Upcoming Poetry Out Loud Regional Final

It's almost here.

On Thursday, February 7, students from nine regional high schools will compete in the Eastern Washington Poetry Out Loud Regional Final, hosted by Get Lit! Programs. Two winners will be chosen to proceed to the State Finals in Tacoma where they'll be one step closer to becoming the 2013 National Champion.

The Regional Final will take place at the Bing Crosby Theater from 7:00 to 9:00 pm and will include the school winners from the following high schools: Central Valley, The Community School, East Valley, Lakeside, Liberty Bell, Mead, Medical Lake, The Oaks, and Okanogan. The competition will take place in two rounds, with participants reciting one poem for each round.

Poetry Out Loud Regional Final

Thursday, February 7, 7-9 pm

The Bing Crosby Theater

Free and open to the public

Now in its eighth year, Poetry Out Loud is a national arts education program that encourages the mastery of great poetry by offering educational materials and a dynamic competition to high schools across the country. The competition begins at the classroom level, progressing through school-wide, regional, and state competitions and culminating in the National Finals in Washington, DC. More than 250,000 students across the country are expected to take part in Poetry Out Loud this year.

2013 Get Lit! Festival Lineup Announced!

2013 Festival Authors

Drumroll, please: Eastern Washington University’s Get Lit! Programs is delighted to announce the lineup for the 2013 Get Lit! Festival!

Chances are you've read something, if not many things, by Joyce Carol Oates. Maybe you spent a winter afternoon bundled up with We Were The Mulvaneys, an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Or you might have spent the summer lost in her genre-bending re-imagining of Marilyn Monroe's life and death, Blonde. Her widely anthologized short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" likely sparked discussion during your high school or college English courses, or you might have read her 2011 memoir, A Widow’s Story. As the author of more than 100 books, including novels, novellas, memoirs, poetry collections, plays and children's books, and countless essays and short stories, Joyce Carol Oates is among America's most prolific and beloved writers.

Joining her will be Jaimy Gordon, whose National Book Award-winning novel, Lord of Misrule (2010), launches readers into the corrupt and cutthroat world of cheap horse racing. At a rundown racetrack in West Virginia, horseman Tommy Hansel and his girlfriend, Maggie, plan to get rich and get out fast. But soon everyone has taken an interest in the pair, and by the time Hansel's fourth horse, Lord of Misrule, takes to the track, the stakes are far more than money. (Friday, April 12, Bing Crosby Theater, 7 p.m.)

As a poet, a professor of creative writing, and the Poetry Editor for the Harvard Review, Major Jackson's career is defined by dedication to the arts community and the drive for poetic evolution. He can portray the complexity of human relations in anything from a long narrative examination of urban life to a brief ten-line poem about forgotten possessions. Of his most recent collection, the Hudson Review writes, "the poetry Major Jackson offers us in Holding Company—unashamedly lyrical, in flight from narrative, layered with allusion and homage—sounds different from any other being written today." Jackson is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006), and Leaving Saturn (2002), a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Jackson will be joined by notable poet Robert Wrigley, who will read from his latest work, The Church of Omnivorous Light: Selected Poems (2013). Wrigley is the widely anthologized author of eight previous collections of poetry, including Beautiful Country (2010), and a winner of the Poets' Prize, the Kingsley Tufts award, and six Pushcart Prizes. (Saturday, April 13, Bing Crosby Theater, 7 p.m.)

Get Lit! will also welcome Kim Barnes, award-winning author of In the Kingdom of Men, “a mesmerizing, richly imagined tale of Americans out of their depths in Saudi Arabia, a marriage in peril, and one woman’s quest for the truth, no matter what it might cost her.” Barnes’ previous work includes the highly acclaimed novel A Country Called Home (2009) and the memoir In the Wilderness (1997), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Jonathan Evison is the author of All About Lulu and the century-spanning bestseller West of Here. With his new novel, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, Evison is covering miles rather than years. In this “hilarious, harrowing road trip,” Ben Benjamin—forty, newly single, and unhinged—meets Trey, a nineteen-year-old with a vivid imagination and muscular dystrophy. Together, they set out across the country to learn what it means to care, and to heal. (Thursday, April 11, Bing Crosby Theater, 7 p.m.)

Festival Passes and individual tickets for the headlining events go on sale Friday, January 25, via TicketsWest (1-800-325-SEAT). The festival pass will be $45, which will gain admission to all headlining events. By purchasing a pass, you can save $15-$20 off individual ticket costs and service fees.  Individual tickets for each event are only $15. All headlining events are free to all students with a valid high school or college ID.

Additional Featured Authors

Christopher McDougall’s career as an AP journalist and a writer for Outside, New York Times Magazine, and Men’s Health has sent him into the midst of wars in the Congo and Rwanda, into the coconut trees of Brazil to investigate an unusual form of exercise, and on a hunt for a fugitive Mexican superstar. In Born to Run (2009), he sets out test his limitations as a long-distance runner. His journey takes him from Harvard’s laboratories to Mexico’s Copper Canyon where he meets a unique tribe of runners who often cover over 100 miles, barefoot, without injury or rest.
(Wednesday, April 10, Spokane Community College, free and open to the public. Bloomsday Training Run, 6 p.m. Talk and book-signing, 7 p.m.)

