Get Lit! Festival 2025

From Hurricane María's impact in Puerto Rico to the resilience of Pacific Northwest farming communities, to the trauma of displacement and marginalization by urban sprawl, to spiritual reconnection as a Black woman survivor of gender violence, social upheaval and climate change affect us all. Nadia Alexis, Jessica Gigot, Dorsía Smith Silva, and Dorinda Wegener will share their approaches to ecopoetry and read select poems. In their discussion, these four poets will explore their relationships with earth, plants, and animals. They will share how their work intersects with climate change, ecosystem degradation, and population vulnerabilities, and focus on intersectionality with social transformation, pushing writers to see their writing goals as a response to activism and the environment. Don't miss this powerful reading and conversation on ecopoetry! 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 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! 

In this reading and discussion, Ayokunle Falomo, Andrés Cerpa, and Matthew Nienow, three poets from vastly different backgrounds, explore the complications and sharp edges of masculinity’s limits. Notions of fatherhood, struggles with addiction, and yearning for a deeper connection with the self undergird these collections. Conversations around masculinity rarely reflect the complex contours of maleness, the intersecting identities of nation, race, culture, and language of origin. These poets push back against limited notions of masculinity, Americanness, and the very borders of nation and self. Ayokunle is a Nigerian American poet and the author of five poetry collections, including AFRICANAMERICAN’T and Autobiomythography of. Raised in Staten Island, New York, Andrés is the author of poetry collections Bicycle in a Ransacked City: An Elegy and The Vault. The journey from rock bottom to sobriety inspired Matthew’s two poetry collections, House of Water and If Nothing. Following readings from their collections, the poets will be in conversation with EWU MFA poetry candidate Jed Blore. 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 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!

Librarians, teachers, and young readers are searching for stories that address “tough” topics at an age-appropriate level, but how exactly do we handle those topics with care and still leave room for joy? Hear from four award-winning authors who've taken on this age category – Sydney Dunlap, Heather Murphy Capps, Meg Eden Kuyatt, and María José Fitzgerald – whose books cover themes from environmental and social justice to neurodivergence and human trafficking. Sydney Dunlap is a former elementary school teacher turned poet and writer, as well as the author of the multi-award winning debut novel, It Happened on Saturday, and new release, Racing the Clouds. Her books tackle difficult but timely subject matter with hope and heart. Heather Murphy Capps is a former television news reporter and now an educator and author of Indigo and Ida and The Rule of Three. She grounds her stories in history and social justice themes. Meg Eden Kuyatt is the author of award-winning novel in verse, Good Different, and the forthcoming The Girl in the Walls, with themes of identity and self-advocacy from the perspective of a neurodivergent protagonist. María José Fitzgerald is a Honduran storyteller and educator whose debut novel, Turtles of the Midnight Moon, won the 2024 Green Earth Book Award. Join us for this roundtable conversation on the middle grade market and how authors are tackling important and serious topics in ways that are accessible to middle grade readers. 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's the 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!

Don’t miss this opportunity to meet some of the most talented writers from the land Down Under! Join seven dynamic and diverse Australian writers, Ashley Hay, Sulari Gentill, James Bradley, Ann-Marie Te Whiu, Kyra Geddes, Laura Jean McKay, and Melanie Cheng as they discuss their individual journeys to publication and their lives as writers in Australia. Each will read excerpts of their work from a wide range of genres including historical fiction, crime fiction, ecological fiction, and poetry. Ashley and Kyra both write historical fiction novels exploring connections through literature. Melanie and Laura Jean are both authors of novels that explore familial conflict and the companionship of animals. Ann-Marie is a Māori poet and the editor of Woven, a collection of First Nations poetry, and has a forthcoming book of poetry called Mettle. Sulari is the author of a popular mystery series, the Rowland Sinclair mysteries, as well as popular contemporary meta fiction. James writes across many genres, including poetry, nonfiction, journalism, and ecological fiction. Find out what writers halfway around the world are up to in this excellent international conversation!

Purchase the author's books via Auntie's Bookstore! *Books will also be available for purchase at the Book Fair.
If Auntie's was unable to carry some of these International titles, (Anne-Marie's Mettle and Kyra's Story Thief for example) you could pre-order via bookshop.org! 

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

Come hear poetry from published alumni of Eastern’s MFA program in creative writing! Poets Rob Carney, LeAnn Bjerken, Kimberly Lambright, Sunni Wilkinson, and Laura Stott welcome you to their virtual reading and conversation on writing life after the MFA program. Rob Carney is an educator and author of eight books of poetry, including his latest, The Book of Drought. LeAnn Bjerken’s debut collection, Ordinary Omens, pairs mystical vibes with life’s ordinary experiences, examining their ties to both the natural and the supernatural worlds. Kimberly Lambright's recent collection, Doom Glove, is a vivid and surreal exploration of self, cities, and desire. In her newest full-length poetry collection, Rodeo, Sunni Wilkinson writes about child loss, relationships, and learning to love the world again through the landscape and creatures of high desert Utah. Laura Stott’s recent book, The Bear’s Mouth, is a full-length collection of poems exploring grief, loss, and finding comfort in the landscape and the creatures that inhabit it. Don’t miss this chance to see what EWU’s MFA grads are publishing.The conversation is moderated by Get Lit! intern and MFA fiction candidate Emily Ladd! 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's 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!

In an age of increasing environmental challenges and social unrest, the need for conversation arises: How do we parent our children in a world of change and disruption? Authors Jennifer Case, Martha Park, Christina Rivera, Chelsea Steinauer, and Jessica E. Johnson invite you to their panel, Mothering the Future: New Nonfiction on Parenting and Environmental Change, where they will read their work and discuss the intersection between environmental writing and motherhood. Jennifer writes about bodily autonomy, identity, mental health, and other realities that give historical and cultural context to the experience of motherhood in her book, We Are Animals: On the Nature and Politics of Motherhood. Martha’s forthcoming illustrated book, World Without End: Essays on Apocalypse and After, explores the intersections of faith, motherhood, and the climate crisis across the South. Christina is a Pushcart Prize-winning author whose forthcoming book, My Oceans: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women, is a collection of ecofeminist reflections from the confluence of motherhood and marine life. Chelsea’s book, Mother, Creature, Kin, examines, among other things, what it means to be a mother in an era of climate catastrophe in prose that teems with longing, lyricism, and knowledge of ecology. Jessica is the author of Mettlework, a memoir of her upbringing amid the remains of an extractive industry interwoven with her story of motherhood in the modern world. Although each writer approaches these topics from different angles and cultural contexts, they all openly question, interrogate, and meditate on what it means to be a mother in an era of environmental 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 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!