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Thursday, April 10
 

11:00am PDT

Celebrating Pride: A Reading & Conversation
Thursday April 10, 2025 11:00am - 12:00pm PDT
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! 
Authors
avatar for Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them) is the author of four collections of poetry including the Isabella Gardner Award-winning Transitory (2023), from BOA Editions, a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry in 2024, and Surrender of Water in Hidden Places (2023), winner... Read More →
avatar for Tennison S. Black

Tennison S. Black

Queer, transmasc nonbinary writer Tennison S. Black is the author of Survival Strategies (winner of the National Poetry Series, UGA Press 2023) which recently was also awarded the NM-AZ Book Award in Arizona Poetry. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in SWWIM, Hotel Amerika... Read More →
Thursday April 10, 2025 11:00am - 12:00pm PDT
Cheney campus: PUB NCR 926 Elm Street, Cheney, WA, USA

12:00pm PDT

A Reading & Conversation with Debra Magpie Earling
Thursday April 10, 2025 12:00pm - 1:00pm PDT
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!
Authors
avatar for Debra Magpie Earling

Debra Magpie Earling

Debra Magpie Earling is the author of The Lost Journals of Sacajewea and Perma Red. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Montana Book Award. She retired from the University of Montana where she was named professor emeritus in 2021... Read More →
Thursday April 10, 2025 12:00pm - 1:00pm PDT
North Idaho College: DeArmond Building Lobby 901 River Ave, Coeur d'Alene, ID 83814

12:30pm PDT

Celebrating Pride: A Queer Open Mic
Thursday April 10, 2025 12:30pm - 1:30pm PDT
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!
Thursday April 10, 2025 12:30pm - 1:30pm PDT
Cheney campus: PUB NCR 926 Elm Street, Cheney, WA, USA

12:30pm PDT

Regional MFA Reading
Thursday April 10, 2025 12:30pm - 1:30pm PDT
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!
Authors
avatar for Ellison Rose

Ellison Rose

Ellison Rose is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at Oregon State University, where they are currently writing about ethnicity, inheritance, intergenerational trauma, and the words we use to describe ourselves. Their work as both a nonfiction writer and poet will always be heavily... Read More →
avatar for Trey Hayden

Trey Hayden

Trey Hayden is a third-year poetry student in Boise State University’s MFA program. Born and raised in Kentucky, he received a BA in economics from Rhodes College (Memphis) before moving to Idaho. He’s currently working on his thesis, which blends together poems about classical... Read More →
avatar for Abby Shaffer

Abby Shaffer

Abby Shaffer is a MFA student at Eastern Washington University who writes poetry about the intersection between the body and the world; between emplacement and displacement; between illness and folklore. She loves talking with friends, making art, singing, and spending time with... Read More →
avatar for Rebecca E. Williams

Rebecca E. Williams

Rebecca E. Williams is a current MFA student in Western Colorado University's Nature Writing Program. She works in paint, poetry, lyrical prose, and occasionally a little new journalism. Her focus is on ecopoetics and especially the necropastoral as a lens to view the connections... Read More →
avatar for Trixie Zwolfer

Trixie Zwolfer

Trixie Zwolfer is a third-year fiction student at the University of Idaho. Her stories frequently draw from fairy tale tradition, centering around strange forests, bodily transformation, and creatures with sharp teeth. Her work has appeared in Stoneboat Literary Review and Corvid... Read More →
Thursday April 10, 2025 12:30pm - 1:30pm PDT
YouTube

3:00pm PDT

In Defense of Animals: Conservation as a Life's Work
Thursday April 10, 2025 3:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
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!
Authors
avatar for Elizabeth Hilborn

Elizabeth Hilborn

Elizabeth Hilborn is the award-winning author of Restoring Eden: Unearthing the Agribusiness Secret that Poisoned My Farming Community. When Hilborn noticed that pollinators on her family’s fruit farm were disappearing, she began an investigation that ultimately exposed the dangers... Read More →
avatar for Michelle Nijhuis

Michelle Nijhuis

Michelle Nijhuis is the author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, a history of the modern conservation movement. A longtime contributing editor of High Country News and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, her writing about science and the environment has also appeared in National Geographic, the Atlantic, and the New York Ti... Read More →
Thursday April 10, 2025 3:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
YouTube

5:30pm PDT

Writers in the Community: InRoads Release Party
Thursday April 10, 2025 5:30pm - 6:30pm PDT
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!
Thursday April 10, 2025 5:30pm - 6:30pm PDT
Spark Central 1214 W Summit Pkwy, Spokane, WA 99201, USA

