Get Lit! Festival presents Pie & Whiskey

George W. Bush once famously said, “We ought to make the pie higher.” In honor of that sentiment, Sam Ligon, associate professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University, and Kate Lebo, Seattle-based poet and renowned pie baker, will host the first ever Get Lit! Pie & Whiskey Reading. Authors will read poetry, short fiction and flash nonfiction inspired by the two greatest after-dinner delicacies: pie and whiskey, which will be served at this event. You must be 21 to attend. 

Readers include: Steve Almond, Elizabeth Austen, Caitlin Horrocks, Chris Howell, Laurie Lamon, Kate Lebo, Sam Ligon, Tod Marshall, Shann Ray, Molly Tenenbaum, Nance Van Winckel, and Jess Walter.

Date: Thursday, April 12

Time: 9:30 p.m.
Venue: Woman's Club, 1428 W 9th. (This venue is not easily ADA-accessible. Please contact us ahead of time if you'd like to attend so we can make the proper arrangements. 509.359.6977 or getlit@ewu.edu)
 Cost: Free admission will include complimentary pie and one beverage. Additional beverages will be for sale. 

Special thanks to Dry Fly Distillery and Woodinville Whiskey Company for supporting this event.

Get Lit!'s Poetry Salon

The Get Lit! Festival is having an informal poetry salon, modeled after the salons of early 20th century Paris. The event will consist of a reading and discussion by six poets hosted by Eastern Washington University's Creative Writing professor Jonathan Johnson. Each of the poets will discuss their craft and their writing life.

The poets include:

Elizabeth Austen, a Seattle poet, performer, and teacher will be reading from her book Every Dress a Decision. She has produced literary programming for one of Seattle's NPR affiliates, KUOW, which introduces recordings of the Pacific Northwest literary events and interviews local and national poets.
Click here to watch Elizabeth Austen read from her book, Every Dress a Decision.

Thomas Brush is an author of three poetry collections and his work has appeared in journals such as Poetry, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, and The North American Review. He established a literary magazine called Better Days, along with a reading series, while teaching English at Kent-Meridian High School. Brush’s forthcoming poetry collection Last Night, winner of the 2011 Blue Lynx Prize, includes poetry from the last twenty years about his childhood, his current reflections on the world, and the places he delights in and lives in.

Molly Tenenbaum has three full-length poetry collections: The Cupboard Artist (2012), Now (2007), and By a Thread (2000), as well as chapbooks Blue Willow, Old Voile, and Story, and single poems in many journals. She has held residencies at Hedgebrook and at the Helen Riaboff Whiteley Center, participated in the Jack Straw Writers’ Program, and was awarded a 2009 Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship.

Kathryn Smith is an EWU MFA alum, a copy editor for the Spokesman-Review, a master gardener in training, and a community volunteer. According to Mary Oliver, Smith tries to "keep my mind on what matters, / which is my work, / which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished."

Kathleen Flenniken was recently named the Washington State Poetry Laureate and her second collection of poetry, Plume, was selected for the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series. Her first collection of poems, Famous, winner of the 2005 Prairie Schooner Prize, was named a 2007 Notable Book of the Year by the American Library Association and a finalist for the Washington State Book Award.

Russell Thorburn enjoys having a successful career as a poet, teacher, and radio hour writer. He writes poems about “fighting against the silence” based on his personal life journey. He repeatedly includes a character named Agent X who time travels to sorrowful and gratifying moments in Thorburn’s life. Thorburn has compared Agent X to Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim.   

What: Poetry Salon

Where: Rocket Bakery (1325 W. First Ave., Spokane)

When: Friday, April 13 2012 9:00 PM

Cost: FREE!

More Information:

Visit Get Lit!

Poem of the Week by Molly Tenenbaum

For practice, let something stay broken,

the faucet's drip keep you waking.

Keep on paying insurance though the car won't go,
don't fix it,
dead on the street, gray and flaking.

Let it keep, unmended, something small-
the cat's arthritic knee-
she's getting used to it after all.

The bird bath frost cracked left blue shards in the garden-
Well, they were pretty, weren't they?
Cutting in summer
fingers at work in the larkspur.

Even the path
to Piper's Creek, all fall a shower of gold,
and in the old orchard, the copper-brown, penny-sized pears.

Today, an orange barrier-strip, and the sign says
Path Closed, the storm, a raw sewage flow.

Let them never clear it. Let last week's
have been the last walk there, back on that day

so windy, so bright-edged
and beam-struck, it was impossible
to sit down or stop or look up.

Molly Tenenbaum is one of the poets participating in the 2012 Get Lit! Festival. The above poem comes from her recently released collection, The Cupboard Artist. She will be part of the Friday morning panel "From Vinegar Bottles to Verse: Discovering Poetry in Overlooked Objects" at SFCC and will be reading her work at the Poetry Salon later that night. Click here for more information about Molly.