385. Louise Erdrich with Karen Russell: Dark Realities and Glimmering Hopes in the Red River Valley

Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series

Can you see the shape of your soul in the everchanging clouds? Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky?

For the ensemble cast of characters that make up the prairie community at the heart of The Mighty Red, existential questions are constantly close to the surface. In her newest novel, author Louise Erdrich immerses readers in the Red River Valley of the North and the complicated lives of its inhabitants. Argus, North Dakota is a town framed by the 2008 economic crisis, the consequences of climate change, and the dynamics of small-town drama. Thrown into motion by a chaotic teen love triangle and fretting about the future, Erdrich’s characters navigate impulsive choices, bitter secrets, and deeply rooted ties to their land and to each other.

The Red River Valley is home to dark realities and glimmering hopes, twisting together like winding late-night drives along dimly lit roads. As resources dwindle and viewpoints shift, love and life lurch forward in splendor, catastrophe, and absurdity. Bonds in the community are born and bolstered, disturbed and questioned, broken and mended. Laced with tender humor and humanity in the midst of devastating environmental circumstances, The Mighty Red paints a layered landscape of ordinary people surviving fraught times.

Louise Erdrich is an award-winning Native American author and poet whose writing spans novels, short stories, non-fiction, and children’s books. Her previously published works include The Plague of Doves, The Round House, and The Night Watchman. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and the owner of the Native-focused independent teaching bookstore Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Karen Russell is the author of five books of fiction, including The New York Times bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. She is a MacArthur Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the recipient of two National Magazine Awards for Fiction, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the 2023 Bottari Lattes Grinzane prize, and the 2024 Mary McCarthy Prize, among other honors. With composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone and choreographer and director Troy Schumacher, she cocreated The Night Falls, listed as one of The New York Times’s Best Dance Performances of 2023. She has taught literature and creative writing as a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of California–Irvine, Williams College, Columbia University, and Bryn Mawr College, and was the Endowed Chair of Texas State University’s MFA program. She serves on the board of Street Books. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, son, and daughter.

Buy the Book The Mighty Red: A Novel

The Elliott Bay Book Company