7:00pm PDT

Spark After Dark: A Community Open Mic
Thursday April 10, 2025 7:00pm - 8:00pm PDT
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!
Thursday April 10, 2025 7:00pm - 8:00pm PDT
Spark Central 1214 W Summit Pkwy, Spokane, WA 99201, USA

8:00pm PDT

Pie & Whiskey
Thursday April 10, 2025 8:00pm - 10:00pm PDT
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!
Authors
avatar for Megan Dhein

Megan Dhein

Megan Dhein works for a marketing company in Spokane while regularly freelancing for the Spokesman-Review. She was the former editor-in-chief of Spokane Coeur d’Alene Living magazine, and the former managing editor of Willow Springs Magazine. Her fiction and nonfiction has been... Read More →
avatar for Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum is the author of the novel Elita (published by TriQuarterly Press/Northwestern University Press in January, 2025) and the story collection Outer Stars, which won the 2025 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction (UNT Press) and will be published in the... Read More →
avatar for Rufina Garay

Rufina Garay

Rufina Garay is a poet, food writer, painter, pie lover, culinary artist, and practitioner of Taoist meditative arts, in which poetry is a healing practice. Her current projects include a chapbook on the Uvalde mass shooting, a poetry workbook-DIY guide through rage as a form of... Read More →
avatar for Karina Agbisit

Karina Agbisit

Karina L. Agbisit is a Latina writer and publishing professional based in the Pacific Northwest. Her writing has been published by Cleis Press, The Vanguard, Haunted Waters Press, Oregon Humanities, and Woodhall Press. Professionally, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing, MA in Book... Read More →
avatar for Eric Greenwell

Eric Greenwell

E. A. Greenwell is a writer, connectivity specialist for the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, and Program Manager of Writing for the Centrum Foundation. His writing has appeared in Boston Review, Poet Lore, Iron Horse Literary Review, and Terrain.org among other magazines... Read More →
avatar for Joni Harris

Joni Harris

Joni Harris lives in Spokane, WA and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University. She has been a finalist for the Montana Prize for Fiction and she is a commissioner for the Spokane Transportation Committee.
avatar for Mery Smith

Mery Smith

Mery Smith is a Spokane poet and story holder. Her work is meant to celebrate the experiences and truths of our every day lives. Her work is featured online at MeryNoel.com and she's in printed anthologies Listen To Your Morther, Pivot and Pause poems on Resilience and other paper... Read More →
avatar for Alexandra Teague

Alexandra Teague

Alexandra Teague is most recently the author of [ominous music intensifying] (Persea 2024) and Spinning Tea Cups: A Mythical American Memoir (Oregon State University Press 2023). She is previously the author of three books of poetry and a novel, as well as co-editor of Bullets into... Read More →
avatar for Spencer Young

Spencer Young

Spencer Robert Young (they/them) is a poet, essayist, and editor. They write about embodiment, punk music, queerness, climate change, and good books. Spencer holds an MA in Creative Writing and Literature from Kansas State University. They currently live in Moscow, Idaho, where they... Read More →
avatar for Lisa Brown

Lisa Brown

Lisa Brown came to Spokane in her twenties, having grown up in rural Illinois, studied at the University of Illinois, and attained a Ph.D in economics at the University of Colorado. She taught at Eastern and Gonzaga, and served in the state legislature for 20 years, including as Senate... Read More →
avatar for Kate Lebo

Kate Lebo

Kate Lebo's first collection of nonfiction, The Book of Difficult Fruit (FSG), won the 2022 Washington State Book Award and was named a best book of the year by NPR, The Atlantic, New York magazine, Electric Literature, and The Globe and Mail. She is the author of the cookbook Pie... Read More →
avatar for Samuel Ligon

Samuel Ligon

Samuel Ligon recently published a serial novel—Miller Cane: A True & Exact History—which appeared in 50 installments in Spokane’s weekly newspaper, The Inlander, as well as online, on Spokane Public Radio, and as a podcast. Ligon is the author of four previous books of fiction... Read More →
Thursday April 10, 2025 8:00pm - 10:00pm PDT
Washington Cracker Building 304 W Pacific Ave STE 310, Spokane, WA 99201, USA

10:00pm PDT

Pie & Whiskey After Party
Thursday April 10, 2025 10:00pm - 11:00pm PDT
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!
Thursday April 10, 2025 10:00pm - 11:00pm PDT
Hogwash Whiskey Den 304 W Pacific Ave, Spokane, WA 99201, USA
 
Friday, April 11
 

TBA

Private Author's Reception
Friday April 11, 2025 TBA
This is a private invite-only gathering for our authors to mix and mingle and enjoy light refreshments. We want to thank Gander & Ryegrass for hosting us and encourage you to check them out another day. You can also consider them for your own private event needs as detailed below!

