Get Lit!

Poem of the Week by Jane Hirshfield

2012-01-30T16:30:00.000-08:00

Many-Roofed Building in Moonlight

I found myself
suddenly voluminous,
three-dimensioned,
a many-roofed building in moonlight.

Thought traversed
me as simply as moths might.
Feelings traversed me as fish.

I heard myself thinking,
It isn't the piano, it isn't the ears.

Then heard, too soon, the ordinary furnace,
the usual footsteps above me.

Washed my face again with hot water,
as I did when I was a child.

Jane Hirshfield's books of poetry include Come, Thief (Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), After (HarperCollins, 2006), and Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2004, Hirshfield was awarded the 70th Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by The Academy of American Poets. She was elected Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2012.

To read more work by Jane, visit poets.org

Kelly Milner Halls reading

2012-01-28T10:00:00.000-08:00

Do you have a child that has a crazy imagination?
Would they love to hear about aliens and UFOs?

If your answer is yes, then you and your child should attend Kelly Milner Halls' reading and book signing at Tinman Too to promote her new book, Alien Investigation: Searching for Truth about UFOs and Aliens. Halls explores sightings, landings, hoaxes, and witness accounts of UFOs within her book. Allow your child (and maybe yourself) to be immersed in the world of UFOs and aliens.

Halls is one of Get Lit!'s Authors Tour authors, which means if you like what you hear, parents and educators, you can bring her into the classroom to work with your students.

What:
Kelly Milner Halls' reading and book signing of Alien Investigation: Searching for Truth about UFOs and Aliens
Where:
Tinman Too (809 W. Garland Ave., Spokane)
When:
Saturday, January 28th 2012
1:00 PM
Cost:
FREE
More Information:
Liz Bishop
(509) 325-3001
Kelly Milner Halls

14th Annual Spokane International Film Festival (SpIFF)

2012-01-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

Do you like to see movies before they hit the box office? Wish you could make your own judgments about movies before the major critics praise or bash them? How about being able to meet and ask questions to the filmmaker and performers?

The 14th annual Spokane International Film Festival, also known as SpIFF, is the place for you. At four separate venues, for eleven days, there will be multiple features, documentaries, and shorts from around the world shown. The filmmakers and performers will be in attendance for Q&A and to tell their stories about the making of their films.

What: 14th annual Spokane International Film Festival (SpIFF)
Where:
Magic Lantern Theater (25 W. Main Ave., Spokane)
Garland Theater (924 W. Garland Ave., Spokane)
AMC River Park Square (808 W. Main Ave., Spokane)
Bing Crosby Theater (901 W. Sprague Ave., Spokane)
When: Thursday, January 26th 2012 - Sunday, February 5th 2012
Cost:
Festival Passes - $250
10-Movie Passes - $90
Individual Films - $10
Matinees - $8
Schedule: Visit SpIFF for dates
More Information:
Email - info@spokanefilmfestival.org
(509) 720 - 7743

Beacon Hill Reading

2012-01-25T09:05:00.000-08:00

The Beacon Hill Reading Series presents an evening of poetry and prose with Megan Cuilla, Simeon Mills, and Nance Van Winckel on Wednesday, January 25 from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Hagan Foundation Center for the Humanities in the Spokane Community College library. The reading is free and open to all to attend.

MEGAN CUILLA received her MFA from Eastern Washington University in 2009. She is a part-time poet and full-time cat wrangler whose hobbies include baking cookies and eating them. She has excellent oral hygiene and dreams of one day becoming an astronaut. Her work is published or forthcoming in Rock and Sling and Knockout.

SIMEON MILLS has published short fiction in The Hawaii Review and StringTown, and on monkeybicycle.com. His graphic work has been featured on Top Shelf 2.0. He received an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana. He lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and son.

NANCE VAN WINCKEL has published three books of short stories and five poetry collections, the most recent of which is No Starling (2007, University of Washington Press). Nance has received various awards for her work, including two National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowships, a Pushcart Prize, Poetry Magazine’s Friends of Literature Award, two Washington State Artist Trust Awards, The Midland Authors Award, and awards from the Poetry Society of America. She teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Spokane.

What: Beacon Hill Reading featuring Megan Cuilla, Simeon Mills, and Nance Van Winckel
Where: SCC Hagan Foundation Center
When: January 26, 6:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Cost: Free

Histories of the FBI

2012-01-23T13:54:00.000-08:00

Does the history of the FBI intrigue you?
What do you believe really happens behind closed doors?
Would you love to find out?

If so, you should attend the lecture of John F. Fox, Jr. held by Gonzaga University. Fox is an FBI historian, co-author of The FBI: A Centennial History, and his articles have appeared in the Journal of Government Information, Studies in Intelligence, the Law Enforcement Executive Forum, and the Journal of Cold War Studies.

What: William L. Davis, S.J. Lecture Series of Gonzaga University Presents: John F. Fox, Jr., FBI Historian, "Histories of the FBI: The Roles of Popular, Public, & Academic History in Understanding the Bureau"
Where: Cataldo Hall Globe Room @ Gonzaga University (502 E. Boone Ave., Spokane)
When: Tuesday, January 24th 2012 7:00 PM
Cost: FREE
More Information:
Gonzaga Univerity Presents: John F. Fox. Jr.

Naked Lunch Break Open Mic

2012-01-19T09:30:00.000-08:00

Naked Lunch Break is a new literary open mic event sponsored by Eastern Washington University and the Riverpoint Campus Libraries. Every Thursday from 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m., poetry, stand-up comedy, stand-up tragedy, fiction, nonfiction, and other such assemblages of words let loose into the air with the aid of a microphone at the rate of three minutes per reader. All are welcome to join in.

Naked Lunch Break will occasionally include a featured reader, and this week's special guest is 2012 Get Lit! Festival headliner Jess Walter, award-winning fiction writer, journalist, and author of six novels including The Financial Lives of the Poets and The Zero. Visit our website to read more about Jess.

What: Naked Lunch Break Open Mic
Where: Riverpoint Campus, Phase I auditorium (SCLS 122)
When: January 19, 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Why: A chance to hear a new story by Jess Walter, or if you're a creative and brave writer yourself, a chance to read alongside him
Cost: Free (and there might even be free pizza as well)

"Rent" is due in North Idaho

2012-01-13T07:35:00.000-08:00

Get Lit! is proud to support the Coeur d'Alene Lake City Playhouse's production of "Rent." Performances run January 13 to January 29.

"Rent," the seventh longest running Broadway show in history according to The New York Times, is a play applauded for its artistic representation of intimate human struggles. The protagonists, a group of artists living in New York City's East Village in the early 90s, struggle with addiction, poverty and AIDS, but the play gives equal weight to their struggle to maintain friendships, find love and create art. The play tackles complex issues but keeps the focus on the characters themselves, and the upbeat pop-rock songs with clever lyrics have proven to be a hit with audiences.

Shawn Vestal's recent article in The Spokesman-Review pointed out that the play is generating controversy in Coeur D'Alene, despite its long-running success and the pile of awards it has earned, including many Tony awards and even a Pulitzer Prize. The play was originally released in 1996 to immediate acclaim, and has since been performed across the world in over twenty languages. However, it seems that some citizens are objecting to the subject matter of the play, which includes references to sex and features gay characters struggling with AIDS.

But the show must go on. On behalf of artists everywhere, we're glad it will.

A benefit performance of "Rent" will be staged by the Lake City Playhouse on Jan. 12 to support INBA Outreach scholarships and the North Idaho Aids coalition. Tickets are $25 each and can be purchased at http://www.inbaoutreach.org/rent.

What: "Rent"

Where: Lake City Playhouse 1320 E. Garden in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

When: January 13-January 29

Cost: $19

More information at http://www.lakecityplayhouse.org

To read Shawn Vestal's article in the Spokesman, click here.

Are You Writing a Novel?

2012-01-06T08:20:00.000-08:00

If you have a completed draft of your novel, we've got just the workshop for you. Cheryl Klein, the executive director of Arthur Levine Books/Scholastic, will be presenting a master class on plot in Spokane on March 3, 2012. The workshop is presented by the Inland Northwest chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, but the workshop's focus on plot and pacing will apply to all novel writers, not just those geared toward the YA/middle-grade market.

Here's the official description: "In this INTENSIVE master class, we will examine the care and feeding of a plot, including a number of techniques authors employ to control pacing, tension, character development and reader reaction. We'll look at the DNA of action and emotional development in a novel, and the uses of subplots. You'll learn methods for analyzing your own plot to identify its strengths and weaknesses, and tips for completing a thoughtful and effective revision."

Mari Hunt, member of the local SCBWI chapter, says that Cheryl Klein "is a gifted editor and phenomenal teacher...we're fortunate to have the opportunity to bring her to our area."

Registration for the class is open now, but the registration deadline of January 31 is already approaching.

More details can be found on the SCBWI Facebook page.

Join Get Lit! at First Night

2011-12-30T07:15:00.000-08:00

Get Lit! Programs is proud to participate in First Night Spokane, the city's family-friendly New Year's Eve extravaganza. You can find us at Auntie's Books at River Park Square (on the 2nd floor), where we'll be featuring two fantastic local authors, as well as providing supplies and direction for you to make your own bookmarks!

Well-known (and adored) authors Kelly Milner Halls and Beth Cooley will both read from their latest work. Kelly Milner Halls writes primarily nonfiction for children, including Saving the Baghdad Zoo and In Search of Sasquatch. Beth Cooley writes fiction for young adults, as well as poetry and literary criticism. Her two novels are Shelter and Ostrich Eye. Each author will read from their work and would be happy to answer questions, sign your copy of their book or chat about writing.

The event will last from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Auntie's at the Square. You will need a First Night button to attend this event, but kids 10 and under gain free admission to all of the First Night events. More information on First Night and how to obtain a button can be found here.

The readings will begin at 7 p.m., but stop in any time to create your own bookmark, write a poem using word magnets or simply browse Auntie's great selection of books.

See you at First Night!

"Watercolors" helps clean up the Spokane River

2011-12-28T08:45:00.000-08:00

Spokane Riverkeeper, a local advocating for and purging waste and harmful chemicals from the Spokane River, promotes Terry Tamminen's book Watercolors: How JJ The Wale Saved Us. With each book purchase, $5 will support Spokane Riverkeeper.

Tamminen is a former Santa Monica Baykeeper and lifelong water advocate. Watercolors is a call to action for humans to interrupt our everyday "flow," consider the ocean because decisions impact the environment and oceanic life. Tamminen's tale is based on a true story involving a rescued baby whale, caring individuals, and the struggle to provide shelter, food, and to exercise compassion for an animal. Sometimes a rescue mission reveals the knowledge that could save us all.

What a whale of a tale, and great gift. Watercolors can be purchased at www.watercolorsthebook.com. The e-book is $9.99 and the printed book is $19.99. Please choose Spokane Riverkeeper from the drop down menu to ensure the $5 gets donated. You will be directed to Amazon.com to purchase the book.

Happy reading!

Get Lit! Barnes & Noble Bookfair

2011-12-09T10:00:00.000-08:00

Get Lit! Programs is looking forward to our upcoming fundraiser at Barnes & Noble on Sunday, December 11! Support the Get Lit! Festival and educational outreach programs while you shop. Stop by any Barnes & Noble with a voucher, and a percentage of your purchase will go to Get Lit! Programs. Vouchers can be found here on our website. We'll also be offering free gift-wrapping at the Spokane Valley Barnes & Noble between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m., so stop by and say hello.

Don’t live in the Spokane area or can’t make it out that day? Don’t worry, you can still participate in our bookfair! Shop online at BN.com/bookfairs anytime between December 11-15 and use the Bookfair ID #10631893 at checkout. This would be a great time to get your copy of The Giver, Zone One, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, and other books by our 2012 Festival headliners.

Encore Performances of The Things They Carried

2011-12-01T09:19:00.000-08:00

Eastern Washington University's Theatre company will take audiences back through the jungles of Vietnam as Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried once again takes center stage December 1st through the 4th, 2011.

Jeff Sander's award-winning adaptation of Tim O'Brien's Vietnam War memoir novel is entering the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, a nationally recognized organization for critiquing theatrical performances.

Tim O'Brien was an honored guest in Get Lit!'s Big Read in Spring 2011. He came to Spokane as part of Get Lit!'s 2011 Festival "Telling the American Story." O'Brien brings to light truths that arise out of a burdening struggle to gain physical and mental peace. His voice resonates as a crucial piece of American history and in the building blocks of discussion for the future. EWU looks forward to continuing the story on stage.

The Things They Carried
December 1st - 3rd at 7:30 p.m.
December 4th at 2:00 p.m.
Adapted by Jeff Sanders
Directed by Sara Goff
Starring Gene Eugene as Tim O'Brien

EWU students and one guest admitted free with EWU student ID. Cost for all others is $10.

David Sedaris at Auntie's

2011-11-28T10:01:00.000-08:00

Auntie's Bookstore welcomes

David Sedaris
Thursday, Dec. 1st 7:00 p.m.

Called a "rock star" by his fans, Sedaris continues his work while traveling between France and England, contributing multiple stories to This American Life, and sharing humorous personal anecdotes set in fiction that audiences adore. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, When You are Engulfed in Flames, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice, and Naked.

Doors open at 6 p.m., reading at 7 p.m., and book signing to follow.

Reserve tickets to ensure a seat. Autographs are open to the public at 10 p.m. Purchase a Sedaris book or audio and receive one ticket for admission and the reading.

Visit www.auntiesbooks.com or call 509.838.0206 for more details.

Calling for Submissions! Inlander Short Fiction Contest

2011-11-22T09:20:00.000-08:00

No doubt the burden of debt is hard to escape. Ever feel indebted to pen and paper as a means to ease the weight?

The Inlander Short Fiction Contest calls for original, unpublished fiction less than 2,000 words for the December 22nd issue.

The theme, Debt, can be figurative or literal, present or past, monologue or narrative, whatever voice suits your impression of Debt.

There is no limit on the number of submissions. E-mail submissions to luke@inlander.com with the subject line "Fiction Contest Entry." Deadline is December 1st.

BlueNote Undergraduate Reading

2011-11-17T09:00:00.000-08:00

Are you an Eastern Washington University undergraduate with some writing to share? Do you like to listen to interesting work? Eastern's undergraduate literary magazine, Northwest Boulevard, is hosting BlueNote, a reading featuring undergraduate students at Neato Burrito (827 W. 1st Avenue) on November 18 at 6:00 p.m.

This is a great opportunity for students to share their poetry or prose pieces with an audience outside the typical EWU community. You don't have to be an English major to read, you just need some original writings to share. Eastern undergraduates who would like more information about how to sign up should contact Erin Ormsby at nwblitmag@gmail.com.

Even if you don't want to read, you should still attend BlueNote and discover the range of Eastern's undergraduate creative writing talent while enjoying some yummy burritos (Neato Burrito has veggie and vegan options). Northwest Boulevard will also be selling t-shirts for $5 and there is also a $2 suggested cover charge. All money goes toward the magazine.

