Get Lit! Festival 2025

Join LGBTQ+ poets Subhaga Crystal Bacon and Tennison Black for a reading and conversation celebrating queer writers! You’ll hear selections from Subhaga’s award winning poetry collection, Transitory, documenting transgender people who have fallen victim to violent hate crimes across the US and Puerto Rico. Tennison will read from his recent National Poetry Series winning book, Survival Strategies, a three-part poetry collection that weaves together a story about identity, family, and place. Be sure to come with questions prepared, as the Pride Center’s Alysin Waite will be hosting a live audience Q&A afterward. And, don’t miss the Open-Mic to follow from 12:30-1:30pm! Purchase the author's books via Auntie's Bookstore!

This event is free and open to the public. Thank you to the Pride Center for their partnership!

Please fill out our festival survey after you have attended this event. The information you provide will help us obtain critical grant funding and will help make next year’s festival even better! 

We are so very sorry to announce that Debra is no longer able to make it to the festival! This event is cancelled. Please join us in NIC for events with Li-Young Lee on Friday!

Join us in celebrating festival author Debra Magpie Earling on the campus of one of our community college partners, North Idaho College! Member of the Bitterroot Salish tribe herself, her work is rich with history, rooted in lush tales of Native Americans. From the Flathead Indian reservation setting of her book Perma Red to empowering women in The Lost Journals of Sacajawea, Debra’s books span across reservations and topics surrounding Native American history. Debra will present a reading at noon in the DeArmond Building Lobby, North Idaho College Campus, Coeur d’Alene.

This event is free and open to the public. Thank you to North Idaho College for their partnership!

Please fill out our festival survey after you have attended this event. The information you provide will help us obtain critical grant funding and will help make next year’s festival even better!

In collaboration with EWU’s Pride Center, Get Lit! invites you to share your own work at a special festival open mic at EWU! All are welcome to read (acoustic songwriters are also encouraged to share a song!) but we strongly encourage members of the LGBTQIA+ community to show up and represent! Spots are limited and will be given on a first-come-first-served basis, so be sure to arrive early to secure your spot. Each reader should be prepared to read for 1-5 minutes. If you aren’t interested in reading, come listen!

This event is free and open to the public. Thank you to the EWU Pride Center for their partnership!

Please fill out our festival survey after you have attended this event. The information you provide will help us obtain critical grant funding and will help make next year’s festival even better!

We are thrilled to present one of our most longstanding festival events, our Regional MFA Reading! This event features an exciting lineup of readers from five Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts programs across the Northwest. Each school has sent us one MFA candidate to read their work, and students will be introduced by a creative writing faculty member. We are excited to get to know students and faculty members from these programs—this year we have Trey Hayden from Boise State, Trixie Zwolfer from University of Idaho, Ellison Rose from Oregon State University, Western Colorado University's Rebecca Williams, and of course, Abby Shaffer from our own Eastern Washington University represented. We hope you’ll join us to hear fiction, nonfiction, and poetry readings from our region’s rising talents!

*This event is virtual and will premiere on our YouTube Channel at the time listed above. Here is the direct link!

Please fill out our festival survey after you have attended this event. The information you provide will help us obtain critical grant funding and will help make next year’s festival even better!

Join two experts in the field of environmental science to hear readings from their work along with a conversation exploring modern conservation leaders, activists, and advocates as well as their motivations and methods during this sixth great extinction on Earth. Elizabeth Hilborn and Michelle Nijhuis, journalists working and reporting on different coasts, will also discuss the importance of storytelling in documenting the work of climate and environmental advocates in this volatile time on earth. Elizabeth Hilborn is the author of Restoring Eden: Unearthing the Agribusiness Secret that Poisoned My Farming Community. When she noticed that the bees on her family’s fruit farm were dying off, she began an investigation that would expose the dangers of common agricultural chemicals in her community. Elizabeth writes stories about conserving wildlife to support our food system. Michelle Nijhuis is the author of the 2021 book Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, a history of the modern conservation movement that profiles some of its most complex characters. Michelle is a lapsed biologist who specializes in stories about conservation and global change. Purchase the author's books via Auntie's Bookstore.

This event is virtual and will premiere on our YouTube Channel at the time listed above. Here is the direct link!

Please fill out our festival survey after you have attended this event. The information you provide will help us obtain critical grant funding and will help make next year’s festival even better!