If you're looking to celebrate a special occasion with family and friends, throw a gala, or host an unforgettable event, Gander and Ryegrass can accommodate! Whether you want to reserve their private dining room in the historic Liberty Building, (home of Auntie's Bookstore!) or prefer they come to you with their mobile catering kitchen, Gander and Ryegrass offers a number of event options to meet your needs. Their menu offerings, while based in Italian cuisine and technique, are also flexible; if you have a vision for hosting your own event, please don't hesitate to inquire!

*Festival authors please note that we are unable to accommodate plus ones for this reception.
Friday April 11, 2025 TBA
Gander and Ryegrass 404 W Main Ave, Spokane, WA 99201, USA

10:30am PDT

Nonfiction Craft Class with Maggie Smith
Friday April 11, 2025 10:30am - 12:30pm PDT
Memory as Material with Maggie Smith

In this generative nonfiction class, we’ll work on creating art from life, using our memories as material. How do we get to the heart of a lived experience on the page? How can we feel comfortable and confident sharing our personal lives with a public audience? What craft elements can we lean on? If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, this workshop is for you. We’ll discuss short pieces of creative nonfiction, and we’ll use those models as inspiration as we begin our own pieces. Don't miss this amazing chance to hone your craft with Maggie Smith! Purchase Maggie's books via Auntie's Bookstore!

*This event is ticketed ($35+fees). Tickets are on sale via this link! Please note that the link will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

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!
Authors
avatar for Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith is the author of seven award-winning books: Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Lamp of the Body, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, and Good Bones, named by the Washington Post as one of the Five Best... Read More →
Friday April 11, 2025 10:30am - 12:30pm PDT
Spokane Central Library: Events A 906 West Main Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

11:00am PDT

Divine Voices: A Conversation with Li-Young Lee
Friday April 11, 2025 11:00am - 12:00pm PDT
Join us in beautiful Coeur d'Alene, Idaho for a conversation with poet Li-Young Lee around the themes of faith and spirituality in his work, moderated by Dr. Erin Davis, Professor of English at North Idaho College, and Jennifer Passaro, Poet Laureate of Coeur d’Alene. Purchase Li-Young's books via Auntie's Bookstore!

This event is free and open to the public.
We would like to thank North Idaho College's English Department 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!
Authors
avatar for Erin Davis

Erin Davis

Erin Davis lives, writes, and takes naps near the Little Spokane River and teaches writing and literature at North Idaho College, where she serves as division chair for English and Humanities. She earned her M.A. in English from California State University, Long Beach, and her Ph.D... Read More →
avatar for Jennifer Passaro

Jennifer Passaro

Jennifer Passaro is Coeur d'Alene's inaugural poet laureate. Born in Idaho’s Wood River Valley, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Montana in 2011, with an emphasis in creative writing, particularly poetry and fiction from the western United States... Read More →
avatar for Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee is the author of six critically acclaimed books of poetry, most recently The Invention of the Darling (W. W. Norton, 2024), The Undressing (W.W Norton, 2018), Behind My Eyes (W.W. Norton, 2008), and a chapbook The Word From His Song (BOA Editions, 2016). His earlier collections... Read More →
Friday April 11, 2025 11:00am - 12:00pm PDT
Coeur d'Alene Public Library: The Community Room 702 E Front Ave, Coeur d'Alene, ID 83814

11:00am PDT

Record Your Own Poetry Moment with Spokane Public Radio
Friday April 11, 2025 11:00am - 12:00pm PDT
Have you ever dreamed of being on the radio? Do you crave an audience for your poetry, or do you have a favorite poem that you wish the whole world had read? Look no further, because we are thrilled to announce our partnership with Spokane Public Radio’s Poetry Moment! You may have heard SPR’s Poetry Moment on KPBX, which airs every weekday at 9am and provides an outlet for the creatives of Spokane, and a daily dose of poetry for all listeners. We’re offering all festivalgoers a chance to record their own Poetry Moment in the Central Library’s podcasting studio! Poetry Moment readers will be welcome to share a poem by their favorite poet, or read their own work. Readers will be chosen on a first-come-first-served basis, so we encourage you to show up early to form a line. Please make sure to read the guidelines here before you arrive. Don’t miss the chance to share a Poetry Moment on the airwaves!

For an example, please check out EWU alum Heather Paul-Tillery reading a poem by EWU alum Sarah Kersey.

This event is free and first come, first served. Thank you to Spokane Public Radio and the Spokane Public Library 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!

