Get Lit! At First Night

In the past, we've had readings at First Night, but this year we are focusing on the younger set. Get Lit! will present a literary event for the family from 7:00 to 9:00 pm at Auntie’s Bookstore on Wednesday, December 31.

Admission is free for children 10 and under. Otherwise, a First Night button is required for admittance. Buttons cost $12 in advance or $15 day of and can be purchased at Aunties Bookstore, City Perk, STA Plaza, Mountain West Bank in Spokane Valley, River Park Square Concierge Desk, Tomlinson Real Estate Offices, and Zip Trip Food Stores. For more information on First Night events go to: http://www.firstnightspokane.org/.

Local children’s author, Kelly Milner Halls, will kick-off the evening at 7:00 pm with a her “Wonders of the Weird” artifacts that help bring her nonfiction books—Dinosaur Mummies, Tales of the Cryptids, and Mysteries of the Kid Mummies—come to life. Kelly has a thing for science and geography, particularly the off-beat and loves to share her sense of wonder with kids. For more information visit: http://www.kellymilnerhalls.com/

The evening’s line-up will also showcase readings from our local elementary and middle school students who participated in the Get Lit!’s Writers-in-Residence Program. Over 25 students from District 81, West Valley, and Central Valley School District (Franklin Elementary, Ness Elementary, and Summit School) will present their poems and other writings. Our young writers have been writing, rewriting, and practicing their presentation for this special event.

At 8:30 pm, Patrick Carman, a children’s and young adult author from Walla Walla, will close the program with a reading from some of his bestselling series such as: The Land of Elyon, Atherton and Elliot's Park. Patrick is the award-winning author of many books for young adults and children and has new books in these series scheduled for release throughout 2009, as well as a new book, Skeleton Creek, which is part book/part online adventure. Check his website at www.enterskeletoncreek.com for more details.

Hopefully we'll see you there! If you are interested in volunteering with us at Auntie's from 6:30 to 9:30, you'll get a free button to go and play the rest of the night and all of First Day. If you are interested, call Dani at 368-6590.

Timothy Egan, Joe the Plumber, and Barbara Bush's Dog

Why do we love literary festivals?

According to Wikipedia--the font of all knowledge--the primary objectives of a literary festival are "promoting the authors' books and fostering a love of literature and writing."

At Get Lit!, we're all about fostering that love. We look forward to spending part of our April talking about, hearing about, and dreaming about great literature. For those precious 11 days, Spokane goes book crazy. Books pop up in conversations at work, school, the gym, the PTA, etc. People we've known for ages suddenly reveal new sides of themselves with talk of favorite books and latest reads.

And sure, the authors come to promote their books, but they wouldn't write those books in the first place if they weren't literature lovers. Or would they?

Timothy Egan, Pulitzer prize recipient, bestselling author, columnist, former Spokane resident, and--most noteably--the 2007 Get Lit! author, recently revealed a darker side of why people write books in his New York Times op-ed, "Typing Without a Clue." Egan writes about authors that are just in it for the cash (wait...there's cash in writing?) and what's more, they aren't even the good writers! Joe the Plumber is his prime example. Egan argues that publishing companies that push books for cash hurt people who know how to create great literature

"Most of the writers I know work every day, in obscurity and close to poverty, trying to say one thing well and true. Day in, day out, they labor to find their voice, to learn their trade, to understand nuance and pace. And then, facing a sea of rejections, they hear about something like Barbara Bush’s dog is getting a book deal."

In the column, Egan acknowledges that some people who are not defined primarily as writers, President Elect Obama for example, are actually good wordsmiths, but then adds:

"For the others — you friends of celebrities penning cookbooks, you train wrecks just out of rehab, you politicians with an agent but no talent — stop soaking up precious advance money. I know: publishers say they print garbage so that real literature, which seldom makes any money, can find its way into print. True, to a point. But some of them print garbage so they can buy more garbage."

