Deciding to See: Nathan Vass in Conversation with Quinn Hallenbeck

In partnership with Chin Music Press, Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum is delighted to welcome beloved Seattle author and filmmaker Nathan Vass for a conversation with performer and photographer Quinn Hallenbeck on how to balance the raw realities of poverty and trauma with the hopeful through-line of kindness.

Together, they will explore how everyday encounters on a city bus reveal resilience, empathy, and unexpected beauty, and how the decision to truly “see” one another can transform both personal stories and public narratives.

Deciding to See: The View from Nathan's Bus is an eye-opening, inspiring, and hopeful linked-essay collection recounting the amazing everyday encounters of city bus driver, Nathan Vass whose life's motto is if you give kindness, you'll get kindness. Vass tests this theory on the roughest nighttime routes in Seattle. The results illuminate the challenges of poverty, homelessness, and crossing class boundaries. Vass intertwines personal stories of trauma from his survival…