Friday April 11, 2025 11:00am - 12:00pm PDT
Spokane Central Library: Podcasting Studio 906 West Main Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

12:00pm PDT

The Art and Craft of Writing Mysteries
Friday April 11, 2025 12:00pm - 1:00pm PDT
Are you a mystery author? Do you have questions about how to write compelling crime fiction? Do detective stories keep you turning pages long after dark? After romance, mystery/crime is the second most popular genre in the book industry. Local authors Elena Hartwell Taylor and Chris Bieker are here to discuss the art and craft of writing mysteries, sustaining a series, and helping you write your best book! Having attended conferences and festivals around the US, including ThrillerFest, Bouchercon, PNWA, and the Decatur Book Festival, these authors are excited to share their knowledge with Spokane readers and writers of crime fiction. Purchase the author's books via Auntie's Bookstore!

This event is free and open to the public. Space is limited, please arrive early to secure your spot! We would like to thank the Spokane Public Library 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!
Authors
avatar for Chris Bieker

Chris Bieker

Chris Bieker is the author of the Rex Begonia Mystery Series - Murder At Manito, Blood on Bloomsday, and High Stakes at Hoopfest. A former editor of the Wilderness Institute newsletter, Bieker worked in natural resources and communications for the U.S. Department of Agriculture before... Read More →
avatar for Elena Hartwell Taylor

Elena Hartwell Taylor

Elena Hartwell Taylor is the bestselling author of the Eddie Shoes Mysteries (under Hartwell) and the Sheriff Bet Rivers Mysteries (under Taylor). She also writes short stories and works as a developmental editor with Allegory Editing. When she's not reading and writing crime fiction... Read More →
Friday April 11, 2025 12:00pm - 1:00pm PDT
Spokane Central Library, Conference Room B 906 West Main Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

12:00pm PDT

Other Correspondences: SAP & Get Lit!
Friday April 11, 2025 12:00pm - 8:00pm PDT
For the second year in a row, we are thrilled to partner with Saranac Art Projects, Spokane’s contemporary artist collective and gallery, to present a special exhibition of visual art created by Spokane artists, inspired by our festival authors. A group of Saranac's artists were given a list of all of our 2025 festival authors and they each chose a writer who inspired them to create a visual art piece. The artists worked throughout the winter on the pieces that will be presented at this exhibition. The gallery is open 12-8 and we encourage attendees to drop by anytime! Special thanks to SAP for collaborating with us on this project!

Here are this year's participating artists and the festival authors they were inspired by:

Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton: Li-Young Lee
Roger Ralston: Tara Campbell
Tobe Harvey: Subhaga Crystal Bacon
Josh Hobson: Juan Carlos Reyes
Mariah Boyle: TBD
Lenora Lopez Schindler: TBD

Note that we have extended a special optional invitation to our festival authors to join us at the gallery from 5:30-7pm as an extension of the private Author's Reception so that authors can continue to gather in community, and attendees can have a chance to meet their favorite authors! Note that refreshments will not be served at the gallery, but it's steps away from both Saranac Public House and Saranac Commons. We encourage our attendees to use this time to gather in solidarity with other artists and community members.

*This event is free and open to the public. Thank you to Saranac Art Projects for your 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!
Friday April 11, 2025 12:00pm - 8:00pm PDT
Saranac Art Projects 25 W Main Ave, Spokane, WA 99201, USA

1:30pm PDT

Poetry Craft Class with Danez Smith
Friday April 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:00pm PDT
Personal Machines: Invented Form with Danez Smith

Poets often reach towards specific forms in order to propel or control a poem, they also might be reaching for a bit of challenge or exploration, but what if we go beyond sonnets or sestinas and instead choose an experiment of our own design? For myself, while I have found that while free verse poetry has always been a succulent wilderness to venture into in search of a poem, the constraints and encouragements of form – particularly those of my own design – have allowed for reverberations between myself and the work that would not have been found unless constructed the limits of invented form. In this workshop, we will explore wonders found in recently invented forms like the bop, the burning haibun, and the Molotov sonnet before turning our attention to forms we will pattern ourselves. This workshop is for those looking to push the limits on their work as well as those looking to take the brakes off completely. In times of great violence and hope, can we break from the received forms of the times and become fugitives into new shapes and possibilities? In this workshop, we will trouble those answers together. Don't miss this amazing chance to study the craft of poetry with Danez Smith! Purchase Danez's books via Auntie's Bookstore. 

*This event is ticketed ($35+fees). Tickets are on sale via this link!
Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration. 