What: BlueNote Undergraduate Reading
Where: Neato Burrito (827 W. 1st Avenue, next to the Davenport)
When: Friday, Nov.18 at 6:00 p.m.
Price: $2 suggested cover charge. Also t-shirts for $5.
Contact Information: Erin Ormsby at nwblitmag@gmail.com

Spokane Words

2011-11-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

Listen up, Spokane. The MAC is hosting a night of articulate composition and word play. That's what Spokane Words is all about and Get Lit! looks forward to attending and seeing you there tonight.

Hear poems by Robert Wrigley, Nance Van Winckel, Mark Anderson, Ciara Shuttleworth, Kurt Olson, Ashley Ruderman, Jonathan Potter, Amanda Maule, and others as they read in the middle of a newly installed exhibit.

Be sure to stop by and say hello to the Get Lit! table afterwards.

What: Spokane Words
Where: The Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture
When: Thursday, Nov. 3 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Price: Suggested $5 donation

For more information, visit www.northwestmusuem.org

Introducing Our 2012 Festival Headliners

2011-10-31T11:05:00.000-07:00

Eastern Washington University's Get Lit! Programs is excited to announce the headliners for our 2012 Get Lit! Festival, which will take place April 10-15.

Lois Lowry
Why you know her: You've probably read at least one of her novels in school, since she's written over 30 children's and young adult books, including the Newbery Award winners Number the Stars and The Giver.
Why we're excited: She'll be reading from the latest installment of The Giver series, and The American Place Theatre's Literature to Life® Stage Presentation of The Giver promises to be a must-see event.

Jess Walter
Why you know him: He's the author of The Financial Lives of the Poets and The Zero, and if you live in the Pacific Northwest, he's one of our favorite celebrities.
Why we're excited: This EWU alum continues to outdo himself. We just heard that The Financial Lives of the Poets, TIME Magazine's #2 novel of the year in 2009, is being made into a movie. Plus, he's got a new book coming out in June of 2012, The Beautiful Ruins.

Colso n Whitehead
Why you know him: He's written works of fiction such as The Institutionist and Sag Harbor, and The New York Times Book Review says he writes with "economy, texture, and punch."
Why we're excited: He's known for his mix of humor and intellect in his approach to social commentary, and Zone One, his latest novel which he'll be reading from, is no exception.

Ted Kooser
Why you know him: He's a Pulitzer Prize winner and former Poet Laureate, he's written over ten poetry collections, and he runs the weekly American Life in Poetry column.
Why we're excited: This down-to-earth insurance agent turned poet is all about making poetry accessible and enjoyable for everyone, and we're sure his event will be just that.

Susan Orlean
Why you know her: She's the author of creative non-fiction works such as The Orchid Thief (on which the movie Adaptation was based) and My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere.
Why we're excited: She'll be reading from her new book of non-fiction, Rin Tin Tin: Life and Legend, which chronicles the real life story of the celebrity dog. And everyone loves dogs.

Steve Almond
Why you know him: He's written non-fiction works like Candyfreak and Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, and his newest collection of short stories, God Bless America, was released a week ago.
Why we're excited: He's hilarious, honest, and edgy, and you never know what might come out of his mouth.

National Book Festival features Poetry Out Loud students

2011-09-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

This past weekend an estimated 200,000 people attended the 2011 National Book Festival, a two day celebration of the literary arts organized by the Library of Congress. This year's festival not only featured over a hundred award winning writers like Toni Morrison, Dave Eggers, and Garrison Keillor, but also showcased three talented high school students who were 2011 finalists for the national Poetry Out Loud competition.

Get Lit! is proud to be the Poetry Out Loud host and coordinator for the Eastern Washington area. With the new school year underway, we're looking forward to another year of impressive recitations and inspiring performances from our local high school students. We'd love to see one of our students on the line up for next year's National Book Festival!

For more information about Poetry Out Loud, click here. Get Lit! will be hosting a teacher development workshop (with available clock hours) for any high school teachers in the region who want to learn more about how to integrate Poetry Out Loud into their classroom and prepare their students for the competition. The workshop will be held on October 26 from 4:00 PM - 7:00 PM at the Spokane Riverpoint Campus. For more information, please contact us at getlit@ewu.edu.

Local Author Spotlight: Trent Reedy

2011-06-06T10:40:00.001-07:00

(You're reading the right post if you're interested in any of the following: children's literature, good literature in general, local Spokane writers, Midwest writers, the Middle East, America, culture, adventure, inspiration. If you prefer boring books, cliches, or vampires, you may be in the wrong place.)

Trent Reedy is a Spokane author quickly making a name in the literary world. Raised in Iowa, he joined the Army National Guard and ended up heading off to Afghanistan. In one village there, he met a young girl with a cleft lip. An Army doctor was able to perform corrective surgery on her, and Reedy promised himself he would tell the girl's story. And he did, loosely basing his book, Words in the Dust (2011 Arthur A. Levine Books), on her experiences.

I sat down and asked Reedy a few questions about writing:

What are you working on right now? I always have a number of projects in progress at the same time. Writing is so much fun. I'm always thinking of new stories, and all the ideas I have for novels are very different from one another. Right now I'm working on a fantasy piece, a middle-grade adventure story for boys, and a couple different young adult pieces.

Who are your favorite authors? Tim O'Brien is just amazing. It was really incredible to hear him speak and read and share a few words with him at the Get Lit! Festival. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is my favorite novel. Every single line of that book is just perfect. My favorite poet is Robert Frost. My kid lit hero is Katherine Paterson [who wrote the introduction to his book]. She's the U.S. National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, or, as I like to say, the Queen of Kid Lit. These writers have made my life better in really direct and important ways.

What advice would you give to writers hoping to have a book published? Keep reading, keep writing, and also keep learning. It's very difficult, if not impossible, at any given time, to understand how much one doesn't know. Always, and at all stages of a person's development as a writer, there is more to learn. One can change and improve the way he looks at his craft; the best story that a writer was able to come up with in 5th grade looks very primitive to his adult self. In the same way, I think any writer's best work today might not be his best work tomorrow.

How do you deal with having manuscripts rejected sometimes? I like to look at rejection letters as trophies of trying. I hang them on the wall above my computer, and I like to think that for every one of those letters there's a thousand people who wanted to write their book but never finished, another thousand who finished but never had the courage to submit. I like my rejection letters. They tell me I'm still in the fight.

What are your favorite things about the Spokane literary scene? Spokane is really a fantastic city for writers, beginning with Auntie's Bookstore, which is astounding and beautiful. And coupled with the writers in the area--the children's lit community is fantastic. That didn't exist for me back in Iowa. I experienced Get Lit! for the first time earlier this year. I was at the poetry reading at the Montvale, and it was wonderful to be in the company of this crowd of people who came to hear these poets' expressions. It wasn't a demo derby or basketball game or some other sporting event that typically draws people. It was people coming out because they care about the power of the written word. I felt a certain energy about it--it was intoxicating. So what's not to love about Spokane?

What do you see as the main differences between writing children's lit and writing fiction for adults? I like writing stories for young people about young people because I have found adult life to be very dull. In a children's lit story, characters can do anything. You can have a fun adventure story about boys who build a raft to go down a river; if the story was about several grown men building a raft to go down a river, the audience would wonder why they don't just get a job. All stories come from conflict and discovery and change; and conflict, discovery, and change are the essence of the experience for young people. Growing up is the greatest human adventure.

To find out more about Trent Reedy:

Ekphrasis

2011-05-17T13:37:00.001-07:00

What's more artsy than art?

Well, how about poetry about art? Ekphrastic poetry is poetry inspired by visual art (ekphrasis is defined as a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art). Take a look at a couple poems paired with the famous paintings they are based on.

The Starry Night
Anne Sexton (1961)

The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
William Carlos Williams (1962)

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

The 2011 Big Read Was a Success!

2011-05-17T06:26:00.000-07:00

The 2011 Big Read in Spokane has come and gone, but will not be forgotten any time soon, thanks entirely to the participation and attendance of so many wonderful Spokane area residents and organizations. Get Lit! Programs chose the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien for the purpose of igniting a conversation and drawing the community together around this one book. The Big Read selection was in conjunction with the 2011 Get Lit! Festival’s theme: Telling the American Story.

We at Get Lit! Programs believe that we hit our target goals dead-on. Diverse audiences were engaged in reading The Things They Carried and discussing the important issues raised in the book, and more generally, a wide group of Spokane residents were drawn into reading and participating in literary-based events. In short, we believe that we made this book part of the cultural discussion. All told, The Big Read touched over 4,000 people, more than 1,500 of whom were high school students. Thank you to everyone who made The Big Read 2011 such a success in Spokane. If you would like to see some of the photos and videos from the event, visit The Big Read archives section of our website.

One of our greatest successes was the theatrical adaptation of the book by the Eastern Washington University theater department. Drawing approximately 1,600 audience members over seven performances, according to audience feedback the production “absolutely exceeded expectations.” The production is currently being honed by the theater department for use as a contest production, and we wish them great luck with this endeavor. The other major highlight of The Big Read was “An Evening with Tim O’Brien.” The event featured a video presentation of veteran’s stories by Tincan (the video and full interviews will soon be available on their website), a poetry reading by Iraq veteran Brian Turner, and a moving reading by O’Brien himself, after which Turner and O’Brien fielded audience questions. Judging by the number of hands in the air, the question and answer session could have gone on all night. Instead, both authors signed books for over an hour at the end of the event.

But, The Big Read would not have been what it was without the events leading up to O’Brien’s reading. Thirteen separate groups hosted book discussions; the Chase Gallery and the J.F. Thamm Gallery presented art exhibits; veterans spoke to high school students; other veterans, university professors and many others participated in panel discussions; the book was read in its entirety on-air at KPBX 91.1; two separate film series were shown; an online blog forum offered students as far away as University of Idaho an opportunity to participate in the discussion; high school teachers taught the book in their classes; a children’s and youth author read stories to younger groups related to American history; and authors hosted workshops and panel discussions that focused audience members on telling their own American stories. Conversations were had that are not normally had, veterans were celebrated and their stories were heard, and reading was elevated to a place of importance within the Spokane community.

The Big Read was brought to Spokane by Eastern Washington University’s Get Lit! Programs with the help of the Spokane Public Library, Spokane County Library District, and Fairchild Air Force Base. We are also thankful to BookCrossing.com, Spokane Public Radio, Tincan, the Spokane Arts Commission, The Inlander, and The City of Spokane for their support.

Though The Big Read is not scheduled to return to Spokane in 2012, we hope to host another Big Read in the future. In the meantime, check out “Spokane is Reading,” a similar community-wide reading initiative organized by the Spokane County Library District, Spokane Public Library, and Auntie’s Bookstore. This year, Spokane will be reading Packing for Mars by Mary Roach. Roach will come to Spokane on October 20 for two free presentations. More info about Spokane is Reading will be available, click here.

2011 Get Lit! Wrap-up

2011-05-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

Another successful season of Get Lit! is behind us! Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2011 Festival—we hope you enjoyed the authors and were inspired for your own writing and reading. Take a look at some highlights of this year's festival, Big Read, and educational outreach programs.

The Big Read
The community’s response to this year’s NEA Big Read was overwhelming. Nearly 5,000 people attended 38 events, which were focused on the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and included discussion with the author, film screenings, lectures, art exhibits, and other events. Eastern Washington University’s theater department produced a dramatic adaptation of the book as the school’s winter play, which was met with praise from the audiences. The Big Read culminated in An Evening with Tim O’Brien at the Bing Crosby Theater, a headlining event at the Get Lit! Festival.

Get Lit! 2011 Festival

Over the course of five brimming days, Spokane was a hub for 40 well-respected authors at more than 50 events. Over 3,000 people participated in the Get Lit! Festival’s author readings, community events, workshops, panel discussions, poetry slams, and more. As always, it was a wonderful time for authors to meet each other and their readers, as well as for the community to interact with authors, discover new favorites, get ideas for their own writing, and express their love for reading. And once again, responses were positive all around. One attendee said, “This is such a wonderful gift for the community—we look forward to this every year.” Another exclaimed, “I’m so delighted that Spokane has a festival of this magnitude. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

Headliners Tim O’Brien and Brian Turner engaged their audience of 450—including more than 250 high school and college students—with great rapport and poignant honesty. One audience member said the best part of the event was “Tim O’Brien’s authenticity, descriptions of his own journey, and especially his emphasis on being a whole man with emotions and doubts.” The audience was so involved in the discussion that people wanted to stay and keep the conversation going beyond the time allotted for questions.

Sam Kean, author of The Disappearing Spoon, was another festival favorite. Audiences were excited by the unique focus on science and enchanted by his humor and stage presence. Poet Matthew Dickman was “insightful, genuine, hilarious and provided fascinating insight into the world of poetry” as he shared his poetry and personal experiences in a charming, forthcoming manner. Heather Gold’s performance piece, “Cookie,” was very popular, and some remarked that it was the best event they had ever been to in Spokane (and it was free!). Unsurprisingly, the audience loved Ani DiFranco’s concert, and reacted with particular enthusiasm when she read a couple poems.

The 25 festival workshops and panels brought a diversity of topics and perspectives from numerous writers and editors. Participants found they left with fresh ideas for their writing, techniques to bring back to their classrooms, or simply new information and thoughts to ponder.

The poetry slams were a great hit. The winner of the college slam, Kurt Olson, performed his piece at the Ani DiFranco concert, as did Harley Bates, who won the teen slam. Bates had never won or performed anything before, but in front of over 650 people at the concert, she excelled. Ben Read, who took first place in the youth slam, greatly impressed author Louise Borden, at whose reading Read presented his winning piece.

Educational Outreach Programs

Writers-in-Residence sent Sarah Conover, Susan Virnig, Diana McLean, and Daniel Harrington into participating schools: Lidgerwood Elementary, Barker High, Havermale High, RiverCity Leadership Academy, and Ness Elementary. During a total of 200 hours of classroom time, these writers connected with about 350 students. Here are just a couple of the powerful stories from their experiences:

A boy with special needs at Ness Elementary school wasn’t interested in poetry for the first eight weeks of the Writers-in-Residence placement. Then the ninth week, Susan Virnig brought in art pieces to spur ekphrastic writing—combining writing and art—and suddenly poetry came to life for him. He proceeded to write eight poems in a single week.

Nilam is a Nepalese student at Lidgerwood Elementary. At the beginning of the year, she wrote only very small amounts, and her English vocabulary was very limited. She was hesitant to try the creative writing assignments, and her teacher simply asked her to brainstorm English words instead of completing entire assignments. By the end of the Writers-in-Residence placement, Nilam was writing full pages and choosing to do the same assignment as the class rather than a simpler version, and her writing was much easier to understand. (You can read one of her poems below.)

Author's Tour brought authors to nearly 3,000 students at 13 different schools, reaching areas as far as Okanogan, Manson, and Coeur D'Alene. One Reardan Elementary School teacher said: “I was very pleased that our fourth grade students were able to receive guidance from a published author while creating their own narrative. I think this experience validates the importance of writing.”