Other featured authors for the 2013 festival include David Shields, author of fourteen works of fiction and nonfiction, including Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, a controversial work that pushes at the boundaries of nonfiction, asserting that “all art is theft” and that “reality cannot be copyrighted.” His latest book is How Literature Saved My Life (February 2013). Novelist Jim Lynch has written three novels set in Washington State, including Truth Like The Sun, which takes place in Seattle during the 1962 World’s Fair. Lynch was the winner of the 2009 Washington State Book award for Border Songs. For a complete list of participating festival authors, visit our website.

Hometown favorite and award-winning author Jess Walter will also appear at the Get Lit! Festival, reading from his new collection of short stories, We Live in Water (February 2013). He’ll be joined by Shawn Vestal, Spokesman-Review columnist and author of the story collection Godforsaken Idaho. The pair will read from their brand-new collections, discuss writing, and answer questions. Moderated by writer, editor, and EWU professor Samuel Ligon.

In addition to the incredible lineup of authors, Eastern Washington University’s Theatre program will offer a special engagement of Ode, an original play based on the whirlwind romance between the great English poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, a romance cut short by tragic events. The play, written by poet and EWU professor Jonathan Johnson, will run during March 2013, and return for an encore performance on Tuesday, April 9, as part of the Get Lit! Festival.

Other Events To Look Forward To:

• The 2nd Annual Pie & Whiskey reading
• Poetry slams for kids, youth, teens, and college students
• Exhibit at the Chase Gallery featuring work created by pairs of local artists & writers
• The Come One, Come All community reading
• Writing workshops, panel discussions, and more!

Updates will be posted to the Get Lit! website over the next two weeks, including the complete festival schedule with all dates, times, and venues. Check back soon! 

Spokane: Where the Weather is Horrible and the Writing is Amazing

When people think of vibrant arts communities, they usually think of New York, LA, Seattle--cities on the coastlines. But in Spokane, if you were to pull out a calendar and put your finger on a random date, you'd probably land on a reading. To name a few, we have: Auntie's, DANGER! Live Writers, Naked Lunch Break, Broken Mic, Beacon Hill, Spokane Poetry Slam, EWU's Visiting Writers Series, and the magnificent Get Lit! Festival (this isn't journalism, bias is permissible).

It's kind of insane, really, how lucky us Spokanites are. So, let's take a minute and forget about the deadly ice-pavement we've been careening over for weeks, and the fact that we live somewhere that has "Stagnant Air Advisories," and bask in the knowledge that our writing community is better than their writing community, whoever they may be.

On a less narcissistic note, take a few minutes to look at the amazing work Spokane writers have been producing. Then forward the links to your friends in the Midwest and gloat.

Mari Hunt: 

You might remember Mari Hunt from the 2011 Inlander Short Fiction Contest, which she won with the story "Her Daughter." Now her story "In the Shadow of Elizabeth Smart" is being featured in the literary journal YARN.

From "In the Shadow of Elizabeth Smart":

Three years ago, when I was fourteen, I waited for my mother to pick me up from a department store downtown. Katie Rennert and I spent Saturday afternoon shopping, but she had to leave early. Her mom called while we were in Women’s Shoes saying she had to go out to dinner with her grandmother—or maybe it was her aunt—I can’t remember anymore. The point is, I waited for my mom by myself at the department store between two sets of doors. One set led outside, where my mother didn’t want me waiting alone, and the other led into the store. The space in between, the space where I waited, is called a vestibule. It’s a nothing space. Like being nowhere, like being fourteen.

Get the full story here.

Kevin Taylor:

Kevin Taylor spent 7 years writing for the Inlander before leaving in 2011 to pursue freelancing. No surprise here, freelancing looks good on him. His piece “Haiti: Home of Her Heart,” just won a Gold Award in the Individual Features or Feature Articles category of the 2013 CASE District VIII Communications Awards, which is a long way of saying that his feature writing is the best of the best in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska and Western Canada. Read more about it here.

From "Haiti: Home of Her Heart":

In Cité Soleil [site so-lay, Sun City] the poorest slum in Port-au-Prince, the chaotic capital of Haiti, Analiesse Isherwood (’11, Behavioral Neuroscience) came bearing gifts for the Christmas toy giveaway in the church. Boy. She saw the boy on the dirt street in Cité Soleil, naked but for a scrap of undefinable cloth. Plastic bottle on a string. Sitting in the passing tap-tap with her mission team, Analiesse Isherwood had the sack filled with toys – real, American toys – she had spent all her spare dollars on. 

Get the full article here.

Robert Lopez Reading at Auntie's

Get Lit! Programs and Eastern Washington University's Visiting Writers Series are pleased to announce author Robert Lopez will be reading at Auntie's Bookstore this Friday, January 18th, at 7:30pm. The event will be free and open to the public.

Lopez is the author of Asunder, a collection of short fiction, and of the novels Part of the World and Kamby Bolongo Mean River, which was named one of the 25 most important books of the decade by HTML Giant. Reviewer Blake Butler said of its inclusion on the list, "Robert Lopez helped close out my decade by closing out my brain with just about every single sentence and paragraph in this thing. It just did not stop. There is not another book I can think of that moves emotionally the way this one does."


Asunder Book Description:

The unforgettable stories in Robert Lopez's Asunder vary in length and style, but all of them devastate, all constantly cross the boundaries between poetry and prose. Here we have characters who are uncertain of themselves, of the people surrounding them. Here people are in trouble and need help. The compressed lyricism of these stories seems driven by the silence of what is not said, what lies beneath the lines and between them. As in his novels Part of the World and Kamby Bolongo Mean River, this elliptical tension of the language gives way to moments of grace and savage humor, leaving the reader startled, as though the world were a complete surprise.

Find more information, including reviews and an author bio, here.