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!
Authors
avatar for Danez Smith

Danez Smith

Danez Smith is the author of four collections including Don’t Call Us Dead, Homie, and, most recently, Bluff. They are also the curator of Blues In Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes. For their work, Danez has won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book... Read More →
Friday April 11, 2025 1:30pm - 3:00pm PDT
Spokane Central Library: Events A 906 West Main Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

2:00pm PDT

Dynamic Identities in YA Fiction: The Self, the Character, the Collective, and More
Friday April 11, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
Young Adult fiction is a relatively new genre but in the past two decades has exploded in popularity. Whether fantasy, sci-fi, or contemporary, the genre is ripe for reflection for adolescent readers as they explore their identities in the context of contemporary issues like authenticity, privilege, and intersectionality. Join YA authors Rie Lee and Jennifer Yu in a conversation about writing themes of identity in books intended for teen readers. Rie Lee’s recent debut, Vessel, is a dystopian novel centered around a girl wrestling with her forbidden sexuality as the poster child for her religious cult, and Jennifer Yu’s latest novel Grief in the Fourth Dimension explores how identity, family, and community affect the ways our lives (and deaths) are remembered. The authors will discuss how speculative worlds can be used to balance accessibility, storytelling, and realistic characterization while exploring ever-shifting and nuanced senses of identity. This conversation will be moderated by festival intern and EWU MFA fiction candidate Emily Ladd. Purchase the author's books via Auntie's Bookstore!

This event is free and open to the public. Space is limited, please arrive early to secure a spot! Thank you to the Spokane Public Library 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!
Authors
avatar for Emily Ladd

Emily Ladd

Emily Ladd is a writer with a short attention span. At any given time, they may be working on several different novels, a few short stories, and three cups of coffee all at once. Emily received their bachelor's degree in art and communication and celebrated by immediately jumping... Read More →
avatar for Jennifer Yu

Jennifer Yu

Jennifer Yu is a young adult novelist currently living in Moscow, ID, where she writes and teaches English at the University of Idaho. When not writing or teaching, you can find her weeping intermittently about the Boston Celtics, photos of the Earth from outer space, and the etymology... Read More →
avatar for Rie Lee

Rie Lee

RIE LEE (she/her/hers) is a recovering true believer. She's a little too obsessed with cults and almost definitely on some kind of FBI watchlist for researching pipe bombs.  She is an alum of the MFA at EWU and is currently pursuing an MLIS focusing on user experience and the intersection... Read More →
Friday April 11, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
Spokane Central Library, Conference Room B 906 West Main Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

3:00pm PDT

The West as a Character: Using Research to Build Authentic Narratives
Friday April 11, 2025 3:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
Join us for an intimate reading and conversation held in the Central Library’s Inland Northwest Special Collections Room featuring two writers whose work is rooted in the history and landscape of the West. CMarie Fuhrman and Betsy Gaines Quammen will both read their work and engage in conversation with Sharma Shields and festival attendees about how research and history have impacted their writing over many books and projects spanning both poetry and prose. Library staff will help pull special artifacts like photographs, maps, and other materials that scrutinize and complicate our region and may connect directly to CMarie and Betsy’s work. Hear about the fascinating process of incorporating research into your creative work and learn how the library can help! Purchase the author's books via Auntie's Bookstore!

This event is free and open to the public. Please note that capacity is limited, and attendees are encouraged to arrive early to secure a seat. Also, no food or drink is allowed in the Special Collections Room for the purpose of preserving artifacts. We would like to thank Spokane Public Library 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! 
Authors
avatar for Betsy Gaines Quammen

Betsy Gaines Quammen

Betsy Gaines Quammen is a historian and writer. She received a PhD from Montana State University where she studied religion, history and the philosophy of science. Her dissertation focused on Mormon history and the roots of armed public land conflicts occurring in the United States... Read More →
avatar for CMarie Fuhrman

CMarie Fuhrman

CMarie Fuhrman is the author of the forthcoming essay collection Salmon Weather: Writing from the Land of No Return, Camped Beneath the Dam: Poems, and the co-editor of Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, and Poetry and Native Voices: Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations... Read More →
Friday April 11, 2025 3:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
Spokane Central Library: Inland Northwest Special Collections Room 906 West Main Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

3:30pm PDT

Fiction Craft Class with Debra Magpie Earling
Friday April 11, 2025 3:30pm - 5:30pm PDT
When I am Stuck: A Fiction Class

When I am wrestling with a story that has nagged me for years, or a new story that seems dull or lifeless and needs a boost, I begin a list of things, curious things I know or have read about, and without fail I spark a lively narrative. In this class we will share a list of topics that will invigorate your writing. Come prepared to write, to dream, to read aloud, and to find new pathways to enliven your stories. Come prepared to have fun! - Debra Magpie Earling

"How infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way . . . so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever. All sorrows can be borne if you can put them into a story.” Isak Dinesen

Purchase Debra's books via Auntie's Bookstore! 

*This event is ticketed ($35+fees). Tickets are on sale via this link! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration. 