Poetry Out Loud: Get Lit! continued to coordinate the Spokane region’s Poetry Out Loud competitions and this year an estimate of 600 high school students participated. Eleven finalists competed at the regional competition, and winner Langston Ward of Mead High School went on to win honorable mention at the state level. Brianna Ellis from Okanogan High School said: “It was very humbling to get to recite poems from such great authors. You get turned on to poetry from the get go. I have loved everything about this experience.”

The 2012 Get Lit! Festival
Next year, the festival theme will be “Capturing the World.” This theme will address how writers capture the world on the page and open up the discussion to writing across the globe. Plus, we will be spotlighting crime-fiction! This will be our last e-newsletter until the fall. But check our website later for information on the 2012 authors and events!

Poems in sidebar:

Jacob Olsen: Nature

Nature is awesome
Because nature is outside
And outside is cool

Nilam Karki: Coming to Spokane

I’m coming with my family. My brother is scared to airplane fly and I’m scared too. My little sister is scared too. My sister is crying. I flew from Nepal to Spokane. I fly and it was long so I watched the movie. This is a surprise to me.

"Susan?!!"

2011-05-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

We just have to share this story! SusanVirnig was one of the Writer's in Residence for the Get Lit! Festival. While she was working with a third grade class at Ness Elementary School, she gave the students the option of writing about "what is poetry?" or to choose to write another of the many types of poems they had done, or to write about anything they wanted to write about. One of the boys chose the last option and wrote this:

"Susan?!!"

One day

she came

without a warning.

Susan

came to us

came to teach us

about

Poetry!

Oh the things we learned

the things she taught us

the fun we had together.

Susan

What a wonderful tribute to Susan - thank you for all your hard work with the students at Ness Elementary!!

Idaho Prize for Poetry 2011

2011-04-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

Lost Horse Press is pleased to announce the Idaho Prize for Poetry 2011. All U.S. poets are eligible. Entries must be postmarked by 15 May 2011; winners will be announced on 15 August 2011. The winning manuscript will be published by Lost Horse Press and the poet will receive a cash prize of $1000! An entry fee of $25 (check or money order only, please) must accompany each manuscript. The 2011 judge is Ray Amorosi.

Sent submissions to: The Idaho Prize, Lost Horse Press, 105 Lost Horse Lane, Sandpoint, ID 83864

Poetry Out Loud National Finals

2011-04-26T10:36:00.001-07:00

This year, the Poetry Out Loud National Finals can be watched without having to travel from your living room! Both the semifinals (all 53 competitors) and the national finals (the top nine) will be webcast live on Thursday, April 28, 9am-8pm, and Friday, April 29, 7-9pm. Micah Meadowcroft will be representing Washington State in the Region 3 Semifinal on April 28th from 5-8pm, Eastern Standard Time. Tune in to cheer him on! This is a one-time-only webcast, and will not be available for viewing after the event. Here's the link: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/poetry-out-loud-finals

The entire schedule is below:

2011 Poetry Out Loud National Finals

April 28, 2011

9 am - 8 pm Semifinals Lincoln Theatre

Region 1 Semifinal: 9 am - 12 pm

East Central CT, DE, DC, ME, MA, NH, NJ, NY, and Northeast NC, OH, PA, RI, SC, VI, VT, VA, WV

Region 2 Semifinal: 1 pm - 4 pm

Midwest AL, AR, FL, GA, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, and South Central ME, MS, MO, NE, OK, PR, TN, WI

Region 3 Semifinal: 5 pm - 8 pm

Upper Northwest AK, AZ, CA, CO, HI, ID, MN, MT, NV and West NM, ND, OR, SD, TX, UT, WA, WY

April 29, 2011

7 pm - 9:15 pm National Finals Lincoln Theatre

We would also like to congratulate the winners of the Get Lit! Poetry Slams! Louise Borden, one of the featured festival authors, was very impressed with Ben Read, Jefferson Elementary student and winner of the Youth Poetry Slam. Congratulations also to Harley Bates of Deer Park for his win in the Teen Slam and Kurt Olson, EWU, for his win in the College Slam! Thanks also to all you who competed this year - they were truly wonderful events!

EVENT CANCELED: Margaret Regan

2011-04-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

We regret to inform you that the Immigration Stories with Margaret Regan event has been canceled. This free reading was set to take place on Thursday, April 14 at the Unitarian Universalist Church. We will update you if the author will be rescheduled in the coming weeks at the same venue. HOWEVER...the UU church still plans to hold a discussion on issues of immigration with local experts. So the conversation continues! There are also two other events to check out that night: Heather Gold performs "I Look Like an Egg, But I Identify as a Cookie" at 7pm at the Kress Gallery (3rd Floor of River Park Square Mall) or there is Sam Kean's discussion of The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World for the Periodic Table of Elements at 8pm at the Bing Crosby Theater. Click here for a complete list of events.

Check out our Get Lit! Festival PSA

2011-04-12T15:30:00.000-07:00

Keep an eye out for our sweet new 2011 Get Lit! Festival commercial on TV. You can also check it out on YouTube .

Get Lit! posters, signs, and festival guides are all over the place. Where have you seen Get Lit! Festival around town? Let us know!

Get Lit and Japan Week

2011-04-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

The week of April 16 - 24 will mark the 19th year that Japan Week has been celebrated in Spokane. During Japan Week, people of Japanese heritage and those interested in things Japanese come together to celebrate Japanese traditions. Japan week is a time to raise awareness of the rich variety of Japanese cultural treasures available to be experienced in Spokane throughout the year. This year, Get Lit! and Japan Week have collaborated to bring Julie Otsuka, author of When the Emperor was Divine, to Spokane. She will be reading from 3 - 4 pm on Saturday, April 16th at River Park Square.

Japan Week also offers Japanese storytelling, origami, music and many other opportunities. A schedule of the weeks events can be found at this website.

Get Lit! Festival Workshops: Learn From The Best!

2011-04-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

If you’re a writer, a reader, an artist, an illustrator, a journalist, a blogger, or just a collector of unique experiences, come join us at the Riverpoint Campus, Phase One Building on April 16th for our series of great workshops hosted by renowned authors and local educators. Listed below are a few of the workshops being offered. You can also go to our website for a complete list.

The Second Draft of History

Aspiring journalists, history buffs, and nonfiction junkies will find their interests collide in this two-hour workshop presented by author Jack Hamann at this year’s Get Lit! Festival. Globetrotting journalist and nonfiction author Jack Hamann has worked as a network correspondent and documentary producer for CNN and PBS, as well as publishing articles for the likes of The Seattle Times. His stories have brought him around the world, spotlighted his interest in humanitarian efforts, and gained him recognition for his investigative book, On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of World War II. Working under strict deadlines, reporters famously produce “the first draft of history.” In this workshop, Hamann will be discussing the desire that many journalists have to revisit past stories and flush out the entire truth behind the “first draft.” His experience, both as a seasoned journalist and nonfiction author will examine the satisfying experience of uncovering hidden facts buried beneath years of apathy and even secrecy.

The Zine Scene

Zines are a blossoming form of personal expression packed in an inexpensive, easily printed punch. To those unfamiliar with what a zine actually is, they can best be described as self-published mini-magazines, usually meant to be printed out at home and distributed locally. Your own zine, produced at our Zine Scene workshop, could include a wide range of your many interests or your one obsessive passion. It could include images, illustrations, or text borrowed (legally!) from other source or showcase your own talent for the arts. Join zine gurus Julia Lipscomb and Lindsae Williams-Sindalu who will give you skills to express yourself in a new way. Click here to learn more about the Bird's Nest Zine Library, right here in Spokane!

Blogging 101

Take the “blah” out of blog with this informative and interesting workshop presented by local Eastern Washington University educator Dr. Molly Johnson and professional blogger for The Spokesman-Review Dan Webster. These working professionals bring their practical advice for creating written work that can communicate your ideas to the world while building your online credibility. Unlike news articles, blogs can showcase the personality behind the writer while still imparting useful knowledge to your readers. And unlike forums and wikis, blogs can also entertain your readers and, at the same time, build your credibility in one, personalized webspace. If you have the desire to make an online professional presence for yourself or just want to contribute your two cents to the blogosphere, this workshop is for you.

We also teamed up with the Northwest Inland Writing Project to offer several workshops designed specifically for educators. Expert teachers will present the best-practices they have learned for expanding reading and writing in the classroom.

Igniting the Inner Reader

How, as an educator, do you build a passion for reading in students distracted by television and video games? This workshop, taught by Jenifer Junior High language arts teacher April Niemela, will share strategies to improve reading with fun activities based on reading appreciation that can transform your classroom into a community of readers. Bring your camera and an eagerness to participate in interactive lessons!

Putting Pen to Paper

Remember as a child, writing letters to pen pals or making personal and top-secret entries into your very own diary? Remember the satisfaction of writing in neat cursive, or recording your memories, or expressing your inner thoughts on an actual piece of paper? Now days, so many children have lost that connection to paper and, as a result, the connection to writing. Join Northwest Inland Writers Project educators, Barbara Crumb and Beverley Wolff, as they teach the use of writer’s notebooks in the classroom to engage students in the art of the written word.

All workshops are $30 ($20 for students with student ID.) Register at spokaneparks.org. You can also call 509.625.6200 or visit Spokane Parks and Recreation at City Hall.

Continuing-education credits (clock hours) will be available for K-12 teachers through NEWESD 101. The cost for 3-5 hours is $10 and for 6 hours is $12. You can sign up for credits the day of the event with a check.

The Get Lit! Festival is Just Around the Corner

2011-04-06T14:55:00.001-07:00

The Get Lit! Festival is just around the corner and there are many free community events for all literature lovers! With over 35 events at multiple downtown venues on Saturday, plus multiple events throughout the week, there truly is something for everyone. We hope to see you at some of the headliner readings as well as some of these free events between April 13-17:

For those interested in nonfiction, Get Lit! offers a panel on freelance journalism on Saturday as well as a reading by Jack Hamman who shares an overlooked part of history—the unjust murder allegations brought against 43 African American soldiers—in his true story On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of WWII. Earlier in the week, on Thursday, at the Unitarian Universalist Church, journalist Margaret Regan will share over a decade of stories that she has collected related to immigration at our southern border. Or, you can come to the Kress Gallery at the River Park Square Mall to watch comedian Heather Gold perform her coming-out story in the kitchen in “I Look like an Egg, but I Identify as a Cookie."

Environmental enthusiasts will want to check out water-rights activist Maude Barlow, who is speaking at a free event at SCC on Wednesday. There is also a Saturday panel on the art of nature writing, followed by a reading from Bruce Bjornstad and Jane Fritz, who share insight into the historical stories of our region. Benjamin Percy will then share his book The Wilding, which explores the dilemmas of land development in a way that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Plus, John Laursen will be here to showcase our region through photographs of the Columbia River Gorge.

To explore the variety that this year’s theme encompasses, writers of various genres will offer their perspectives on writing the American story in a panel on Saturday. There will also be readings on how the West captures and shapes its inhabitants by Ruth McLaughlin, author of Bound Like Grass: A Memoir from the Western High Plains, and Heather Sharfeddin. After that, Jonathan Evison, author of West of Here, and Brenda Peterson, who wrote the memoir I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth, explore new ways to look at American landscapes, people, traditions, and connections between past and future. In addition, Julie Otsuka will be reading at the River Park Square Mall on Saturday in collaboration with Japan Week. Her novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, describes the travails of a Japanese American family's internment in a Utah enemy alien camp during World War II.

Get Lit! Programs will also host a Native American Spotlight on Saturday at the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture. First, there will be a panel where Gloria Bird, Victor Charlo, and Laura Tohe will discuss incorporating their heritage into their writing. Later, families and children of all ages are invited to hear three storytellers—Taress Alexis, Marilyn James, and LaRae Wiley—share traditional songs and oral stories of the First Americans. Kindergarten and pre-school students from the Salish School of Spokane will also perform a skit and sing songs in their native language.

If you like a mixture of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, there are various options: the EWU Alumni Reading, the Regional MFA Reading, and the EWU Faculty Reading are all a good bet on the weekend.! The Inlander will once again be hosting their 101-Word Fiction Showdown on Sunday with the eight finalists from their short fiction contest. And for the poetry lovers, the popular Poetry Salon After-Hours will be held on Friday night at the Montvale Hotel atrium, complete with fireplace and couches. Just like it was in the salons of old. Poets Lowell Jaeger, Kathleen Flenniken, Laura Tohe, Victor Charlo, and Laura Read will gather to share their work and their thoughts about writing with you.

Plus, there will be a Lost Horse Press Reading on Friday, April 15 from 3 - 5 pm in the Walther Gallery of the MAC Museum. The featured readers will include Lost Horse Press poets: Henry Real Bird, Maya Jewell Zeller, Christopher Howell, and D.S. Butterworth. They will be joined by renowned classical guitarist, Leon Atkinson as well as Fiddlin' Red Simpson. Maya Jewell Zeller will also be participating in the EWUAlumni readings at the Riverpoint campus on Saturday and Chris Howell will participate in the EWU Faculty reading at the Barrister Winery on Sunday.

And, of course, for the writers, this year’s panels and talks are designed to encourage you to share your version of the American story. Saturday topics include the ins and outs of the publishing process as well as poetry chapbooks. Artist and writer, Danica Novgorodoff will also be here to explain how she turned a book into a graphic novel. Friday panels, held at the local college campuses, are also open to all. They will explore: life becoming art through poetry, perfecting perspective, using place as character, and finding themes in your life story. Then, if you or anyone you know is interested in sharing work, Get Lit! welcomes you to the Come, One, Come All Community Reading on Sunday which is open to readers of all ages and genres.

Find all the details at www.ewu.edu/getlit. There you can also page through our complete festival guide online! Tickets and festival passes are still available for all of the headlining events as well as the workshops.

Telling the American Story at the Chase Gallery

2011-03-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

The Spokane Arts Commission announces "Telling the American Story: History, Memory, Place, Story, Picture, Space", a group exhibition in conjunction with Eastern Washington University's Get Lit! Festival at the Chase Gallery from March 1 - April 29, 2011.

Some of the featured artists are: Gordon Wilson, Laurie Lamon and John Kuhn, creators of a piece titled, "Things we Throw Away"; Lisa Conger, Darrell Sullens and Stephanie Turner's "Depot"; and Joe Comine, Rosie Comine, Scott Eubanks, James Comine and Simon Miller's film, "The Futility of War and the Letters." Tiffany Patterson, Mark Anderson and Jessie Fountain have created a portrait inspired by the Salish language; Bernadette Vielbig, Tom Davis and Ben Read are working on an intergenerational group portrait; and Norvel Trosst and Zan Agzigian are creating an installation titled, "Dreaming Becomes Reality" which includes three poems, "Memory," "Change," and "Bye, Bye, Lie." The photographs and poems in this piece allude to and reveal the illusion of the American Story sthrough black and white photos with window-blinds between each photo that display poems on each side of the blind that can be flipped and read front and back by viewers using a turn stick. This is a show that seems complicated and it is - one reason this show is a must see!

