A short literary tour.

One of the top literary cities in the United States, Seattle has been the home to many writers and poets, including E.B. White, Jack Olson, Mary McCarthy, Luke May, Tom Robbins, Theodore Roethke, August Wilson, Jonathan Raban, Jon Krakauer, and David Guterson. Join us on a short literary tour as we explore sites that honor a few other well-known authors in this creative mecca.

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The tour begins at the historic Eastern Hotel at 506 Maynard Avenue South in the International District. In the 1930s, the Filipino-American author, poet, and labor activist Carlos Bulosan (1913-1956) lived at the hotel. Inside the lobby is a memorial exhibit paying tribute to the history, experiences, and struggles of Filipino Americans in the first half of the 20th century. The exhibit includes the mural titled "Can You Read the Secrets of History in my Face?"--inspired by Bulosan's poem "The Shadow of the Terror." His masterpiece is "America Is in the Heart," which depicts the life of the Filipino migrant worker.

Not far from the Washington Convention Center on the corner of 11th Avenue and Olive Street is the Victorian-style Hugo House, a non-profit center for the literary arts. The founders named the house in honor of the poet Richard Hugo (1923-1982), who wrote about overlooked places. Hugo grew up in White Center, an area south of Seattle, and became one of America's foremost poets. From the 1950s to the early 1960s, he worked as a technical writer for the Boeing Company. He published several books of poetry, a memoir, a highly respected book on writing, and a mystery novel. Among his most well-known books are Death of the Kapowsin Tavern (1965), Good Luck in Cracked Italian (1969), What Thou Lovest Well, Remains American (1975), 31 Letters and 13 Dreams (1977), and The Right Madness on Skye (1980).

The tour's downtown leg ends in the Pike Place Market at Lowell's Restaurant where sisters Mary Bard Jensen (1904-1970) and Betty MacDonald (1908-1958) passed time. Mary penned the Best Friends series for girls and Betty wrote The Egg and I and the children's classic Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. They both lived in various homes throughout the city, including the Arcadia Apartments at 1222 Summit Ave.

In the book Anybody Can Do Anything, Betty describes the sisters sharing their bagged lunches at Manning's, which is now Lowell's Restaurant. "We took our sandwiches, which we had brought from home ... and walked to the Public Market where for five cents we could get an unlimited number of cups of wonderful fresh-roasted coffee. The dining room was three flights up in the market loft, so we climbed the stairs, got our coffee, climbed more stairs and sat down at a large table by the windows ... commanding a magnificent view of the Seattle waterfront, the islands and Puget Sound."

Farther afield (via a cab ride or a trip on one of the Metro buses with a number beginning in 7) is the University Heights Center for the Community at 5031 University Way NE. This non-profit organization provides and promotes community programs, services, and activities in one of the oldest elementary school buildings in the state.

On top of the steel gateway is a bronze sculpture of 21 oversized books in the process of falling, opening, and closing and about 80 bronze pages in the process of blowing toward the nearby intersection. Look closely and read the excerpts taken from books written by local writers, such as Indian Killer by the Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian writer Sherman Alexie (1996-). He is the recent recipient of the 2007 National Book Award in Young People's Literature for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

If you come on a Saturday, enjoy the farmer's market, where you'll find local produce and crafts, although not as much as downtown at Pike Place Market. And if you do make the trek up to the University District, leave time to explore the University of Washington campus, with its lovely landscaping and two museums, the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture and the Henry Art Gallery.

VICKI VALLEROY, the president-elect of the Pacific Northwest Chapter, is a Web content and staff development librarian for the Boeing Company. She is a member of the Education, Information Technology divisions, and Technical Services and Digital Content sections. She can be reached at [e-mail]. Writers' biographical information is from HistoryLink.org, Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, www.historylink.org, accessed March 2008.