Join us in celebrating the impactful work of EWU's Writers in the Community program (WITC), a non-profit practicum housed within Eastern Washington University’s Master of Fine Arts program that has been active for nearly three decades. During the academic year, MFA students volunteer as creative writing teachers in placements as varied as hospitals, correctional facilities, halfway houses, community non-profits, and public, private, or alternative schools, as well as other locations through the Spokane area. This year’s placements include Odyssey Youth Movement, Recovery Cafe, Corbin Senior Center, Spark Central, and many more including local elementary and high school classrooms. Fiction, nonfiction, and poetry written by community members in these placements is collected throughout the year and published in an annual anthology titled InRoads which celebrates the students’ and community members’ writing and creativity. This event is a celebration of the release of this year’s InRoads. Come hear inspiring readings from our community and learn more about the positive impact WITC is making in Spokane.

This event is free and open to the public. We would like to thank Spark Central for their continued partnership both with the festival and with EWU’s Writers in the Community!

Please fill out our festival survey after you have attended this event. The information you provide will help us obtain critical grant funding and will help make next year’s festival even better!

Join us for a special Open Mic hosted by EWU’s Writers in the Community! This event is a celebration of the many talented local writers in Spokane and the surrounding region—anyone is welcome to participate in this open mic style reading for all genres, including singer-songwriters. Signups are first-come-first-served with limited space, and writers will each have 1-5 minutes to perform. Don’t miss this opportunity to be on a Get Lit! Festival stage at one of our favorite non-profits, Spark Central!

This event is free and open to the public. We would like to thank Spark Central for their continued partnership both with the festival and with EWU’s Writers in the Community! *Please note that the work read at this event may contain adult themes.

Please fill out our festival survey after you have attended this event. The information you provide will help us obtain critical grant funding and will help make next year’s festival even better!

Everyone’s favorite event, Pie & Whiskey, is returning to The Washington Cracker Building! Pie & Whiskey is hosted by Samuel Ligon and Kate Lebo. Sam is the author of three novels—Miller Cane: A True & Exact History, published serially in the Inlander, Among the Dead and Dreaming and Safe in Heaven Dead—and two collections of stories, Wonderland, and Drift and Swerve. Kate is the author of the cookbook Pie School, and a collection of essays, The Book of Difficult Fruit, which won the Washington State Book Award in 2022. Sam and Kate also co-edited the anthology Pie & Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence of Butter and Booze, which will be available for purchase at the event. Pie & Whiskey features 11 authors reading flash fiction, flash nonfiction, and poetry inspired by a deep affinity and abiding appreciation for pie and whiskey. Readers include Karina Agbisit, Lisa Brown, Rufina Garay, Eric Greenwell, Joni Harris, Kate Lebo, Sam Ligon, Megan Dhein, Mery Smith, Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum, Alexandra Teague, and Spencer Young. And yes, you read that correctly—we're thrilled that Spokane’s Mayor Lisa Brown will be participating year! Purchase the author's books via Auntie's Bookstore!

This event is $10 at the door, 21+, no advance tickets. Please come prepared to pay via credit card at the door!

Pies served at the event are baked by Kate Lebo and a crew of volunteers. A limited number of chapbooks containing work from the readers will be on sale for $10. The chapbooks are designed by Lost Horse Press, printed by Gray Dog Press, and hand-stitched by EWU students and alumni. While sales of the chapbook help support the event, donations are also gladly accepted. *Credit cards are very strongly preferred for entry and all sales.

We would like to thank Don Poffenroth and Dry Fly Distilling for generously donating the whiskey. We would also like to thank Gray Dog Press, Lost Horse Press, Culture Breads, West Central Abbey, DOMA Coffee Roasting Company, and Terry and Rebecca Patano. This event would not be possible without their donations of time, space, energy, and funds. Thanks also to Megan Dhein for coordinating.

Please fill out our festival survey after you have attended this event. The information you provide will help us obtain critical grant funding and will help make next year’s festival even better!

If you didn’t get enough whiskey at P&W, Hogwash has you covered! They are hosting a special 21+ after-party for readers and writers to come together for story-centered cocktails and snacks. They will even have two special cocktails available inspired by festival authors! Mocktails will also be available. More information on those special drinks coming soon. Thank you to Hogwash for the collaboration and support!

This event is free and open to the public. We would like to thank Hogwash for their partnership!

Please fill out our festival survey after you have attended this event. The information you provide will help us obtain critical grant funding and will help make next year’s festival even better!