Augury Books: Editors' Prize in Poetry

2011-03-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

Augury Books is an independent press based in New York City. They are proud to announce their inaugural Editors' Prize in Poetry. The reading period will be from March 15 - May 15, 2011 and the winner will receive a $1,000 honorium and publication with Augury Book as well as ten complimentary copies of the book.

Multiple submissions are accepted as long as each manuscript is submitted individually with separate reading fees. All entries will be considered for publication. Submit 40 - 75 pages of poetry and an acknowledgments page. Please do not include a bio. There is a $20 entry fee and a deadline of May 15, 2011.

Sometimes the Story Finds You

2011-03-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

Each year we ask some of our festival authors to offer up some wisdom on writing. Suzanne Morgan Williams, author of Bull Rider, shares her thoughts on the writing process as well as the importance of people sharing their stories with each other.

Sometimes the story finds you. I’ve been giving revision workshops lately and the first thing I ask writers is “What is your book really about?” The fact is, during that first draft, I never know and I suspect that’s true for others too. So it’s an important question. Until you answer it, your work can’t sing. What starts out as a conflict, say between a cautious mom and her son who wants to be a bull rider, ends up being about loyalty and empowerment and family resiliency. Oh, and about two brothers – one, Cam, who now doesn’t want to be a bull rider and another, Ben, who was a bull rider until he was blown up by an IED in Iraq.

This was not the story I set out to write when I began Bull Rider. I didn’t want to write about war injuries. But my son-in-law was in the service and the war in Iraq was heating up and I just kept thinking about this other brother in the O’Mara family and what he might be doing if he were a Marine. Cam’s story was changing to include Ben and Ben was demanding equal space on the pages. So that’s what Bull Rider was really about: the consequences and sacrifice of war and the strength of one fictitious family. It just took me a while to realize it.

I think the best books come from the writer’s emotional experience and the questions he’s grappling with if not directly from his or her physical experience. That’s what gives a book heart. That’s when you can answer that question, “What’s your book really about?” And those books can open conversations. They allow others who’ve maybe had that physical experience to access their own emotions. Or they let those who haven’t been through the book’s conflict to practice – what would they do? How would they feel? In the case of Bull Rider, it was also my honor to learn from real stories – from the blogs of wounded soldiers to the stories of my father-in-law who landed at Anzio beach and fought through Italy and Germany during World War II. My husband said his father never talked much about the war and when he finally told me this story in 2006, I understood why. So much loss. “Did you like Italy?” I asked him. “There wasn’t much left to see.” That and the numbers from his unit – 90 percent dead, wounded or missing – pretty much summed it up.

My father-in-law was 86 when we talked. He died last week. I treasure the memories he shared and put them into Bull Rider. But how many years did he not say anything? Who could understand losing nine of every ten of your buddies? What price did he pay to not bring that pain home to his family? The story in Bull Rider found me. I’m not a veteran and I’m not from a military family, although we’ve become one since our daughter’s marriage. I am a good listener. I listened to myself. Then I listened to so many stories. It is my honor to share a little bit of what I learned. I hope it opens a conversation.

For a list of books about the military experience and military families that are good reads for kids aged 7 through high school visit her website and open Veterans, then Books.

If you are interested in hearing more, come to see Suzanne's reading during the Get Lit! Festival at Auntie's Bookstore on April 16 from 1-1:45pm. She is also leading a workshop for ages 10 and up from 9:30-11 am on Saturday at the Riverpoint Campus. Both events are free!

Big Read interview with the Get Lit! Programs Coordinator

2011-03-11T10:41:00.000-08:00

How is the Big Read important to our community? Whywas Tim O'Brien's book chosen? What does "thinking outside of the book box" mean? If you are interested in finding out about behind the scenes information for the 2011 Big Read, please check out The Big Read blog, for an insightful interview with Danielle Ward!

For details on all the many events that are currently going on, please visit the NEA website.

Congratulations Authors Tour authors!

2011-03-10T09:20:00.000-08:00

Carol Muzik's book Raising Lucy - The True Story of Raising an Orphaned Wild Goose won the Mom's Choice Award in the Animal Kingdom Category for juvenile picture books! Way to go!!

And Renee Riva's newest book, Happy Camper - A Romantic Comedy, has been published in Kindle or pc format and will be out in print in two weeks - congratulations!

And just what is the Authors Tour, you ask? Since 2003, Get Lit! Programs has been sending published authors into K-12 schools within the Inland Northwest. Between January and April, writers working in a variety of genres - poets, novelists, nonfiction writers, journalists, children's authors, naturalists, and humorists - travel to rural and low-income schools. Through visits to an average of thirty schools each year, Authors Tour touches nearly 5,000 students, most of whom have never before met a "real" author. A principal from one of the participating schools said it best: "It has been an entire school generation since we last had a published author in our district."

To request an author, please contact Danielle Ward at 509-359-6977 or dwald@ewu.edu to ensure that you receive the Get Lit! Programs discounted author rate.

The 2011 Big Read Kicks off!

2011-03-07T09:20:00.000-08:00

This year, for the first time, Get Lit! will participate in The Big Read, a program created by the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with the Arts Midwest. The goal of The Big Read is to restore reading to the center of our community's culture. According to a 2004 report by the National Endowment for the arts, "not only is literary reading in America declining rapidly among all groups, but the rate of decline has accelerated, especially among the young." The Big Read aims to address this crisis by celebrating some of the greatest books.

The 2011 Big Read will consist of a series of events all connected to Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, and will serve as a month-long lead-up to this year's Get Lit! Festival. The Big Read in the Spokane area officially kicked off on March 4 with a reception at the Chase Gallery in Spokane's City Hall where several area veterans spoke and will continue with 50 events, now through April 16.

Now is a good time to pick up a copy of Tim O'Brien's award winning book The Things They Carried. Tracing the tour of one American platoon, The Things They Carried is not just a tale of the Vietnam War, although it is considered one of the finest books ever written about combat. This award-winning book is a brutal, sometimes funny, often profound narrative about the human heart - how it fares under pressure, and what it can endure. The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award and the title story of the collection was selected for Best American Short Stories of the Century.

There are various book discussions around town that you can participate in:

Riverpoint Campus on March 9 at 6 pm

North Spokane Library on March 9 at 7 pm

Auntie's Bookstore on March 12 at noon

Riverpoint Campus on March 16 at 6 pm

Sinto Senior Activity Center on March 16 at 10 am

Liberty Lake Library on March 17 at 6:30 pm

Barnes & Noble (NorthTown) on March 19 at noon

North Spokane Library on March 20 at 1 pm

VFW Post 51 on March 25 at 5 pm

Barnes & Noble (Spokane Valley) on March 31 at 7 pm

Fairchild Air Force Base Library on April 5 at 6 pm

South Hill Library on April 11 at 6:30 pm

Hillyard Senior Center on April 12 at 1 pm

Deer Park Library on April 24 at noon

Plus you have the option to go online and participate in a blogging book club with University of Idaho students moderated by Dr. Emily Duvall, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Idaho. Read what students have to say about The Big Read book, The Things They Carried, and leave your own comments.

Also, beginning March 4, you can catch a stage adaptation of the book put on by Eastern Washington University's Theater Department. They will present the same show for one night only on March 18 at The Bing Crosby Theater. You can see films related to the 1960's and to veterans on Wednesday nights at several libraries. Several groups are offering panel discussions and teach-ins. And mark your calendars for the culminating event: "An Evening with Tim O'Brien and Brian Turner," on Saturday, April 16 at 8 pm at The Bing Crosby Theater. (The cost is $15, but military get a $5 discount and students are free with a current high school or college ID.)

To find out more about Get Lit!'s involvement in The Big Read visit our website, or for a complete calendar of events, click here.

Check out this video to see what it's all about:

Free Adult Writing Workshops!

2011-03-03T10:44:00.000-08:00

Writers in the Community, part of the Inland Northwest Center for Writers at EWU, will be offering free adult writing workshops each Saturday during the month of March. This is a great opportunity to sharpen your skills and work with other writers, plus-- let's say it again-- they're FREE!

There will be workshops in fiction, poetry and non-fiction, beginning this Saturday, March 5. All of the workshops will be held in the Phase 1 building of the EWU Riverpoint campus, and there will be signs in the main lobby to direct you to the correct classroom.

Here is the schedule:

Saturday, March 5, 11 a.m.-2 p.m.: All genres (fiction, non fiction, poetry).
Saturday, March 12, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Fiction
Saturday, March 19, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Nonfiction
Saturday, March 26, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Poetry

The theme for these workshops is "Kicking at the Dust." During this Saturday's workshop, poets will focus on nature poetry, fiction writers will examine how to use tension to drive the action in stories, and non fiction writers will be focusing on food-related memories.

Please RSVP to witc@eagles.ewu.edu so they know how many students to prepare for!

Writers in the Community (WITC) is an internship program for graduate students working toward their Master of Fine Arts degree. During the school year, participants lead classes, seminars and workshops in such varied settings as hospitals, prisons and retirement homes, as well as elementary, middle and high school classrooms. They also sponsor a number of community events related to reading and writing in our community, such as the Whitworth Writing Rally each fall; Broken Mic, a series of weekly open mic readings; and of course the youth, teen and college poetry slams during the Get Lit! Festival.

What it Means to Thirst

2011-02-28T10:07:00.000-08:00

by Shann Ray Ferch

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

These words by Mary Oliver are a wonderful place to begin a conversation about writing. If you love writing and have worked at writing, you know how painful it can be. In living our lives we are confronted by forces undeniably nuanced, formidable, and unwieldy. The work of poetry and prose is no less alarming. Trying to craft a sentence that might uplift, or give voltage, or generate torque or gravity or loathing or loss - we've embraced a dynamic and fearsome thing, haven't we?

So if the nature of our daily encounter with existence, or the nature of our daily encounter with the writing life could be captured in a question, it might be precisely the one Mary Oliver has given:

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I believe both the question and the response are tied to gratitude.

I recall walking as a boy with my father in the Beartooth Range along the eastern front of the Rockies in southern Montana. We went to catch Golden trout, a delicacy of high mountain lakes and streams. The only problem was a five-mile climb, near straight up, along rugged switchbacks, rocky and severe. I was twelve years old and when my dad told me of the hike, and how hard it would be, I wanted nothing to do with it: too much work, too much pain, and in the end we might not even catch any fish. My thoughts were consumed with excuses and even anger at my father for suggesting we go for Golden trout, rather than the Rainbows that filled East Rosebud Lake (no hike at all) or Mystic lake (a comparatively easy hike over relatively flat terrain). But my father convinced me not only to go with him but to make the trip worthwhile, to enjoy the challenge together and enter the Beartooths with awe and respect. He asked me not to give in to everything in me that wanted to complain or blame. His own spirit of delight pervaded the air . . . he was in love with every aspect of entering the high country.

We began and he kept me in stride, waiting for me when we rested, helping me go forward again. The hike was far and away the most difficult of the hundreds we took together, and many hours passed before we crossed a final upward slant of mountain grasses. The tilt was so steep we grabbed at the roots of windblown trees, and scrambled slowly on all fours. At last the destination came into view and we pressed our hands into the earth, dug in with our feet and went step by step until finally we crested the lip of a massive rock bowl and stood and looked down on Silven Lake . . . a blue gem encased in the heart of the mountains, reflecting the heart of the sky.

Writing is just such a journey, one strewn with daunting obstacles, steep swings of overdone ego or lack of self-confidence, and a stubbornly embedded sense of anger and blame for self or others. But when we approach the life of the artist with love and humble desire, we find gratitude, the rich soil that gives life.

By the time we crested the jagged lip of the mountain, my thoughts had changed. Even now, decades later, when I think of my father and the mountains of Montana, I think of kindness, affection, confidence, care.

In Montana the sun is big and shines in a seemingly endless sky. Our imagination too, is expansive and imbued with a natural capacity for grandeur.

From this place we return to Mary Oliver's initial question:

What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Oliver's response is lovely. In her poem "When Death Comes" she offers this tenacious and radiant declaration:

When it's over, I want to say:

all my life I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

The open-hearted narrative of May Oliver's poetry evokes wilderness and mystery, an ultimate question followed by an ultimate response - one almost hears her asking us to love the world, and to love others more than our own lives. Her book Thirst, in which she mourns the death of Molly Malone Cook, her partner of 35 years, reveals the bright nucleus of the nature of love itself. In reading Thirst we see that in true writing, just as in true living, we are often called to face the flames of an unforeseen and fateful crucible. We are reminded that even in the roar of the great fires, gratitude speaks, unexpected and vital, and set the soul at ease.

Shann R. Ferch, PhD, is a Professor of Leadership Studies in the Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University. He is the author of American Masculine.

Community Contests

2011-02-26T15:43:00.000-08:00

Want to share your story with audiences at the Get Lit! Festival? Consider submitting to one of the following local writing contests. The winners of each of these contests will read their work at different events during the festival. Keep in mind that the deadlines are fast approaching!

>The Pacific Northwest Inlander’s 101-Word Fiction Contest
Readers are invited to share micro-masterpieces of narrative, voice and character. Multiple winners will be published in The Inlander and on Inlander.com. Then eight lucky finalists will be selected to compete at the 101-Word Fiction Showdown on Sunday, April 17, at Auntie’s Bookstore from 3:30-5 pm as part of the Get Lit! Festival. At the showdown, The Inlander’s Senior Writer, Michael Bowen, will challenge eight of the region’s best writers of micro-fiction to compose three short tales related to “Telling the American Story.” They will then face off in a tournament that will determine who will be the Inland Northwest’s Flash Fiction Guru. The contest deadline is Thursday, March 3 at 3 pm. For questions, email feedback@inlander.com or visit http://www.inlander.com/spokane/101words.

>Earth Day Writing Contest
To help commemorate Earth Day 2011, DowntoEarthNW.com is inviting writers and thinkers to think global and act local by sharing what Earth Day means to them in today’s world. Judged by poet Ed Skoog, author of Mister Skylight, contestants can submit work of various genres to info@downtoearthnw.com by 5 pm March 31. The contest winner will read prior to the April 13 appearance of Maude Barlow at Spokane Community College’s Lair Auditorium.

>KSPS Young Writer Contest
Students in grades 4-6 are welcomed to submit an essay, article, story, or poem about their favorite American hero (deadline is March 31; visit www.ksps.org/community-education/ksps-young-writers-contest/ or email dit@spokaneschools.org for more details). The winner will read their piece at the festival before headlining youth author Suzanne Morgan Williams on Saturday, April 16 from 1-1:45 pm at Auntie’s Bookstore.

