Look for Get Lit! Programs at ArtFest

It's that time of year again when the Coeur d’ Alene Park in Browne's Addition of Spokane turns into a grand celebration of the arts.

Every year, the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture hosts this spectacular showcase of artisans, musicians, and culinary treats. This year's festival is the 24th of its kind and promises to be as fun and festive as all the others, but will have the extra treat of Get Lit! participating in the Make-It-Art event. Look for the big tent for hands-on art-making experiences for kids and families. The six projects will include:

Make-it-You: Face-Painting w/ The MAC
Make-it-World: Origami Cranes w/ The Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane
Make-it-Live: Fish Collages & Water Education w/ The Lands Council
Make-it-Play: Mask-Making w/ Spokane Civic Theater
Make-it-Help: Recycled & Ready-made PSA's w/ Youth Sustainability Council
Make-it-Read: Word-Art w/ Get Lit! Programs

($3 donation to the MAC’s Education Programs per activity)

In addition, visitors to the ArtFest will be able to enjoy 120 juried artist booths featuring paintings, sculpture, jewelry, photography, glass, wood, textiles and much more, a dozen food vendors of every sort, and continuous live music.

ArtFest Hours:

Friday May 29: Noon to 8 p.m. (Music until 10 p.m.)

Saturday May 30: 10 am to 8 pm (music until 10 pm)

Sunday May 31: 10 am to 5 pm

Music:

Friday headliner (8-9:45 p.m.) Too Slim and the Taildraggers with the Underworld Orchestra Horns

Saturday headliner (8-9:45 p.m.) Big Mumbo Blues Band

Find out more details at the MAC's Art Fest website, then join us for what promises to be a fun and entertaining weekend!

Northwest Poets at Auntie's on Sunday!

Spring is in the air, time for some poetry!

Two poets that both studied with Richard Hugo and Madeline DeFrees at the University of Montana will be reading at Auntie's this Sunday at 12.30.

Gary Thompson will read from his new book, To the Archaeologist Who Finds Us, recently released by Turning Point Books.

His poems have been described by Dennis Schmitz, author of The Truth Squad and About Night as “Lyrical, wry, at ease—these poems have a deep inner life. They are inhabited, not haunted, by Keats and Raymond Carver, a hesitant dead father who reaches Thompson on the telephone, by angels weathered as birds, by found loves—but always inhabited (the only test of real poetry) by the poet himself.”

Thomas Aslin will read from his new book, A Moon Over Wings, published by Clark City Press of Livingston, Montana.

Joseph Stroud, author of Of This World: New and Selected Poems, praises Aslin’s work: “The courage and big heart of these poems bring to mind the work of Richard Hugo. Like Hugo, Aslin struggles with the difficulties of our all too human lives. Thomas Aslin’s poems are the history of a man working and finding his way into grace. His excellence as a poet . . . is that he makes that grace available to all of us.”

Please support the arts by joining us on Sunday, 17 May at Auntie’s Books (402 West Main ) for an afternoon of exceptional Northwest contemporary poetry.

A book signing will follow the reading.

When Protecting Becomes Censoring

What do the books in this picture all have in common? At one time some one attempted to have them banned.


In April, four members of a library board in West Bend, WI, were dismissed for refusing to remove controversial books from the library’s young adult section. The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Association of American Publishers and PEN American Center criticized the firings--and now the city council says it may reconsider its hasty decision.

The whole ordeal started when two parents requested that young adult titles which contained sex and homosexuality be shelved in the adult section--where minors have to get parental approval before checking books out. Read more about this case in this recent article in the School Library Journal.

One of the most frequently banned books is John Steinbeck's Pulitzer winning The Grapes of Wrath and it is still being removed from library shelves and reading curriculum today. Read about how Steinbeck intended his novel to be controversial and how Oklahoma residents are still not OK (pun intended) with it in Tulsa World's "Grapes of Wrath still blows ill wind."

Banning and censoring books has been going on since the first book was created. Some of our favorite banned books, "ranging from Ulysses to Little Red Riding Hood," can be read for free at The Online Books Page's "Banned Books Online" site.

Get Lit! wants to know what you think about censorship and whether parents should have the right to determine the content of our library shelves. Please leave us a comment on this post.

For more information about banned books, visit the Banned Books Week site. This year's Banned Book Week will take place September 26–October 3. Check out your local libraries and bookstores for more information closer to those dates.

Get Lit! Scooped New York Times

You knew, of course, that Get Lit! is the eminent literary event of the Northwest, but did you know that we even showcase great authors before they get attention from the New York Times?

If you missed Adina Hoffman's reading during the festival, or you want to revisit with this fantastic author, you can now read the May 5th New York Times book review of My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century.

According to Dwight Garner, the NY Times reviewer: "Mr. Ali’s poetry-talk, in this biography, is ingenious and ardent. He compares his poetic method to billiards (“You aim over here ... to strike over there”), and he has this to say about the crossroads of religion and writing: 'The more mosques, the less poetry.'

Ms. Hoffman plucks, like olives, lovely stories to tell about him. Mr. Ali would become so engaged when talking to a friend, the poet and editor Michel Haddad, she writes, that they would take turns walking each other home all night long:...."

Not enough to satisfy your thirst for news about Ms. Adina? Hear her in person again in an interview with her, included in a feature on Taha Muhammad Ali on Chicago Public Radio's "Worldview" program.

Adina Hoffman is the author of House of Windows: Portraits from a Jerusalem Neighborhood, and My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness, which was released earlier this month. My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness, the biography of Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali, reflects on the ways in which history registers in daily life, and on the often alchemical means by which experience is transformed into art. Hoffman's other writings, including essays and criticism, have appeared in the Nation, the Washington Post, the Times Literary Supplement, the Boston Globe, Raritan, and on the World Service of the BBC. Formerly a film critic for the American Prospect and the Jerusalem Post, she is one of the founders and editors of Ibis Editions, a small press that publishes the literature of the Levant. She lives in Jerusalem.

Stay tuned for information about next year's festival. We bet you can't wait to find out who's coming so that you know about whom you can say: "I knew them when..."