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.