Get Lit! promises to never, ever, ever present garbage at our festival. Remember, we're all about fostering the love of literature—-great literature—-through fantastic author events and outreach programs. Make sure you join our 2009 love fest on April 10-19 and support all of our authors, the ones who work in "obscurity and close to poverty" and the ones who are a little more well known.

Check out Jess Walters and Timothy Egan interviewing each other at the 2007 Get Lit!:

Part I
Part II

Curiousity May Kill Cats...But Never Readers

If you are looking for the most up to date information on the 2009 Get Lit! Festival, look no further! We are currently hammering and nailing away on our website renovation. I anticipate it will be up and running starting the first of the year. But for those of you who are wanting to get a jump on the festival in order to plan for your bookgroup, read up on the authors who will be in attendance, or just start the Get Lit! gossip going, we update this blog each week with useful information for readers and writers and festival fans.

Over on the side you'll see a basic outline of the festival schedule as it stands now, plus a listing of authors who will be attending the festival. Watch that one grow from three to twenty over the next few months!

And if you are interested in joining our e-newsletter list, we are sending out monthly updates about the festival. Just go to: http://www.ewu.edu/getlit/mailings.htm

WeRead, You Read, Everyone Should Read

With the weather turning cold and the days becoming shorter, we can't think of a better way spend our long evenings than with a book. The problem is that there are so many books to choose from. So how do you organize the books you've read, the books you want to read, and the authors you want to make sure you catch the next release from? How do you find out what your friends are reading and which books they recommend without calling or emailing them all?

It's easy, you use one of the many book organizing/social book lover sites that are available on the web. We chose to use weRead for it's easy user interface and because it interfaces with our Facebook.

Check it out for yourself and make sure you sign up as one of Get Lit! Programs friends, either on that site or on Facebook. See what we're reading and tell your friends what they should read, all at one convenient website.

Speak Your Word!

In 1986, Marc Kelly Smith hosted the first poetry slam at the Get Me High Lounge in Chicago. He shared the stage with Mike Barrett, Rob Van Tyle, Jean Howard, Anna Brown, Karen Nystrom, Dave Cooper, and John Sheehan, all fellow members of the Chicago Ensemble of Poetry, and the event soon migrated to the Green Mill, a tavern and jazz lounge in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood.

The movement grew to a worldwide phenomena and today, the National Poetry Slam features approximately 80 certified teams each year, culminating in five days of competition. This competition--described by Marc Smith as "part Super Bowl, part poetry summer camp, and part traveling exhibition"--is the slam's highest-profile showcase. As for the participants, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Slam Poetry has this to say about the early slam poets:

"The experimenters in this new style of poetry presentation gyrated, rotated, spewed, and stepped their words along the bar top, dancing between the bottles, bellowing out the backdoor, standing on the street or on their stools, turning the west side of Chicago into a rain forest of dripping whispers or a blast furnace of fiery elongated syllables, phrases, snatches of scripts, and verse that electrified the night."

Our own city has a vibrant Slam Poetry scene. The Empyrean coffeehouse (154 S. Madison) hosts Spokane Poetry Slam tournaments the second Thursday of every month at 7 pm. Poets perform their work in front of judges selected from the general audience. Before the competition there is an open mic session and world class slam poets are regularly featured during intermissions.

In addition, Get Lit! Programs and Writers in the Community work with students in our community to hone their Slam Poetry skills and ultimately compete in one of tournaments that takes place during the Get Lit! Festival. For next year's festival, we've added a college night in addition to our regularly featured youth and teen events. Here are the dates:


Monday, 13th April, 5.30 pm - Youth Slam Poetry (ages 5-12) at the Kress Gallery in the RiverPark Square mall.

Tuesday, 14th April, 6.30 pm - Teen Slam Poetry (ages 13-18) at the Empyrean coffeehouse.

Wednesday, 15th, 7.30 pm - College Slam Poetry at the Empyrean coffeehouse.