Community of Writers at Squaw Valley

2011-02-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

Every summer for over four decades, the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley has brought together poets and prose writers for separate weeks of workshops, individual conferences, lectures, panels, readings, and discussions of the craft and the business of writing. Their goal is to assist writers to improve their craft and move them closer to publication. Squaw Valley, located in the California Sierra Nevada, close to the north shore of Lake Tahoe, is a ski resort, the site of the 1960 Olympics. Summers are warm and sunny; the area offers mountains, alpine lakes, and streams. Participants will have opportunities to enjoy the natural surroundings.

Their poetry workshop will be offered July 16 - 23 and will feature Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Cathy Park Hong, Major Jackson, Sharon Olds, and special guest Galway Kinnell. Deadline for application submissions is May 10th.

The writers workshop will be offered August 6 - 13. The special guests, among many other participants, are Sam Barry, Kathy Goldmark, Oakley Hall III, Diane Johnson, Anne Lamott, David Lukas, Malcolm Margolin, and Amy Tan. Submissions deadline is May 10.

The screenwriting workshop is also August 6 - 13, with a submissions date of May 10. The screenwriting staff is Eugene Corr, Pamela Gray, Toney Merritt, Patricia Meyer, Christopher Monger, Judith Rascoe, Tom Rickman,Lisa Rosenberg, Tom Schlesinger, Camille Thomasson, and Michael Urban.

"Bound Like Grass" Montana Book Award Winner!

2011-02-23T09:33:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Ruth McLaughlin for winning the 2011 Montana Book Award for her book Bound Like Grass! This annual award recognizes literary and/or artistic excellence in a book written or illustrated by someone who lives in Montana, is set in Montana, or deals with Montana themes or issues.

Bound Like Grass: A Memoir from the Western High Plains is an honest, beautifully written memoir of McLaughlin's and her family's struggle to survive on their isolated wheat and cattle farm. We are excited to announce that Ruth will be participating in the 2011 Get Lit! festival. She will be involved in a panel titled "Finding Themes in Our Life Story" on Friday, April 15th at North Idaho College from noon - 1:30 pm. She will also be reading from this book on Saturday, April 16th at Auntie's on Main at 10 am.

And speaking of prizes . . .

There is only one week left to enter the Willow Springs fiction contest! Willow Springs is accepting entries online, or postmarked by March 1, 2011 for the Willow Springs Fiction Prize. The winner will receive $2,000 and publication in Willow Springs 68. The entry fee is $15 and includes a one-year subscription to Willow Springs, beginning with the issue containing the winning entry. Submission details can be found at the prize website.

Idaho Prize for Poetry 2011

2011-02-18T09:41:00.000-08:00

Lost Horse Press is pleased to announce the Idaho Prize for Poetry 2011. All US posts are eligible. Entries should be postmarked by May 15, 2011; winners will be announced on August 15, 2011. The winning manuscript will be published by Lost horse Press and the poet will receive a cash prize of $1,000. An entry fee of $25 (check or money order only, please) must accompany each manuscript. The 2011 judge is Ray Amorosi.

Please send submissions to: The Idaho Prize, Lost Horse Press, 105 Lost Horse Lane, Sandpoint, ID 83864

The guidelines for submission are listed on the contest website.

Another Publishing Opportunity!

2011-02-15T09:49:00.000-08:00

Each spring, Northwest Boulevard publishes a journal filled with the creative writings of Eastern Washington University undergraduates and alumni: poetry, creative nonfiction, art, and photography, although they are also willing to publish cross-genre or non-genre pieces. Their office is located in the PUB, room 219.

The deadline for submission for the 2011 edition is February 25th. Questions? Email them at nwblitmag@gmail.com.

Opportunities for Writers

2011-02-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

Wow! What a long list of opportunities! Please check the deadline dates as some are fast approaching!

Blood and Honey Review is a new literary magazine supported by the American University of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its mission is to promote a vibrant literary life in the Balkans and at the university by connecting writers and artists from the Balkans to the world, and promoting writers and artists from the world in the Balkans. They will publish fiction, poetry, and essays twice a year online (January and June), with a printed anthology distributed once a year in bookstores throughout the Balkans (June). The writers guidelines are posted and their is no specified deadline for submission.

Muse and Stone is a literary journal published by Waynesburg University each spring. Half of each journal is drawn from unsolicited submissions; the other half is dedicated to work by Waynesburg University students. They are currently accepting submissions for their Spring 2011 issue. Simultaneous submissions are accepted. Include cover letter and SASE response only. Send up to 5 poems, or 6,000 words of fiction or creative nonfiction to: Muse & Stone, Waynesburg University, Buhl Hall, 51 W. College St., Waynesburg, PA 15370 or at muse&stone@waynesburg.edu. The deadline for submission is April 1.

Now in its 37th year, CutBank Literary Magazine is once again looking for great work to publish in issues 74 and 75. Through February 28, they're welcoming original, unpublished works of poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction from established and upcoming writers alike. They are always excited to feature new writers and are happy to announce that they're now accepting online submissions!

Additional Contests and Opportunities for Writers:

Salem College's 2011 International Literary Awards include the Reynolds Price Short Fiction Prize (Judge: Michael Parker); the Rita Dove Poetry Prize (Judge: Alison Joseph); and the Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Prize (Judge: Meghan Daum). Guidelines are posted online. Deadline: February 10.

Fourth Genre seeks the best creative nonfiction essay/memoir for the seventh annual Michael Steinberg Essay Prize. Authors of previously unpublished manuscripts in English are encouraged to enter. The award amount is $1,000 for 1st Prize. Winning and runner-up entries will be published in an upcoming issue of Fourth Genre. Judge: Ryan Van Meter. Reading fee is $15 and word limit is 6,000 words; long submissions will not be read. Guidelines are online. Deadline is February 28.

Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest will award the winner a prize of $1,000, publication by Omnidawn Publishing and 100 author copies will be given annually for a poetry chapbook. Elizabeth Robinson will judge. Submit a manuscript of 20 -30 pages with a $15 entry fee. Visit the website for complete details. Deadline: February 28th.

The coordinators of Tin House Summer Writers Workshops are pleased to announce they will be awarding both full and partial scholarships for the 2011 Tin House Summer Writers Workshops, July 10 - 17 at Reed College, Portland, OR. Partial scholarships cover either tuition or food and lodging. All scholarship recipients will need to provide for their own transportation to and from the workshop. The final decisions are made based on the merit of the writing sample alone. Final postmark deadline for scholarship applications in March 14, 2011. Winners will be notified by phone and email no later than May 16, 2011. Apply at their website.

Byrdclyffe Arts Colony offers a one-month residency for artists, writers, and composers. Beautiful, historic setting, secluded yet close to the Village of Woodstock. Private room and studio space in a rustic turn-of-the-century inn. Access to galleries, performances and hiking. Four week sessions from June - September. Apply online or check this site for more information. Deadline is March 1.

And last but certainly not least: The 2011 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference will be held from August 10 - August 20 in the Green Mountains of Ripton, Vermont. The conference includes lectures, craft classes, meetings with editors and agents, readings by faculty and guests, and workshops in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. The 2011 faculty will include poets marianne Boruch, Linda Gregerson, Jane Hirshfield, Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Phillips, Alberto Rios, and David Rivard; fiction writers Andrea Barrett, Lan Samantha Chang, Stacey D'Erasmo, Percival Everett, Aleksandar Hemon, Amy Hempel, Margot Livesey, Kevin McIlvoy, Jim Shepard, and Helena Maria Viramontes; and creative nonfiction writers Tom Bissell, Jane Brox, and Rebecca Solnit. The deadline for financial aid is March 1; March 19 for general admission. Their street address is Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT 05753 Email: blwc@middlebury.edu.

What is Hedgebrook?

2011-02-04T09:07:00.000-08:00

For many years, Hedgebrook was a "best kept secret," quietly supporting the creative process of women writers at their Whidbey Island retreat.

Several years ago, they had an epiphany: Hedgebrook is not just a place, it's an idea. Wherever alumnae gather, whenever their work is being heard or seen or read, Hedgebrooks' mission lives and breathes in the world. Out of this revelation, they manifested a new vision: to engage their alumnae globally and promote their work, and in doing so, to exponentially expand the audience for work by women writers.

They offer exciting Master Classes each year; the first one for 2011 is led by playwright and actress, Ellen McLaughlin. Ellen's workshop, The Myth at the Heart of the Matter, focuses on exploring the use of myths, folktales and other ancient narratives to provide structure to any writing project. It is open to writers in all genres and will be offered March 15 - 22nd.

Other upcoming Master Classes include a class by Ruth Ozeki on Retraining the Author's Mind, June 10 - 17th and one led by novelist Victoria Redel, A Writer's Opportunity, November 3 - 10th. Please visit their website to view more upcoming events.

Bringing words to life!

2011-02-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

Are you a poetry slammer? Would you like to participate in a workshop with the best slammer in the world??? The North Idaho College is hosting a free poetry slam presentation from two-time individual world poetry slam champion Buddy Wakefield on February 24, 2011 at 8:30 pm in their Student Union Building! They are also looking for local slam poets to open for Buddy! If you are interested, please contact Haley McDaniel at asnic_events@nic.edu.

Brenda Peterson - "I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth"

2011-01-25T09:52:00.000-08:00

Brenda Peterson's agent pronounced that her new book I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth was "Deep ecology meets fundamentalism. And you must be a bridge. Find the common ground."

She writes in The Huffington Post, March 19, 2010, "Oh, yes, the easiest thing in the world: Finding that middle path that all the politicians and mystics seek. I am the first liberal in generations among my southern, conservative Christian family. Far-flung from them here on the Left Coast, I also firmly resist some of my relatives' End Times survival strategy: Expecting any minute to be Raptured up the heaven away from this "skewed" or "fallen earth.

As one of my relatives remarked, "There are no drowning polar bears and melting ice caps where I'm going."

How did I survive fundamentalism and still love the earth? One way is through humor. I mean this book as a dark, divine comedy of family, faith, and country. My book begins on our backyard beach as my neighbor George and I sit watch over a newborn seal pup while his mother is fishing out in the Salish Sea. He is part of our local Seal Sitters citizen naturalists. George firmly believes in the Rapture and, like my family, would like to take me with him to escape Tribulations here below.

"Why are you so cheerful about the end of the world?" I ask him.

"We true believers have waited thousands of years for our reward," he tells me.

"You're a really good neighbor," I offer. "We'd all miss you if you zipped up to heaven. We'd say,'Well, there goes the neighborhood!'"

Humor seems to me the highest form of intelligence; it also defuses fundamentalists of every stripe. Either on the Far Right or Far Left. As an environmental writer, I see parallel between religious End Timers and increasingly apocalyptic Greens. Original sin among fundamentalists is easily translated into pollution among environmentalists. In the Biblical story, we eat of the forbidden tree and are fallen; in the Green story, we cut down the sacred tree and are self-doomed. Biblical Armageddon parallels Mass Extinction.

The comedy and personal stories in this book have a purpose: To ask us all to take a step back from any dogma and listen to each other - as if we were all one very diverse family. As if we shared the same home, or habitat. For example, sometimes my inbox feels like it's been invaded by Fox News from relatives telling me that climate change is a "liberal plot." On the other hand, I get Greenpeace alerts that the living earth is "under attack." Times like these I wonder, is there such a thing as a fundamentalist OR and environmentalist stand-up comic?

In this book I make a list comparing fervent environmentalist to fundamentalists and see they are often mirror images:

Enraptured by doom
Apocalypse Now
Righteous Anger
Holier than Thou
Humorless
Blame, shame, judgment
Evangelical

Fear and doom constrict our ability to imagine a future. Humor and openness to all opinions involves imagination. An antidote to all this doomsaying is finding what I call Reasons to be Left Behind. On my website and blog I focus on what gives me rapture here on earth - everything from music to other animals to food. All are manna in the wilderness. I want to make a bumper sticker that says "Apocalypse Never" or "In case of Rapture, can I have your car?"

The stories we tell ourselves have a way of coming true. My story is more about what my friend the literary ecologist Joseph Meeker calls, "The Comedy of Survival." In this new book I've come to see myself as a comic, or picaresque, character. Taking myself and the world less seriously, taking evasive action, and most of all adapting to a changing world. Fundamentalists of all kinds resist adapting because change is the enemy. To be lighter on our feet, on our world, and to find reasons to be left behind. That's my strategy for survival. It sure beats duck and cover drills, endless orange alerts, and terror as the only teacher. And it's much more fun."

Brenda Peterson will be participating in the Get Lit! Festival. She will be part of a University panel on Friday, April 15th from noon - 1:30 at North Idaho College discussing nonfiction books. She will be reading on Saturday, April 16th at the Riverpoint campus and will be participating in a panel on Saturday, April 16th at the Riverpoint campus on "The Art of Nature Writing."

In addition to I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth, she has also written Animal Heart, Duck and Cover, Face to Face, Between Species, Sightings, Build Me an Ark, and The Sweet Breathing of Plants.

Ani DiFranco in Concert

2011-01-24T09:48:00.000-08:00

Ani DiFranco has written hundreds of songs, played thousands of shows, captured the imaginations of legions of followers, and jammed with folkies, orchestras, rappers, rock-and-roll hall-of-famers, jazz musicians, poets, pop superstars, storytellers, and a martial arts legend. She's "fixed up a few old buildings" and minimized her carbon footprint before it was trendy - from installing a geothermal heating and cooling system in the renovated church that her label calls home to using organic inks on all the t-shirts she sells.

DiFranco was born in Buffalo, New York. She started her musical career at an early age, beginning by playing Beatles' covers at local bars. In 1989, she created her own record company, Righteous Records (renamed Righteous Babe Records in 1994), and her self-titled debut album was issued on the label in the winter of 1990. Later, she relocated to New York City, where she took poetry classes at The New School and toured vigorously.

Since DiFranco bucked the major label system in the early '90's by opting to release her music on her own terms, the self-described Little Folksinger has been the subject of all kinds of hyperbole. She's been called "fiercely independent" (Rolling Stone,) "inspirational" (All Music Guide,) and "the ultimate do-it-yourself songwriter" (The New York Times.).

Conceived, sculpted, and refined over the course of two years, her new album, Red Letter Year. is an impeccably crafted, multi-layered sonic achievement. And while the extra time spent crafting this album is a big reason for Red Letter Year's captivating musical depths, the people in DiFranco's life play an even bigger part - people like her partner and co-producer, Mike Napolitano and her one-year-old daughter, Petah Lucia. Love, family and home are three of the album's most prominent muses, resulting in a doze songs that exude warmth and renewed vigor.

DiFranco will be playing at the Bing Crosby Theater on Friday, April 15th. Doors open at 7:00 and the concert begins at 8:00. Tickets are available through TicketsWest. The cost is $37 advancea dn $39 at the door. As of today, there are still a few festival passes left that include an Ani ticket for $60!

Contests Galore!

2011-01-17T09:40:00.000-08:00

There are three upcoming competitions for aspiring writers! Play-Makers Spokane, Floating Bridge Press Poetry Chapbook Competition and The Scenes of Life all have approaching deadlines.