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!
Authors
avatar for Debra Magpie Earling

Debra Magpie Earling

Debra Magpie Earling is the author of The Lost Journals of Sacajewea and Perma Red. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Montana Book Award. She retired from the University of Montana where she was named professor emeritus in 2021... Read More →
Friday April 11, 2025 3:30pm - 5:30pm PDT
Spokane Central Library: Events B 906 West Main Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

3:30pm PDT

Poetry Craft Class with Li-Young Lee
Friday April 11, 2025 3:30pm - 5:30pm PDT
Join renowned poet Li-Young Lee for an intimate conversation on craft. Please come with questions about his work, your own work, and the questions we all face about how and why we write — and read — poetry today. This will be less formal than a traditional craft class, and there will be time for freewriting on different prompts as topics come up in the conversation. Don't miss this unique opportunity to talk with and write with the legendary poet Li-Young Lee! Purchase Li-Young's books via Auntie's Bookstore.

*This event is ticketed ($35+fees). Tickets are on sale via this link! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration. 

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!
Authors
avatar for Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee is the author of six critically acclaimed books of poetry, most recently The Invention of the Darling (W. W. Norton, 2024), The Undressing (W.W Norton, 2018), Behind My Eyes (W.W. Norton, 2008), and a chapbook The Word From His Song (BOA Editions, 2016). His earlier collections... Read More →
Friday April 11, 2025 3:30pm - 5:30pm PDT
Spokane Central Library: Events A 906 West Main Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

5:30pm PDT

Creatives Social
Friday April 11, 2025 5:30pm - 7:00pm PDT
We are extending a special optional invitation to festival authors and community members to gather together at the Saranac Art Gallery from 5:30-7pm for a Creatives Social.

This serves as an informal extension of the private Author's Reception so that authors can continue to connect and attendees can have a chance to meet their favorite authors! Note that refreshments will not be served at the gallery, but it's steps away from both Saranac Public House and Saranac Commons. We encourage our attendees to use this time to gather in solidarity with other creative community members!

*This event is free and open to the public. Thank you to Saranac Art Projects for your partnership!
Friday April 11, 2025 5:30pm - 7:00pm PDT
Saranac Art Projects 25 W Main Ave, Spokane, WA 99201, USA

7:00pm PDT

An Evening with Jonathan Johnson & Li-Young Lee
Friday April 11, 2025 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
We are pleased to present an evening of poetry and conversation between poets Jonathan Johnson and Li-Young Lee. This event is a thrilling pairing for our community as it puts beloved Inland Northwest poet and professor Jonathan Johnson on stage with Li-Young Lee, a prominent contributor to the contemporary canon and poetry legend! Jonathan and Li-Young’s work share many similar concerns and themes including fatherhood, family heritage, and overcoming the adversities of grief. Jonathan Johnson is the author of seven books, two of which—Pine, a collection of poetry, and The Little Lights of Town, a short-story collection—are forthcoming in 2025. Li-Young Lee is the author of six critically acclaimed books of poetry, most recently The Invention of the Darling. Both poets will read from their collections and will engage in a conversation moderated by Jonathan Frey who is an EWU MFA alum and professor of English at North Idaho College. Don’t miss what we are sure will be an incredible evening celebrating the power of poetry! Purchase the author's books via Auntie's Bookstore!

Thank you to the Spokane Public Library!

*This event is ticketed ($25+fees). Tickets are on sale via this link! Please note that the link will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration. 

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!
Authors
avatar for Jonathan Frey

Jonathan Frey

Jonathan Frey is associate professor of English at North Idaho College, where he teaches creative writing, composition, and advises the student-run literary magazine, Trestle Creek Review. He writes weirdo Bible fan fic, which has appeared recently in Psaltery & Lyre and been nominated... Read More →
avatar for Jonathan Johnson

Jonathan Johnson

Jonathan Johnson’s poems and stories have been published widely in magazines and anthologies, appeared in Best American Poetry, and been heard on NPR. His sixth and seventh books—Pine (poems) and The Little Lights of Town (stories)—are forthcoming in 2025, both from Carnegie... Read More →
avatar for Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee is the author of six critically acclaimed books of poetry, most recently The Invention of the Darling (W. W. Norton, 2024), The Undressing (W.W Norton, 2018), Behind My Eyes (W.W. Norton, 2008), and a chapbook The Word From His Song (BOA Editions, 2016). His earlier collections... Read More →
Friday April 11, 2025 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Spokane Central Library: nxʷyxʷyetkʷ Hall 906 West Main Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA
 
Saturday, April 12
 

9:00am PDT

Book Fair
Saturday April 12, 2025 9:00am - 5:00pm PDT
Join us for our annual Book Fair at the Montvale Event Center, which includes access to 12+ festival events featuring dozens of authors including Maggie Smith, Danez Smith, Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum, Tara Campbell, Rena Priest, and many others! Events include readings, panel discussions, reading and writing sessions, an open mic, and so much more! The Book Fair will host 20+ local and regional booksellers, small presses, non-profits, and other bookish organizations. DOMA Coffee Roasting Company will be serving FREE coffee from 9am-12pm. This pass covers the full day of events and Book Fair and allows you to come and go as you please!

