Tucson Weekly: Cheap Thrills (November 20

Cheap Thrills HOMEGROWN TALENT: Native Seeds/SEARCH is a dedicated, non-profit group working to conserve the traditional crops, seeds and farming methods that have long sustained native peoples throughout the greater Southwest. And on Friday, November 21, a quartet of top local writers and researchers--including Barbara Kingsolver, Gary Paul Nabhan, Richard Nelson and Ofelia Zepeda--pay tribute to that mission with a benefit reading.
Kingsolver was trained as a biologist before becoming a writer, and catapulting into the limelight with popular fiction including the acclaimed Animal Dreams, The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven. Nabhan's Gathering the Desert landed him the Burrough's Medal for Nature Writing. His other books include Enduring Seeds, and most recently, a collection of essays titled The Shape and Scope of Diversity.
Nelson spent years studying relationships between the natural world and Alaska's Eskimo and Athabaskan peoples, resulting in a string of books including Shadow of the Hunter and Make Prayers to the Raven.
Zepeda, a poet, linguist and educator, reflects upon the lives of her Tohono O'odham people in Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert, and Jewed 'I-hoi/Earth Movements, A Collection of Poems in O'odham and English.
The celebration begins at 7 p.m. in the Berger Performing Arts Center, 1200 W. Speedway. Advance tickets are $8, available at Silverbell Trading, The Book Mark and the NS/S office on North Fourth Avenue. Tickets are $10 at the door. For information, call 622-5561.
CREATIVE COUPLE: Literary tour-du-force Pete Hautman and Mary Logue will sign copies of their latest work at Clues Unlimited. Hautman's Ring Game is his fourth book to chronicle Joe Crow and his outrageous band of friends, who gleefully plunge into a wild mix of larceny, martial arts, weird religion, body building and murder.
In Settling, Logue's second selection of poetry, she details close-to-home relationships between sisters, parents and children, women and nature, and hearts and minds.
The husband and wife team will sign their respective works from 3 to 5 p.m. Saturday, November 22, at Clues Unlimited, 16 Broadway Village, at the corner of Broadway and Country Club Road. Call 326-8533 for details.
LOST CITY: Now a sprawling, pollution-plagued metropolis, Mexico City was once a charming capital, rich with art, culture and charming neighborhoods. Helen Levitt, better known for her photographs of New York, captured that lost beauty in Mexico City 1941: Photographs by Helen Levitt, now on display in the UA Center for Creative Photography.
The images reveal street scenes in the city's center, as well as the neighborhoods on its periphery, powerfully portraying a nation then on the brink between its agrarian past and industrialized future. Exhibit runs through January 11.
Also showing is Foto/Auto/Bio: The Charles Harbutt Archive, newly acquired by the center. This is the first American museum retrospective of Harbutt's work, and contains an overview of the man considered one of the nation's most powerful interpreters of the documentary style.
The UA Center for Creative Photography is in the UA Arts Oasis, south end of the pedestrian underpass on Speedway east of Park Avenue. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Call 621-7968 for information.

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