Play-Makers Spokane is seeking comedy scripts for Hit & Run V, a staged reading of new plays. If selected, scripts will receive a rehearsed staged reading in Spokane, WA in November, 2011. Script requirements are:

* Ten and 15 minute plays, 20 pages maximum

* Comedies only, please

* Produced OK

* Playwrights of all ages and from any country are welcome to submit, but all plays must be written in English.

* Two play submissions maximum per author

* Solo plays, monologues, musicals, and children's plays are not eligible

* No entry fee, no payment to writers; this is a volunteer event

* Deadline: June 1, 2011

Submission procedure: E-mail a cover letter and script with character breakdown and production history as a Word or PDF document to playmakersspokane@gmail.com. Questions? Contact Hit & Run coordinator Sandra Hosking at sandrahosking@hotmail.com.

The 16th Annual Floating Bridge Press Poetry Chapbook Competition is open for submissions until February 16, 2011. If you are a current resident of Washington State, you may submit a chapbook manuscript of up to 24 pages of poetry with a $12 entry fee. The winner receives $500, a Seattle reading in September, and 15 copies of the prize-winning chapbook. Their books are beautiful, archival-quality, perfect-bound, and collectable.

Floating Bridge Press considers all individual poems for inclusion in their annual journal, Floating Bridge Review.

For complete guidelines and a look at their titles, please visit their website.

Last but not least!!

The Spokane Community College Player's, also known as The Drama Club, will be performing a series of one act plays called The Scenes of Life. They are looking for play submissions that are no longer than 15 minutes long and have no more than five performers. The official deadline is Friday, January 14th, 2011. Final decisions will be made January 21st and the performance will be March 4th. For more information, please contact Adam Sharp

asharp@scc.spokane.edu.

Fishtrap Executive Director Search

2011-01-10T13:56:00.000-08:00

What is Fishtrap??

Fishtrap is an an organization in Wallowa County in Northeastern Oregon which advocates, "Promoting clear thinking and good writing in and about the West." They sponsor readings, workshops, classes, conferences, Fellowships and residencies.

The Fishtrap Board recently opened the formal search for their next Executive Director. Please check out their application guidelines and pass this along to anyone you know who might be interested in such a leadership position with one of the oldest literary organizations in the Northwest. The search is open-ended at this point, with no published deadline for applying.

Secondly, they have just published the application guidelines for 2011 Fishtrap Fellowships. The Fishtrap Fellowship program brings emerging writers to their flagship event, Summer Fishtrap, held each July at Wallowa Lake. Scholarships are also available and that information can be found on their website as well. Deadline for Fellowship applications is February 1.

Rock and Sling!

2011-01-06T10:27:00.000-08:00

The editors of Rock and Sling believe that all creative work is an act of faith. In keeping with the original vision of Rock and Sling, they wish to continue to be a hallmark of quality writing, embracing broad differences in experience - spiritual, cultural or political. It is their desire to be a forum for writers and artists engaged explicitly or obliquely with the problems, triumphs, heart breaks, ecstasies of faith, and the complicated joys in life. They hope to serve as a forum for an open and vigorous intellectual and artistic discussion, and a meeting place between those elements of our world that oftentimes oppose one another.

Rock and Sling seeks the highest quality work which embraces, wrestles with, argues with, celebrates and brushes against our ideas of faith, whether it is on the cultural or spiritual level. The journal's founders stated, "an accepted Rock and Sling submission may not even make explicit reference to Christianity, but it will maintain a universal spiritual curiosity." Above all, they desire work which seeks beauty and excellence, in form and in meaning, and explores the boundaries of what we know to be true.

Thom Caraway of Whitworth University is the Editor-in-chief of Rock and Sling.

Veteran's Voices Project 2011

2011-01-03T10:14:00.000-08:00

Tincan started at Eastern Washington University in 1994 thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce. This local program uses information technology and interactive media for education and community development. In 1999, Tincan became a nonprofit and shifted focus from equitable access to telecommunications and computer technology to the development of meaningful content that showcases the vibrant community through the online arena. They recently moved to a new local in downtown Spokane that boasts a 32 station media lab and a full video production studio. Among other things, they teach many students about video production and have built an great online history archive filled with regional information.

The Veterans' Voices project seeks to tell the story of the Vietnam War as only those who marched through the harshness of war can explain. Funded by a grant from Humanities Washington, Tincan is collecting oral history interviews with Vietnam Veterans to capture the things they carried with them both physically, mentally and spiritually. This is in celebration of the 2011 Big Read book, The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien.

Eight high school students from the Spokane area are studying the history of the war and the art of film to create a film to reflect Get Lit! Program's 2011 theme of "Telling the American Story." The students will read The Things They Carried; attend workshops with Whitworth professor Dr. Dale Soden; conduct oral histories with Vietnam Veterans; and create a 10-minute film that will be shown during the Get Lit! Festival when Tim O'Brien will be in town to talk about his work. (Date: April 16, 8pm at the Bing Crosby Theater.)

If you know any Vietnam Veterans who would be interested in sharing their story, please contact Elisha Durrant at elisha@tincan.org or 509.744.0972.

For more information on The Big Read, which runs March 4 to April 17 or the 13th annual Get Lit! Festival, which will take place from April 13-17, click here.

Get Lit! at First Night 2010

2010-12-28T10:38:00.000-08:00

This year Eastern Washington University's Get Lit! Programs will be ringing in the New Year with talented students from our Writers-in-Residence program at RiverCity Leadership Academy, Barker High School, and Havermale High School. These young writers have been discussing literature and working on creative writing with Get Lit! professionals. Since 2004, Get Lit!'s Writers-in-Residence program has helped inspire over a thousand young writers in K-12 schools in and around Spokane.

Join us to hear what these budding writers have been working on with our visiting authors! We look forward to seeing you at the NEW Auntie's Bookstore Annex at the River Park Square Mall on the 2nd Floor near the Macy's skywalk. The event will start at 7pm and go until about 9pm. Click here for a complete First Night schedule of events, or here for complete information. Buttons are $12 advance purchase and $15 the day of the event. Their website has a listing of all the locations buttons are available for purchase. As usual, children 10 and under are free with a paying adult.

Have a safe and arts filled New Year's Eve!

Writing = Change

2010-12-23T10:54:00.000-08:00

As we face another new year with its call to action in the form of personal resolutions and all of its promise, the thought that comes to mind is how words play a role in effecting our future.

Here at Get Lit! we work year round to showcase poets, authors, essayists, journalists, songwriters, screenwriters, playwrights, and graphic novelists that are contributing to the larger conversation--or rather conversations, since there are many dialogues in process--that impact our understanding of the world we live in. We make a point to bring at least one leading environmental thinker to the festival each year such as Paul Roberts, David Suzuki, and Maude Barlow. In the past, we have hosted political voices like bell hooks, Naomi Wolf, and Reza Aslan. And we have had nearly 100 poets and 100 fiction/nonfiction authors share their work over the years. The goal is to spark discussion within the community and introduce new authors to people in our region.

We also host many educational outreach programs in K-12 schools in Eastern Washington with the hope that our professional writers and authors can help teachers show students that their pens/pencils have a little bit of magic in them. With a pen, a piece of paper, and a point, these young writers are given the opportunity to share their ideas with others. Writing no longer feels like an assignment. Instead, many students have noted having fun, feeling powerful, and getting excited about learning more about themselves and others through sharing. With our "Telling the American Story" theme for 2011, we are also expanding on our usual workshops and panels with a focus on getting local writers of all ages creating and publishing their words. So watch in February for more information on our workshop options!

Meanwhile, we've come across a few articles by Paul Haeder in downtoearthnw.com that address this idea of the power of words. For those of you who don't know, downtoearthnw.com is committed to reporting and sharing environmental news and sustainability information from across the Inland Northwest. Here are the articles that sent us down this road:

Power of the Pen: Memory of Earth, Wind and Fire Environmental writing from the edge of the world; fiction and poetry brings truth

Power of the Pen II: Can poetry bring truth? Modern environmental movement welcomes creative thinkers

We invite you to share your thoughts about writing as an agent for fostering change. What have you read lately that compelled you to action? What have you written lately out of passion? In this fast, faster, fastest world, words can serve as a necessary stop light, encouraging contemplation, a new perspective, and even a call to action.

High Desert Journal's 2011 Obsidian Prize in Fiction

2010-12-22T15:19:00.000-08:00

The High Desert Journal is announcing it's 2011 Obsidian Prize in Fiction, offering a $1,000 prize plus publication! Submissions are due February 18, 2018 and must not exceed 6,000 words. Entries will be accepted online. There is a $15 entry fee.

The judge for this competition is Gretel Ehrlich, author of This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland, The Solace of Open Spaces, and Heart Mountain. She has also written other works of nonfiction, fiction and poetry.

High Desert Journal is a literary and visual art magazine dedicated to further understanding the people, places and issues of the interior west. Its pages help define this region in literary and artistic terms and represent a collection of work that charts the changes of this distinctive, unique region. It accepts work from residents of the region and from anyone living outside the region creating work with high desert themes and elements.

Weekly Nielsen BookScan Data Available for Authors in Amazon's Author Central Service

2010-12-15T19:08:00.000-08:00

For the first time, authors can track their books' weekly print sales, including geographical distribution, as recorded by Nielsen BookScan (widely regarded as the best source for industry print book sales.) Author Central also launches tracking of historical Amazon bestsellers rank for each of an author's books. This is a free service provided by Amazon that helps authors promote their books and reach more readers. In addition, authors who use Author Central have the opportunity to share the most up-to-date information about themselves and their work with readers. Authors can view and edit their bibliography, add a photo and biography to a personal profile, upload missing book cover images, add video, information about speaking events and use a blog to connect with readers. Authors only need a book listed in Amazon's catalog to be eligible to join Author Central. Authors can learn more about Author Central and these new features at http://authorcentral.amazon.com.

Montana Artists Refuge Scholarship Opportunities

2010-12-07T12:45:00.000-08:00

Montana Artists Refuge

The Refuge, founded in 1993, aims to serve as "a quality environment in which to work and provides an opportunity for artistic collaboration in a creative community." Their residencies are open to all kinds of artists and they also have spaces for artists to do art shows, concerts, readings and performance pieces.

Current Vacancies and Scholarships

The Montana Artists Refuge has received a scholarship grant. They are offering scholarships to help with residency costs from Jan – April 2011. Please apply now for the following vacancies:

January – one vacancy (Front Dyott apartment, $625/month rent)

February – one vacancy (Middle Dyott apartment, $550/month rent)

March – one vacancy (Back Dyott apartment, $925/month rent)

April – one vacancy (Front Dyott apartment, $625/month rent)

Add one of their large studios for $300/month.

Download applications and find more information about them at their website, http://www.montanaartistsrefuge.org/

2010-12-04T15:45:00.000-08:00

New Workshop at Tincan

Family Video Library Workshop

Do you have dozens of MiniDv cassettes, CDs or thumb drives sitting around your home gathering dust, filled with video memories from birthdays, holidays, weddings and vacations?

Have you ever thought about doing something with them?

Why not make a short film with all of your special vacation moments set to music, or pull out all of the highlights about your family from the past year and send it out instead of your usual Christmas letter...with you narrating it!

You could create a personal biography for a child or relative OR build a video memorial for someone who has passed on.

In this workshop you’ll learn how to collect those moments using state of the art video editing software and manipulate them into a short film that you can burn onto a Dvd, CD or upload to the web to share with family and friends around the world.

To participate in this workshop you must have video on miniDv, CD, thumb drive or hard drive to participate in this workshop. Video on CD, thumb drive or hard drive must be in a compatible format such as a .mov, avi or .wmv.

A Festival Headliner Reveals a Serious Historical Error

2010-11-30T14:24:00.000-08:00

Get Lit! Programs tries to bring to our festivals authors who have concern for the world and a desire to create a better future for underrepresented individuals. So we were pleased to find out that one of our nonfiction headliners for the 2011 festival is shedding light on a serious mistake in America's history.

Jack Hamann, a Seattle-based author, calls out for justice for a group of WWII soldiers in his 2005 book On American Soil, co-written with his wife Leslie. The book chronicles how 43 African-American soldiers stationed at Seattle’s Fort Lawton were wrongly accused and court-martialed for the lynching of Italian POW Guglielmo Olivotto in August 1944. Twenty-eight of those soldiers were dishonorably discharged.

Because of the book, in part, the U.S. Army reversed the verdict in 2007 and gave 14 of these soldiers honorable discharges; many, however, died in shame or haven’t been located. Hamann is still active in revealing the truth and pushing for the installation of educational markers at Fort Lawton so visitors will know what really happened.

At the festival, Hamann will read from and discuss On American Soil, as well as leading a workshop on writing journalistic nonfiction. Other authors, including Tim O’Brien and Brian Turner, will share their own perspectives on some of the important issues American soldiers face. We are pretty excited about it!

Third Coast Contest Deadline Approaching!

2010-11-16T13:00:00.000-08:00

The Third Coast Magazine Poetry and Fiction Contests deadline is fast approaching! Make sure to submit your work by December 1, 2010. Contest winners in each genre receive $1000 & publication. All entrants receive a one year subscription to Third Coast.

The contest will be judged by Brad Watson in fiction and Natasha Trethewey in poetry.

Guidelines: Submit one previously unpublished story of up to 9,000 words or three previously unpublished poems with SASE and a $15 reading fee payable to Third Coast. Please send each entry separately to:

Third Coast 2010 Fiction or Poetry Contest
Department of English
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331

For more information visit: http://thirdcoastmagazine.com/contests/

What is a Graphic Novel?

2010-11-15T11:29:00.000-08:00

Benjamin Percy wrote the novel Refresh, Refresh, which was interpreted into a graphic novel by Danica Novgorodoff. Just what is a graphic novel?According to hbook.com, it is a book designed to entertain, educate, document and interpret social, historical and current events. Graphic novels are sequential and combine text with panels and images to tell a story. They range in length from a comic strip to a comic book to a full length graphic novel. While many believe that only young people read graphic novels, the truth is the average age of readers of this type of novel is 30. While large numbers of graphic novels and comics are written about superheroes, there are now many genres, including memoir, fantasy and historical novels. Due to the fact that there is less text and the story is easily followed through pictures, these books are enjoyed by reluctant readers, but also enjoyed by those who take pleasure from reading traditional books. For more information on graphic novels, please visit the following link.

Happy Friday

2010-11-12T11:32:00.000-08:00

Happy Friday! Check out this great post by Melina over at Bark, on the importance of young adult and children's book writers.

"The whole event made me remember the squirming, secretive feeling of reading as a kid, the way the world of the book continued far out of the bounds of the book itself– I would be writing in the before and after and in-between scenes in my head while I was brushing my teeth in the morning and sitting bored and confused in math class. I would read while walking from my room to the dinner table and while climbing the stairs up to bed. And for some reason it seemed like this book-grip was the usual experience of reading for me, as opposed to now when it’s a rare and beautiful exception.