Here's who you'll find at this year's Book Fair!

Girl Noise Press, Talking River Review, Makeout Creek Books, Melanie Hewitt AKA LibroBuch, Washington Center for the Book, Books to Prisoners, Latah Books, Willow Springs Magazine, Willow Springs Books, Rock & Sling, Spokane Print and Publishing Center, Lost Horse Press, Lynx House Press, Western Colorado University, Fugue, Spark Central, Spokane Arts, SpokAnimal, Page 42 Bookstore, Spokane Public Radio, Jupiter’s Eye Book Cafe, Foray for the Arts, Gray Dog Press, and Wishing Tree Books. 

Check out this map for some lunch options in walking distance!

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. 

Tickets will be on sale via this link on Monday, March 3rd! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

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!  
Saturday April 12, 2025 9:00am - 5:00pm PDT
Montvale Event Center: Montvale Hall 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

9:30am PDT

Conversations Over Coffee
Saturday April 12, 2025 9:30am - 10:30am PDT
Are you a novelist looking for a critique group? A poet looking for other poets to share prompts and inspiration? Are you a reader and want to talk about the books you can't get out of your head? Join us for our fourth-annual Conversations Over Coffee! This event (inspired by an Unconference format) offers participant-driven conversations that cover a range of topics--essentially anything you’d like to talk with others about! Bring your expertise and your hopes to connect on any question or topic, and we'll create in-the-moment groups so people can talk about their interests with others. This is a great space to form lasting connections with other readers and writers in town!

Must Read Fiction began because reader and writer Erin Popelka believes that her life is better when she’s got a novel in hand. In 2017, she started Must Read Fiction, a social media community to meet other readers who feel the same way. The result: a vibrant place for readers to connect to their next great read, hear the story behind the story with author interviews, and receive free books!

*DOMA will be providing free coffee in the Book Fair from 9-12pm. Make sure to arrive early to make time to grab a free coffee before heading to the second floor!

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. 

Tickets will be on sale via this link on Monday, March 3rd! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

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!  
Authors
avatar for Erin Popelka

Erin Popelka

Erin Popelka is a reader, writer, and the founder of Must Read Fiction. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Puerto del Sol, The Los Angeles Review, and Berkeley Fiction Review, among others. As founder of Must Read Fiction, she facilitates an online... Read More →
Saturday April 12, 2025 9:30am - 10:30am PDT
Montvale Event Center: Second Floor Lounge 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

10:30am PDT

Writing the Unspeakable: Excavating Silence In Narrative
Saturday April 12, 2025 10:30am - 11:30am PDT
Writing requires the writer to locate a narrative voice and plumb its depths, pursuing the story it has to tell. But what about pursuing the silences, portraying the voiceless, and revealing the unspeakable? Four writers of differing genres will discuss their experiences of finding meaning in silence. Hear from Pacific Northwest authors Margot Kahn, Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum, Molly Olguín and Kristen Millares Young, whose poems, essays, and short fiction have been published in magazines such as the New England Review, The Sun, and The Guardian. They have also individually won several literary awards like the AWP Intro Awards Prize, PEN/O. Henry Prize, and the Nautilus award. These writers, through their variety of experience as well as publications, share practical strategies for structure and technique while also revealing their intuitive work to uncover the mysteries held in the silent spaces. Understanding the complexities of writing silence is essential to authentically telling the stories of the marginalized, recounting the way power uses silence to extract more power, and–perhaps counterintuitively—finding the divine. Purchase the author's books via Auntie's Bookstore!

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. 

Tickets are on sale via this link! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

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!  
Authors
avatar for Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum is the author of the novel Elita (published by TriQuarterly Press/Northwestern University Press in January, 2025) and the story collection Outer Stars, which won the 2025 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction (UNT Press) and will be published in the... Read More →
avatar for Kristen Millares Young

Kristen Millares Young

Kristen Millares Young is a book critic, essayist, and author of the novel Subduction, named a staff pick by The Paris Review. Winner of Nautilus and IPPY awards, Subduction was a finalist for two International Latino Book Awards and Foreword Indies Book of the Year. Her work appears... Read More →
avatar for Margot Kahn

