NOTE that all available tickets for A Conversation with Tommy Orange have been reserved. However, Tacoma Arts Live Box Office is keeping a waitlist. Please call the Box Office at 253.591.5894 to have your name added to the waitlist.
Tacoma Reads is a local community reading program that seeks to unite the community in dialogue around contemporary themes through reading a common text. The 2019 Tacoma Reads selection is the bestselling debut novel There There by Tommy Orange. Orange will visit Tacoma for a fireside-style chat hosted by Mayor Victoria Woodards. This is a free, community event.
Described as “groundbreaking, extraordinary” by The New York Times, There There is a multi-generational, relentlessly-paced story of 12 urban Native Americans traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, interconnected in ways they may not yet realize. There There has earned numerous accolades, including winning the the PEN/Hemingway Award, the the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and being selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It was listed as one of the Best Books of the Year in The Washington Post, NPR, Time, O: The Oprah Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Boston Globe. For the audiobook, click here.
Author Tommy Orange is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California, and lives in Angel’s Camp, California.