Saturday, April 27 is Independent Bookstore Day, a day set aside to celebrate all those havens of civilization and culture where you can browse in the old sense, touch and leaf through physical books, and talk to real people who read a lot.

In Seattle, the celebration includes the Passport Challenge, in which one tries to visit all 25 participating bookstores in one day. Arundel Books of Pioneer Square is one of them. Their house imprint, Chatwin Books, who published my Fabric of the American Dream in 2015, will be presenting a series of readings by Chatwin authors at the store that day.

As one of their art book “authors,” rather than reading from my book I will be talking about the paintings that are in it; about my subsequent work; and then about two artists of my choosing, Edouard Manet (of course) and Norman Rockwell (about whom I wrote a piece for ArtDish a few years back).

My talk starts at 3:30 PM PDT. The event will be live-streamed on Facebook, but to reward actually showing up in person, which is kind of the point, champagne will be served at the bookstore.