If you are interested in perfecting your Slam Poetry prose by inviting someone to your school/college or if you want to find out more about participating in the Get Lit! Festival tournaments, please contact Ross Carver (354 7437, witc@ewu.edu) for the youth and teen events, and Daniel Harrington (218 8426, lotuscreations4U@gmail.com) for the college event.

We're looking forward to seeing you on stages around town.

Just remember: "The point is not the points. The point is the poetry!"

Celebrating Their Talent

Although it is tempting to dwell on the sadness of never again reading a new book by one of the following men, we choose instead to celebrate the amazing words they’ve already put on the page.

Tony Hillerman (May 27, 1925 - October 26, 2008) published several novels, children’s and non-fiction books, but he is best known for his detective novels that took place in the Four Corners area of Arizona and New Mexico. The adventures of the protagonists Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee of the Navajo tribal police were made into movies by the Mystery! series on PBS. Hillerman won several awards for his writing, the Mystery Writers of America awarded Dance Hall of the Dead the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1974 and also awarded Hillerman their Grandmaster Award in 1991, but his New York Times obituary reports that what the author treasured most was the Special Friend of the Dineh (the Navajo people) given to him in 1987 by the Navajo Nation.

Michael Crichton (October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008) books has sold more than 150 million copies worldwide. He is probably most famous for the novels Jurassic Park and its sequel The Lost World, which were both adapted into high grossing films, but also wrote, directed, and produced for film and TV (he's the creator of ER). His awards include an Emmy, a Peabody, and the more unusual distinctions of having a dinosaur called after him (Crichtonsaurus bohlini) and being included on People magazine's list of the "Fifty Most Beautiful People." The Washington Post obituary names Crichton's heroes as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain and Sir Alfred Hitchcock.

Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) transformed oral history into a popular literary form. A reviewer for The Financial Times of London described his books as “completely free of sociological claptrap, armchair revisionism and academic moralizing.” He won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for The Good War and was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1997. Two years later, he received the George Polk Career Award in 1999. Explaining how he his hip in later years he said, "I was walking downstairs carrying a drink in one hand and a book in the other. Don't try that after ninety." The Chicago Tribune obituary quotes Terkel's self-chosen epitaph to be "Curiosity did not kill this cat."


May we all have as full lives and rewarding careers as these three.

No More Food, No More Black Gold

You might expect the author of The End of Oil and The End of Food to be gloomy and dry, but at a recent appearance in San Francisco , Paul Roberts was described as "candid and engaging." Thanks to the Hagan Foundation Center for the Humanities and the President's Speakers Series at Spokane Community College we'll be able to see this charismatic speaker at next year's festival on Wednesday the 15th of April at 7.30 pm in the Lair Auditorium at SCC.

A journalist since 1983, Paul Roberts has written for The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The (UK) Guardian and has freelanced for Slate, USA Today, The New Republic, Newsweek, The Christian Science Monitor, Rolling Stone, and Outside magazine. He was a finalist for the National Magazine Award (1999) and for the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2005.

The topics of The End of Oil, the decline of global petroleum production, the social and political costs of a post-oil shock and the possibilities for moving beyond oil, are hotter now than they were when the book came out. That explains why a 2004 Mother Jone's interview with Paul Roberts reads like it is about our upcoming election, if you just blank out the candidates' names. In his June 2008 National Geographic article, "Tapped Out," Paul describes how oil companies are predicting when supplies will level off, but explains why that won't change how much money we're spending at the pump. "Whatever the ceiling turns out to be, one prediction seems secure: The era of cheap oil is behind us. "

As if not being able to drive your SUV for much longer isn't bad enough, Paul's latest book, The End of Food, discusses the factors involved in third world food crises and how western nations will soon feel the effects of them, because of how dependent we are on our large-scale, hyper-efficient industrialized food production, which generates food more cheaply than at any time in history, but has reached a point of dangerously diminishing returns.