I’m sure I am not original in what I described above. But I do think in recent years I forgot the specific incomparability of what it felt like to read as a kid. And how much all that early absorption of alternate universes made me want to write. In some ways, I think good Young Adult writers are the most influential artists in our culture."

http://thebarking.com/2010/11/you-might-have-forgotten-from-where-you-remember-that/

100 Years After Death, Mark Twain Publishes New Autobiography

2010-11-09T11:26:00.000-08:00

By an act of genius, Mark Twain is still alive, 100 years after his death.

On November 15, the first of three volumes of an autobiography he dictated during the last four years of his life will be published by the University of California Press.

For six years, a team of experts at the Mark Twain Project at Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, has been laboring over 5,000 pages of manuscript, and is now ready to present the 760-page volume. Within the next five years, the second and third volumes, each about 600 pages, will be released. Although parts of the autobiography have surfaced throughout the years, more than half of the entire work is previously unpublished.

Twain requested that the book be published a century after it was written so that he could speak his mind in complete freedom, without fear of losing his reputation or offending those he wrote about. And it does provide never-before-seen insight into Twain's thoughts. In addition to including his characteristically witty tales, Twain castigates the military and makes jabs at Wall Street tycoons.

Dictating the book also helped Twain speak freely without self-censoring. Written in a haphazard, stream-of-conscious manner, Twain proudly called the autobiography "a complete and purposed jumble." He also wrote to a friend that "The form of this book is one of the most memorable literary inventions of the ages. . . . It ranks with the steam engine, the printing press & the electric telegraph. I am the only person who has ever found out the right way to build an autobiography."

The collection is strikingly relevant, both politically and stylistically. Many are now calling Mark Twain the world's first blogger, and no doubt contemporary readers and writers will connect to his honest, blow-by-blow accounts of his thoughts.

You can read more about the autobiography on The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

2011 Festival Headliners Announced!

2010-11-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

Drum roll, please!

Eastern Washington University's Get Lit! Programs is delighted to announce the headliners for our 2011 Get Lit! Festival, each presenting a distinct perspective on our theme of "Telling the American Story."

Tim O’Brien will discuss The Things They Carried, his classic collection of stories about American soldiers in the Vietnam War. Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab’s Wife, will present feminine perspectives on the classics. Matthew Dickman will be interviews as well as read from his All American Poem, an energetic depiction of our everyday experiences with pop culture and beauty.

Get ready for nonfiction writers Maude Barlow, global activist and author of international best seller Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and The Coming Battle for the Right to Water; and Sam Kean, sharing his creative take on the Periodic Table in New York Times bestseller The Disappearing Spoon.

Headlining children's writers include: Louise Borden, author of a myriad of books, including a dramatic, true tale about the creators of Curious George; Suzanne Morgan Williams, author of Bull Rider and other multicultural and historic nonfiction books for children; and Michael Harmon, the unconventional author of the youth books Skate, The Last Exit to Normal, and Brutal. Our musical headliner is singer and songwriter Ani DiFranco, who will perform original songs and spoken word.

Festival passes for the headlining events go on sale Friday, November 5 via TicketsWest or by calling 1-800-325-SEAT. By purchasing a pass, you will be saving $20-$25 off individual ticket costs and service fees. Passes gain admission to see Tim O’Brien (with Brian Turner), Sam Kean, Matthew Dickman, and, on Friday, either Sena Jeter Naslund (with Nancy Rawles) or Ani DiFranco in concert. The regular festival pass is $45. The pass that includes the Ani DiFranco concert ticket is $60 (quantity limited). (Note: individual DiFranco tickets go on sale November 5 for $35.)

Students will again get in free with a current high school or college ID to the headlining events (except DiFranco). Student tickets will be available at the college bookstores or they can get one at the door as space allows.

Mark your calendar for April 13-17 and start thinking about your own American story!

National Novel Writing Month...a.k.a NaNoWriMo

2010-10-26T11:08:00.000-07:00

November's not just the month of yellow leaves and huge turkey dinners. Between November 1 and 30 annually, NaNoWriMo creates an opportunity for writers to sit down and crank out a novel from scratch (50,000 words being the goal).

Anne Lamott said, "For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts." And that's the philosophy behind NaNoWriMo: turn off your self-editor, don't worry about anything except quantity, and plunge forward into all the griminess of a first draft.

From their website, here's how NaNoWriMo works:

1) Sign up for the event by clicking the "Sign Up Now" link at the top of the site.

2) Check your email and read the ginormous email our noveling robots send you. It will have "Love" in the subject line, and may be hiding in your Junk folder.

3) Log into your account and use the links on the My NaNoWriMo page to set your timezone, affiliate with a region, and tell us a little bit about yourself.

4) Begin procrastinating by reading through all the great advice and funny stories in the forums. Post some stories and questions of your own. Get excited. Get nervous. Try to rope someone else into doing this with you. Eat lots of chocolate and stockpile noveling rewards.

5) On November 1, begin writing your novel. Your goal is to write a 50,000-word novel by midnight, local time, on November 30th. You write on your own computer, using whatever software you prefer.

6) This is not as scary as it sounds.

7) Starting November 1, you can update your word count in that box at the top of the site, and post excerpts of your work for others to read. Watch your word-count accumulate and story take shape. Feel a little giddy.

8) Write with other NaNoWriMo participants in your area. Write by yourself. Write. Write. Write.

9) If you write 50,000 words of fiction by midnight, local time, November 30th, you can upload your novel for official verification, and be added to our hallowed Winner’s Page and receive a handsome winner’s certificate and web badge. We'll post step-by-step instructions on how to scramble and upload your novel starting in mid-November.

10) Win or lose, you rock for even trying.

-----

So do some finger stretches and get ready to write on November first! We'll see you again when you stumble back into daylight with triumphant shouts. Learn more and sign up at http://www.nanowrimo.org/.

Lit! Lovers

2010-10-19T10:48:00.000-07:00

About to enter its 13th season, Get Lit! is thrilled to have watched its literary festival flourish each year, connecting local, new, and nationally known writers and providing unique opportunities for a wide range of literature lovers. Get Lit! is indebted to its supporters and revenue sources, including community partnerships, business sponsorships, foundation grants, and event ticket sales.

Now, Eastern's College of Arts, Letters, and Education invites you to support Get Lit! Programs. Your gift will allow us to continue bringing quality literary programs to members of our community. Sponsorship options range from $50 to $50,000. Underwrite a festival agent, sponsor a school for one of our educational outreach programs, make an in-kind offer, donate online as a Lit! Lover, or even become the Pulitzer or Nobel sponsor of Get Lit! Programs. Become affiliated with a nationally recognized program while helping

underwrite international and nationally acclaimed writers and poets.
expand the reach of this premier literary festival to a greater community.
ensure that the festival is affordable, offering many events free to the public.
increase outreach to schools throughout the region, inspiring future authors.
engage children in the excitement of reading and writing and help improve literacy.

Click here to contribute to Get Lit! Programs. For more information about sponsorship opportunities for your company or organization, please contact one of the following:

Deb Blake, College Advancement Director for the College of Arts and Letters at Eastern

dblake@ewu.edu or 509.359.6703

Danielle Ringwald, Get Lit! Programs coordinator

dringwald@ewu.edu or 509.368.6590

And of course, to find out more about Get Lit! Programs and keep an eye on upcoming events, go ahead and visit our website.

Upcoming Contest Deadlines: Short Fiction and Nonfiction

2010-10-12T12:56:00.000-07:00

Announcing two fabulous literary contests:

The Inlander's 2010 Short Fiction Contest
The Pacific Northwest Inlander is accepting unpublished fiction between 800-1,500 words with the theme of redemption (which, according to their blog, can be interpreted "any way you want"). The deadline is Tuesday, Nov. 30 at 2 p.m. E-mail (no hard-copy) submissions to michael@inlander.com with "Fiction Contest Entry" in the subject line. One, two, or three winners will be published in The Inlander's Dec. 23 issue, plus--maybe--more online.

Narrative Ma gazine's Fall 2010 Short Story Contest
Narrative Magazine is accepting fiction and nonfiction submissions for their Fall 2010 story contest, including "short shorts, short stories, essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic stories, all forms of literary nonfiction, and excerpts from longer works of both fiction and nonfiction." You can submit online through their website. The material must be previously unpublished, and there is a $20 entry fee. First prize earns $3250, second prize $1500, third prize $750 and ten additional finalists get $100 each. (sweet!)

Narrative Magazine focuses on "advancing literary arts in a digital age" by trying to reach readers around the globe. They are a non-profit and the magazine is free online to all readers (for the most part-- they have a subscribers-only "VIP" section of the site with additional material. Sniff.)

Here's part of their mission statement, which is pretty cool:
"Literary readers are more than twice as likely as nonreaders to vote, to volunteer, and to be active participants of the communities in which they live. They are more likely to be healthy, to be hired, to create art, and to achieve both academic and economic success. Reading encourages and develops empathy and emotional sophistication, logical thinking, clear expression of ideas, and the ability to comprehend complex and opposing thought systems. Reading opens minds and changes lives."

Poetry in Motion

2010-10-06T10:12:00.000-07:00

Our longest running Writers-in-Residence Program is at Central Valley's Barker High School. For five years, Get Lit! Programs paired local writer Renee Roehl with Barker students interested in exploring creative writing. Students meet once a week for several hours in a writing workshop that explores poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. The program continues throughout the school year and results in an amazing anthology of their collected work. Since many of the students continued with Renee year after year, she has seen so many of them grow as writers and as people.

The teenage years can bring with them a keen sense of observation as young adults explore the world around them. The students at Barker have already seen so much and they have some powerful things to say about it. While some of the students prefer to share their guts and glory on the page, I have seen the end of the year performance at the school and have even noticed some of the students sharing with the community at open mics and poetry slams.

Here is one example, a poem on film. Thanks to Eastern's Writers in the Community and local nonprofit TinCan, Jessica Andrew and several other students at Barker High produced this:

Tincan uses information technology and interactive media for education and community development. Jessica was featured in Tincan's October Newsletter. It offers info on what she is doing now.

This month's student spotlight is on Jessica Andrew. Jessica started with Tincan last May through the Subversive project at Barker High School. Since then Jessica has joined the NEA Films 4 Change program at Tincan and has found herself in the producers chair. Jessica, who is extremely organized, makes a perfect producer for the film. She has been responsible for the role of scriptwriter and production scheduler while also recruiting actors and keeping contact with all team members. Jessica is a senior at Barker High School and is currently taking running start classes at Spokane Falls Community College. Her creativity and drawing skills will prove beneficial in her pursuit for a degree in architecture at WSU. Right now Jessica's number one job is taking care of her 20-month-old son.

Banned Books Week

2010-09-27T13:30:00.000-07:00

It's Banned Books Week!

Every year during the last week of September, libraries and bookstores around the country raise awareness about censorship by holding events and putting up displays featuring books that have been challenged or banned in the U.S.

This year, Banned Books week runs through October 2 and you can see if there are any events in your area here

Some of the notable books banned in the past include To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger and The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Recent challenges include Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

The American Library Association, one of the sponsors of Banned Books week, points out that "The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections. Imagine how many more books might be challenged—and possibly banned or restricted—if librarians, teachers, and booksellers across the country did not use Banned Books Week each year to teach the importance of our First Amendment rights and the power of literature, and to draw attention to the danger that exists when restraints are imposed on the availability of information in a free society."

Let's exercise our First Amendment rights and read a banned book! What are some of your favorites you know have been challenged in the past? Which banned books are among your favorites of all time?

Happy reading!

Anthology Accepting Essays on Teaching

2010-09-27T05:00:00.000-07:00

Are you a current or recent graduate student who has experience teaching creative writing? If so, you can submit an essay on creative writing pedagogy for possible inclusion in the anthology Dispatches from the Classroom: Graduate Student Essays on Creative Writing Pedagogy.

The editors of the anthology are looking for essays "linking the theoretical foundations of creative writing pedagogy with practical classroom application." They are interested in essays examining pedagogical practices for poetry, nonfiction and drama, but not fiction.

The editors suggest that "ideal essays will briefly discuss an aspect of creative writing instruction (including relevant pedagogical theory), but will focus mainly on how this aspect translates to classroom practice, and will include personal experience and examples."

Submission details:
Essays should follow MLA documentation format and may run from 5-15 pages, but preference will be given to shorter lengths. Supplementary materials including course documents, assignments, or class handouts are encouraged, but should not be submitted independently. Reprints are acceptable if the editors are notified. All submissions should include a cover note with an author bio and the title of the essay. Submissions must be sent to the editors by e-mail at dispatchesfromthefront@yahoo.com by November 19, 2010.

Happy writing!

*Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com.

Applications due soon for 2011 Hedgebrook Writers in Residence program

2010-09-18T10:18:00.000-07:00

Women authors from around the world attend the Hedgebrook Writers in Residence program to focus their energies, mingle with like-minded writers and hone in on their craft. The program is now accepting applications for their 2011 retreat. All applications must be postmarked by September 23, 2010.

Located on Puget Sound's lovely Whidbey Island, the retreat allots each of the six selected authors her own cottage and meals. Dinners are enjoyed communally at a shared farmhouse kitchen. This gives the author not only space and solitude for her own writing but also a supportive community that further encourages the creative process.

And here's some great news: you do not have to be an established author to apply. An applicant is selected based on the merit of her proposal and on the quality of her writing. This means that all unpublished women authors are eligible.

So, what have you got to lose? Send in your application and maybe you'll be the next member of the worldwide Hedgebrook family. It may just be, to quote the Hedgebrook website, "The Alchemy of Time & Space, Solitude & Community" that will jumpstart your literary career.

Author Randall Platt Wins WILLA Literary Award

2010-09-09T15:02:00.000-07:00

Congrats to local author Randall Platt, winner of the 2010 WILLA Literary Award! The nationally-recognized award, which honors Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather, annually celebrates remarkable published literature that emphasises a woman's experience in the west. Her novel, Hellie Jondoe, was selected by a panel of twenty-one professional librarians. Set in 1918, the historical novel centers around a plucky thirteen-year old orphan and pickpocket (Hellie, of course) who heads west in order to seek a better fortune than the one she began with -- only to become an unwitting caretaker for two other children along the way. The young adult novel is the eighth title by Platt, whose website describes her writing as, "...for adults and young adults and those who don't own up to being either."

To learn more about Randall Platt, her collection of titles, and how her modeling career has influenced her writing life (and vice versa), visit her website.

Get published with the help of New Pages

2010-08-19T10:54:00.000-07:00

Are you a writer looking for a place to publish your fiction and/or poetry? While Poets and Writers and Writer's Market are the two most popular options for locating literary journals and competitions, arguably the best organized and most informative website is New Pages. Hugely supportive of independent and university presses -- as well as independent book stores, record labels and alternative weeklies -- New Pages hosts a variety of free resources for writers on the hunt. Writers can narrow down their search by clicking on a variety of contest lists, either for individual stories/poems or for book-length manuscripts, and they can also peruse an inspiring list of calls for submissions -- the rare and highly desirable situation where presses are begging to receive one's work.

