Announcing the Get Lit! Kids and YA Headliners!

Announcing the 2013 Youth Headliners

Patricia McCormick is a two-time National Book Award finalist and the author of five critically acclaimed young adult novels, including Never Fall Down, the story of a young Cambodian boy whose musical talent proves to be his sole chance of surviving the Khmer Rouge. Joining her will be Emily Danforth, author of the widely acclaimed novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post. This event will be free and open to the public. Saturday, April 13, 11:30 am, Spokane Public Library Downtown Branch.

Rebecca Stead is the Newbery Award-winning author of When You Reach Me and First Light. Her newest book, Liar & Spy, is a story about spies, games, and friendship. The story centers on seventh-grader Georges, his eccentric new homeschooled friends, and an apartment building spy mystery that needs to be solved. This event will be free to all youth; tickets for adult general admission are available through TicketsWest. Sunday, April 14, 11:30 am, Bing Crosby Theater.

Get your Get Lit! Festival Passes Now
Buy a pass and save $20-$25 off individual ticket costs and service fees.

Eastern Washington University’s 15th Annual Get Lit! Festival will feature over 50 events including author presentations and readings, writing workshops, panel discussions, poetry slams and writing contests. A Festival Pass gets you in to see the all of the headlining events: Jonathan Evison and Kim Barnes on Thursday, April 11; Joyce Carol Oates, Jaimy Gordon, and David Shields on Friday, April 12; Major Jackson and Robert Wrigley on Saturday, April 13; and Rebecca Stead on Sunday, April 14. The Festival Pass is regularly priced at $45, saving you $20-$25 off individual ticket costs and convenience charges. Individual tickets can also be purchased for each of the headlining events for $15. (Note: Students get in to all headlining events free with current ID.) 

Author Spotlight: Major Jackson
Join Major Jackson and Robert Wrigley for a conversation about poetry.

Major Jackson is an American poet, a professor of creative writing, the author of three poetry collections, and the Poetry Editor for the Harvard Review. His work has earned him the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize as well as the honor of being a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the NAACP Image Award. He has taught in the graduate MFA programs at Columbia University and New York University. He lives in Burlington, Vermont, where he is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at University of Vermont. While his earlier works consisted mostly of long narrative poems, Holding Company signals a creative evolution with its concise ten-line lyrical poems and ecstatic tone.

“True enough,/he wanted a row of filaments inside like Times Square./The sockets were dead” –Lying

Poetry Out Loud Regional Final
Learn more about the National Poetry Out Loud Competition here.

Thursday, February 7th, Get Lit! Programs hosted the Eastern Washington Poetry Out Loud Regional Final at the Bing Crosby Theater. Students from nine regional high schools recited classical and contemporary poetry for a chance to proceed to the state finals and get one step closer to becoming national champion. Tom Zbyszewski from Liberty Bell High School won the competition with his incredible performances of “Golden Retrievals” by Mark Doty and “Famous” by Naomi Shihab Nye. Langston Ward from Mead High School, last year’s state champion, placed second with stirring recitations of “The Gift” by Li-Young Lee and “A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest and the Road Unknown” by Walt Whitman. Both Zbyszewski and Ward will compete in the state finals in Tacoma on March 9. 

For more information about this year's festival, visit our website.

Tom Wayman Reading at Riverpoint

Get Lit! Programs and Eastern Washington University's Visiting Writers Series are pleased to announce author Tom Wayman will be reading in the Phase 1 Auditorium at Riverpoint this Friday, February 22nd, at 7:30pm. The event will be free and open to the public.

Wayman is the author of 18 collections of poetry, two collections of short stories, and the novel Woodstock Rising (2009). He'll be sharing work from his latest collection of poetry, Dirty Snow (2012).

About Dirty Snow:

Tom Wayman's newest collection of poems, Dirty Snow, unflinchingly considers the impact of the Afghan War: its absence and presence in Canadians' everyday lives as citizens of a nation at war. The collection explores Wayman's view that Canada's military intervention in a civil war between two odious sets of combatants has degraded Canadians' quality of life by, among other means, the conflict's relentless absorption of public funds in pursuit of dubious ends...

The Beacon Hill Reading Series Presents...

The 2nd installment of this year's Beacon Hill Reading Series is on its way!

Event: An Evening of Poetry and Prose
When: Tuesday, February 12, 6:30-7:30 pm
Where: The Hagan Foundation Center at SCC
Cost: Free and open to the public

The reading will feature the following authors:

DIANE SHERMAN published her first collection of poems, Walkabout, in 2011, which won an honorable mention in the New York Book Festival in 2012. Her poems have been featured in various journals including Pisgah Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, The Spokesman Review, and The Cape Rock. Diane grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and currently lives with her husband in Spokane, where she teaches yoga as well as the Bare Bones Writing workshop for women.

SHARMA SHIELDS' short story collection Favorite Monster won the 2011 Autumn House Fiction Contest. Sharma’s short fiction has appeared in Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Fugue, and Sonora Review, among other places. She has received numerous awards for her writing, including the Tim McGinnis Award for Humor, a Grant for Artist Projects from Artist Trust and the A.B. Guthrie Award for Outstanding Prose. Sharma lives in Spokane with her husband, son, and newborn daughter.

PAUL LINDHOLDT grew up on Puget Sound but now lives in Spokane. A professor of English at Eastern Washington University, he teaches literature and environmental studies. He has won awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Society of Professional Journalists, and most recently from the Washington Center for the Book for his ecological memoir In Earshot of Water: Notes from the Columbia       Plateau (University of Iowa Press, 2011).