Read Bee Wilson's May 19, 2008 Critic at Large article, "The Last Bite: Is the world’s food system collapsing?," in The New Yorker for an in dept review of the book. Then listen to Paul Roberts discussing these issues with Tom Ashbrook on NPR's On Point show from May 28 of this year. That should prepare you enough to be able to participate in what is sure to be a lively discussion on the 15th. You could of course also buy Paul's books and read them before next April.

See you then!

Probation Officer, Undertaker's Assistant, Supermarket Shelf Stacker, then Acclaimed Writer and Poet = Simon Armitage

On April 19, 2009, Spokane will have the amazing opportunity to listen to Simon Armitage reading his work. Critics love his poems, but he is a prolific writer who also writes non-fiction, novels, and scripts for film, TV, and theater.

He has received numerous awards for his poetry including: the Sunday Times Author of the Year, one of the first Forward Prizes and a Lannan Award. Rumor has it that he is also short listed to be the new UK Poet Laureate next year.

You would think that someone as talented and prolific would have gone through an extensive writer’s program, but although he has taught writing at the University of Leeds and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and is a current senior lecturer at the University of Manchester, his own academic foundation is not in Comp., Lit., or even English.

Maybe because his biography includes a Geography degree at Portsmouth Polytechnic and a postgraduate qualification in social work at Manchester University, as well as a variety of non-writing careers, Simon Armitage work speaks to people from all groups of life. We are ecstatic that he is going to be speaking to the people of Spokane.

For more information about Simon’s work visit his website at: http://www.simonarmitage.com/
Our favorite areas of the site are the Poem of the Day and the Audio & Video clips of the author reading his work.

Fans on this side of the pond includes Gwyneth Paltrow. Here she is, reading Simon’s poem "The Gift" which was commissioned by UNICEF for their Born Free from HIV campaign, created to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

October is Literary Prizes Month

This month's literary prize announcements include the Nobel Prize in literature and The Man Booker Prize.

According to the Independent, the Nobel Foundation "infuriated the bookies, delighted the bookish and thumbed its nose, again, at the American book industry" when they chose British/French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. To find out if you agree with the committee's assessment of him as an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization, " read the interview with him in France-Diplomatie. (You may have to scroll down to see the interview.)

If you want to know how to become a successful author and win £50,000 at the tender age of 33, then read about how the Man Booker Prize committee decided that Aravind Adiga's book The White Tiger was their obvious 2008 winner on the prize's news site. It also contains a link to a video interview with the author.

Get Ready for Get Lit! 2009 and Jane Smiley

Mark your calendars for next year's festival that will take place April 10-19!

It is going to be hard to top the amazing events we had last year. But as much as we loved spending time with our fabulous 2008 authors, we are excited about what 2009 has in store.

The first headliner we secured is Jane Smiley. On Thursday, April 16th, Get Lit! and the Washington Library Association will host An Evening with Jane Smiley at The Bing Theater. She'll read and discuss her most recent novel, Ten Days in the Hills, a satirical exploration of Hollywood set against the U.S. invasion of Iraq and then do a book signing.

Smiley has written more than ten novels and three non-fiction books. In 1992, she received the Pulitzer Prize for A Thousand Acres. If you can't wait until April to read Jane's prose and find out about her writing life, here are some links to wet your appetite:

• Jane blogs for the Huffington Post. To access her blogs and sign up for alerts for when she's published a new one visit: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/.
  
  


• To find out how an author transitions from books to blogging, read Jane's 2007 interview with The Progressive's Matthew Rothschild: http://www.progressive.org/mag_intv1207.
  
  


• That same year, Washington Post's Bob Thompson spoke with Jane about writing Ten Days in the Hills. Among other things, the author described how she found herself confronting a technical problem she'd never faced before: Too much sex. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/19/AR2007021901231.html

Stay tuned for more information on our other headliners.