New Pages isn't just for writers, but also for readers in search of quirky reads that the bigger publishers may have passed on. Click on "Book Reviews" for exciting new titles being published by these intrepid smaller presses.

And don't forget to visit one of the writing groups in town, such as the Inland Northwest Writers Guild, for more advice on where and how to publish your writing. Their next meeting is at 6:30 PM on August 18th, in the auditorium of Auntie's Book Store.

Is GenY Studying Less?

2010-08-13T15:38:00.000-07:00

Keith O'Brien of The Boston Globe recently asked, "What Happened to Studying?" Based on research about to be published in The Review of Economics and Statistics, the average student at a four-year college in 1961 studied about 24 hours a week. How much does today's average student study?

Just 14 hours.

Professors, administrators, students and parents are taking a hard look at the research, wondering what could account for so few hours being devoted to studying: "The easy culprits — the allure of the Internet (Facebook!), the advent of new technologies (dude, what’s a card catalog?), and the changing demographics of college campuses — don’t appear to be driving the change, Babcock and Marks found. What might be causing it, they suggest, is the growing power of students and professors’ unwillingness to challenge them."

Essentially the two professors who conducted the research believe that professor/student relationships are based on doing as little as possible. Students complain about hard assignments and give negative course evaluations, so professors trying to keep their jobs make assignments less complicated and receive positive course evaluations.

Another interesting aspect of the research showed that students themselves were concerned about how much they were studying, stating that they "didn't know how" to successfully study.

What do you think?

Is this a reflection of students raised by helicopter parents used to negotiating with or bullying their high school teachers? Has technology simply streamlined aspects of research that used to take hours? Have rising tuition costs forced a greater percentage of students to work while in school, leaving them less hours for study? Should colleges be doing more to ensure their students know how to use the resources provided? Should high schools?

Read the full text here. And let us know your thoughts!

Spokane Author Shann Ray Wins Prestigious Writing Award

2010-08-05T16:28:00.000-07:00

We would like to offer congratulations to Spokane resident Shann Ray, winner of the Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize for Fiction, a prestigious award sponsored by The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference of Middlebury College. His winning manuscript, American Masculine: Montana Stories, will be published by the independent publisher, Graywolf Press, in 2011.

Shann Ray is the nom de plume of Dr. Shann Ferch, a professor currently employed by Gonzaga University, where he teaches classes on leadership and forgiveness. His short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals such as Northwest Review, StoryQuarterly, McSweeney's and The South Dakota Review. He also is an award-winning poet, a Fulbright scholar, a former collegiate basketball player and a father of three daughters.

Get Lit! Programs recently contacted Shann Ray over email in regards to this blog posting. He generously and eloquently offered the following quote when asked about Spokane and the Northwests' influence on his poetry and prose:

"Spokane's lit scene is the place where I was given the gift of seeing the world with new eyes. The great psychiatrist, and holocaust survivor, Victor Frankl once said: 'what is to give light must endure burning.' Frankl also said the most true expression of our humanity is to give ourselves in the ultimate unselfish act of loving another human being. I agree. Here in Spokane, I feel such gratitude for the deep investment other literary artists have made in me. Poet Jonathan Johnson completely transformed my vision of life with others, beauty, and the crucible involved in prose that is both elegant and filled with torque. Poet Chris Howell's Light's Ladder shattered me, and then made me whole. Jess Walter's discernment regarding plot and the undercurrents that move society, and especially his kindness, have been invaluable. Sherman Alexie's poetry collection, The Summer of Black Widows, his collection of stories, War Dances, and his vitality and generosity as a person have helped keep my hope alive as a writer.

"The Northwest, a span of wildness and fire I think of as running from Washington to British Columbia and from Alberta to my home state of Montana is another form of crucible. Spending time with my dad in the high country, and letting the landscape absorb me has given me an abiding respect for the ravishing mystery that is the created world.

"Awe, violence, loneliness, emptiness, forgiveness, intimacy, fullness and grace are aspects of our relationship to landscape that help form the interior of my poems and stories and the people who inhabit them. Both landscape and people leave me with a breathtaking sense of the many subtle and enduring ways perfect love casts out fear."

For more about Shann Ray and his writing, visit his website

A Scrap of An Idea

2010-07-26T10:07:00.000-07:00

ODE TO PAPER

Plain white lined object
Floating through the air in the breeze
Leaving and arriving at different destinations
Movable, portable
Wanting nothing more than
To communicate
To relay words and numbers and symbols
Accepting different languages
Written by different hands
Light-weight
Loose-leaf
Different purposes
Different roles
Without this, little children of all ages
Grown adults with childhood spirit
Could not enjoy the gift of freedom
To make airplanes that
Fly high into the heavens
To make frogs and tigers and birds
That expand our minds
To make footballs that
Cause touchdowns in the middle of class
This dull, reusable, recyclable piece of trash
Is the binding of our society, our culture, our world
Connecting life into a whole

- MARCI PHILIPS
(We found this poem in the College of Central Florida's literary journal IMPRINTS and the Paper Sculpture art is by Jen Stark.)

I love this quote by George Bernard Shaw. "Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love." Writers can create the world as we'd like it and expose life in all of it's complexities. Let's here a big HOLLER for those artists who play with paper...whether it manifests into a sculpture, a piece of writing, or even a prayer for peace.

As Picasso said, "The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web." With that in mind, we invite you to share with us your scraps of ideas: a lonely line, a fuzzy outline of a thought, a few of your favorite words that jump off the page in the dictionary. Who knows, maybe if we free these words and ideas from our mind, they will finally find a home on paper.

The Social Life of Paper

2010-07-14T10:55:00.000-07:00

The following are excerpts of an article written by Malcom Gladwell, printed in the March 25, 2002 volume of The New Yorker. To read the entire article, click here.

Computer technology was supposed to replace paper. But that hasn't happened. Every country in the Western world uses more paper today, on a per-capita basis, than it did ten years ago. The consumption of uncoated free-sheet paper, for instance -- the most common kind of office paper -- rose almost fifteen per cent in the United States between 1995 and 2000. This is generally taken as evidence of how hard it is to eradicate old, wasteful habits and of how stubbornly resistant we are to the efficiencies offered by computerization. A number of cognitive psychologists and ergonomics experts, however, don't agree. Paper has persisted, they argue, for very good reasons: when it comes to performing certain kinds of cognitive tasks, paper has many advantages over computers. The dismay people feel at the sight of a messy desk -- or the spectacle of air-traffic controllers tracking flights through notes scribbled on paper strips -- arises from a fundamental confusion about the role that paper plays in our lives.

The case for paper is made most eloquently in "The Myth of the Paperless Office" (M.I.T.; $24.95), by two social scientists, Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper. They begin their book with an account of a study they conducted at the International Monetary Fund, in Washington, D.C. Economists at the I.M.F. spend most of their time writing reports on complicated economic questions, work that would seem to be perfectly suited to sitting in front of a computer. Nonetheless, the I.M.F. is awash in paper, and Sellen and Harper wanted to find out why. Their answer is that the business of writing reports -- at least at the I.M.F -- is an intensely collaborative process, involving the professional judgments and contributions of many people. The economists bring drafts of reports to conference rooms, spread out the relevant pages, and negotiate changes with one other. They go back to their offices and jot down comments in the margin, taking advantage of the freedom offered by the informality of the handwritten note. Then they deliver the annotated draft to the author in person, taking him, page by page, through the suggested changes. At the end of the process, the author spreads out all the pages with comments on his desk and starts to enter them on the computer -- moving the pages around as he works, organizing and reorganizing, saving and discarding.

Without paper, this kind of collaborative, iterative work process would be much more difficult. According to Sellen and Harper, paper has a unique set of "affordances" -- that is, qualities that permit specific kinds of uses. Paper is tangible: we can pick up a document, flip through it, read little bits here and there, and quickly get a sense of it. (In another study on reading habits, Sellen and Harper observed that in the workplace, people almost never read a document sequentially, from beginning to end, the way they would read a novel.) Paper is spatially flexible, meaning that we can spread it out and arrange it in the way that suits us best. And it's tailorable: we can easily annotate it, and scribble on it as we read, without altering the original text. Digital documents, of course, have their own affordances. They can be easily searched, shared, stored, accessed remotely, and linked to other relevant material. But they lack the affordances that really matter to a group of people working together on a report. Sellen and Harper write:
Because paper is a physical embodiment of information, actions performed in relation to paper are, to a large extent, made visible to one's colleagues. Reviewers sitting around a desk could tell whether a colleague was turning toward or away from a report; whether she was flicking through it or setting it aside. Contrast this with watching someone across a desk looking at a document on a laptop. What are they looking at? Where in the document are they? Are they really reading their e-mail? Knowing these things is important because they help a group coordinate its discussions and reach a shared understanding of what is being discussed.

Paper enables a certain kind of thinking. Picture, for instance, the top of your desk. Chances are that you have a keyboard and a computer screen off to one side, and a clear space roughly eighteen inches square in front of your chair. What covers the rest of the desktop is probably piles -- piles of papers, journals, magazines, binders, postcards, videotapes, and all the other artifacts of the knowledge economy. The piles look like a mess, but they aren't. When a group at Apple Computer studied piling behavior several years ago, they found that even the most disorderly piles usually make perfect sense to the piler, and that office workers could hold forth in great detail about the precise history and meaning of their piles. The pile closest to the cleared, eighteen-inch-square working area, for example, generally represents the most urgent business, and within that pile the most important document of all is likely to be at the top. Piles are living, breathing archives. Over time, they get broken down and resorted, sometimes chronologically and sometimes thematically and sometimes chronologically and thematically; clues about certain documents may be physically embedded in the file by, say, stacking a certain piece of paper at an angle or inserting dividers into the stack.

But why do we pile documents instead of filing them? Because piles represent the process of active, ongoing thinking. The psychologist Alison Kidd, whose research Sellen and Harper refer to extensively, argues that "knowledge workers" use the physical space of the desktop to hold "ideas which they cannot yet categorize or even decide how they might use." The messy desk is not necessarily a sign of disorganization. It may be a sign of complexity: those who deal with many unresolved ideas simultaneously cannot sort and file the papers on their desks, because they haven't yet sorted and filed the ideas in their head. Kidd writes that many of the people she talked to use the papers on their desks as contextual cues to "recover a complex set of threads without difficulty and delay" when they come in on a Monday morning, or after their work has been interrupted by a phone call. What we see when we look at the piles on our desks is, in a sense, the contents of our brains.

...

In the tasks that face modern knowledge workers, paper is most useful out in the open, where it can be shuffled and sorted and annotated and spread out. The mark of the contemporary office is not the file. It's the pile.

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It is only if paper's usefulness is in the information written directly on it that it must be stored. If its usefulness lies in the promotion of ongoing creative thinking, then, once that thinking is finished, the paper becomes superfluous. The solution to our paper problem, they write, is not to use less paper but to keep less paper. Why bother filing at all? Everything we know about the workplace suggests that few if any knowledge workers ever refer to documents again once they have filed them away, which should come as no surprise, since paper is a lousy way to archive information. It's too hard to search and it takes up too much space. Besides, we all have the best filing system ever invented, right there on our desks -- the personal computer. That is the irony of the P.C.: the workplace problem that it solves is the nineteenth-century anxiety. It's a better filing cabinet than the original vertical file, and if Dewey were alive today, he'd no doubt be working very happily in an information-technology department somewhere. The problem that paper solves, by contrast, is the problem that most concerns us today, which is how to support knowledge work. In fretting over paper, we have been tripped up by a historical accident of innovation, confused by the assumption that the most important invention is always the most recent. Had the computer come first -- and paper second -- no one would raise an eyebrow at the flight strips cluttering our air-traffic-control centers.

Thinking Career Change? How About Papermaking?

2010-07-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

Timothy Barrett, internationally recognized master craftsman and paper historian, states that "the study of books can give us an entirely new picture of the development of all disciplines and of human knowledge in the broadest sense." He asks, "how can the material study of books and paper reveal new things about our cultural heritage, about history, that we wouldn't otherwise be able to learn?" For example, he discovered that papermakers in the 15th century were trying to make imitation parchment instead of regular paper, most likely as a way for papermakers to cut scribes out of the equation by making imitation hand-copied manuscript books. Early mass production!

Combining the skills of artist, ethnographer, scientist, and historian, Barrett documents and demonstrates centuries-old hand-papermaking practices that may otherwise be lost. As the founding director of the papermaking facilities at the University of Iowa Center for the Book — the only academic program in the United States that focuses on producing traditional Western- and Japanese-style papers and teaching-related techniques — he has trained a generation of papermakers to create conservation-sound paper.

He says that in order for scholars in the field to utilize their knowledge of different papers and book production techniques, they need to get hands on experience in the book arts: paper-making, letterpress printing, bookbinding and calligraphy.

Believe it or not, this is a REAL job with practical implications. Barrett and his co-workers recently fabricated the handmade archival paper used to re-house the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution as part of the “Charters of Freedom Re-encasement Project.” They created a layer of white paper to be placed under important documents in their display cases. The paper supports the parchment of the original documents, "provides a white background for better viewing, and helps stabilize the internal humidity in the encasement."

This goes WAY beyond the childhood experiment of turning dryer lint into paper. If you'd like to learn more check out Barrett's Japanese Papermaking: Traditions, Tools, and Techniques.

A New Auntie's Bookstore Location!

2010-06-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

Auntie's Bookstore is expanding to Riverpark Square!

Remember where Children's Corner bookstore used to be? Auntie's has signed a three-year lease for a space on the second floor, just before the skybridge to Macy's.

The new Auntie's location will feature a variety of books and they will also have small gift items like t-shirts available for sale. While still to be determined, the books will most likely include a mixture of fiction, non-fiction, children's literature, magazines and more. And the new store will of course offer the same friendly, knowledgeable staff we've become accustomed to.

Auntie's owner, Chris O'Harra, envisions this location will reach out not only to visitors to Spokane who wouldn't necessarily stumble on the Main location, but also to casual mall shoppers who might otherwise choose a national chain bookstore.

As of now, Auntie's is aiming to be in the space this summer. Wow! Keep an eye out and drop by the new location to say hello!

Library Cuts

2010-06-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

As you may have already seen in the Spokesman-Review and other news outlets, the proposed 2011 City of Spokane budget includes large cuts for Spokane libraries, which may result in an entire branch having to close or the elimination of an outreach program to seniors and preschoolers.

The budget proposal by Mayor Mary Verner is attempting to deal with an estimated $10 million shortfall as a result of the recession. While the library staff had foreseen budget cuts and already eliminated 2.85% of their budget, approximately $220,000, these proposed cuts are twice what they'd planned for.

The budget was proposed early in order for citizens to give feedback on the proposed cuts. To express your comments & concerns about the potential cuts, go to: Ask Spokane

The city currently has six library branches: Downtown, Shadle, South Hill, Hillyard, Eastside and Indian Trail. Due to the recession, visits to the library have increased by almost 6%, with last year being the busiest year on record.

Make sure to follow the link and give your feedback!