Big Read interview with the Get Lit! Programs Coordinator

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!

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!

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!

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.