Margot Kahn

Margot Kahn is the author of Horses That Buck (University of Oklahoma, 2008), winner of the High Plains Book Award; A Quiet Day with the West on Fire (Floating Bridge, 2021); and The Unreliable Tree (Northwestern University, 2025). Her poems, essays, and reviews appear in New England... Read More →
avatar for Molly Olguín

Molly Olguín

Molly Olguín is a queer writer, educator, and monster aficionado. Her forthcoming collection The Sea Gives Up The Dead was chosen by Carmen Maria Machado for the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction. She has stories in magazines like Quarterly West and The Normal School. She was the... Read More →
Saturday April 12, 2025 10:30am - 11:30am PDT
Montvale Event Center: Ella's Theater 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

11:00am PDT

Silent Reading Party
Saturday April 12, 2025 11:00am - 12:00pm PDT
In the mood to be around other people but not interact? Do you need a few minutes in the middle of the festival to take a few quiet moments to regroup? Join our silent reading party with host Kathie McAuliffe to sit together and enjoy some quiet book time! If this appeals to you, you’re in luck - there are two Silent Book Club Chapters in Spokane right now. Join us and get more information for future parties!

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. 

Tickets will be on sale via this link on Monday, March 3rd! Please note that the link will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration. 

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!
Saturday April 12, 2025 11:00am - 12:00pm PDT
Montvale Event Center: Second Floor Lounge 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

11:30am PDT

Imagining the End: Writing Fictional Apocalypses
Saturday April 12, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm PDT
From zombie invasions to nuclear wars, the end of the world has been envisioned again and again in any number of terrific and unsettling ways. How can authors keep the genre fresh and entertaining for an ever-wider audience? Join authors Tara Campbell and Laura Jean McKay as they discuss their processes in crafting fictional apocalypses that feel relevant and insightful to readers in a post-pandemic world. Tara Campbell writes crossover sci-fi, speculative fiction off the warp-drive path; her themes are not about technology and machines, but what happens when an ordinary person (or creature) faces extraordinary circumstances. Laura Jean McKay’s writing blurs the line between humans and animals in humorous and transcendent ways; her work shows a keen mastery of prose and a remarkable awareness of our relationship with the natural world. Join these two speculative fiction writers in a reading and discussion of craft, process, and genre! Purchase the author's books via Auntie's Bookstore.

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. 

Tickets are on sale via this link! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

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!  
Authors
avatar for Laura Jean McKay

Laura Jean McKay

Laura Jean McKay is the author of The Animals in That Country (Scribe 2020) - winner of the prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award, The Victorian Prize for Literature, the ABIA Small Publishers Adult Book of the Year and co-winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2021... Read More →
avatar for Tara Campbell

Tara Campbell

Tara Campbell is an award-winning writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse, and graduate of American University's MFA in Creative Writing. Publication credits include Masters Review, Wigleaf, Electric Literature, CRAFT Literary, Uncharted Magazine, Daily... Read More →
Saturday April 12, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm PDT
Montvale Event Center: Third Floor Ballroom 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

12:00pm PDT

ReWriting the West: Dispatches From a New Frontier
Saturday April 12, 2025 12:00pm - 1:00pm PDT
Authors and journalists Tiffany Midge, Rena Priest, and Betsy Gaines Quammen gather to discuss writing about and to the Western United States. These writers often find themselves retelling, revising, and rewriting recurring narratives about who they are and what it means to live, work, and write in the West where they report on the animals, places, and issues we all care about. Tiffany Midge is a poet and journalist whose work blurs the line between genres and explores identity in the PNW with a sense of humor. Rena Priest’s work spans nonfiction and poetry and celebrates the natural beauty, history, and cultures of the West. Betsy Gaines Quammen is a historian and writer who collects stories to make sense of a place defined by colonization, extraction, rebellion, myth, beauty, and land. Don't miss this reading and conversation on rewriting the West!

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. 

Tickets will be on sale via this link on Monday, March 3rd! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

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!
Authors
avatar for Tiffany Midge

Tiffany Midge

Tiffany Midge is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and was raised by wolves in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Brooklyn Rail, Real Simple, First American Art Magazine, World Literature Today, McSweeney’s, and more. Midge’s poetry collections... Read More →
avatar for Rena Priest

Rena Priest

Rena Priest is a writer and enrolled member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation. Priest’s writing draws on history, science, and culture to tell stories and ask questions. Priest served as the 6th Washington State Poet Laureate (2021-2023) and was named the 2022 Maxine Cushing Gray... Read More →
avatar for Betsy Gaines Quammen

Betsy Gaines Quammen

Betsy Gaines Quammen is a historian and writer. She received a PhD from Montana State University where she studied religion, history and the philosophy of science. Her dissertation focused on Mormon history and the roots of armed public land conflicts occurring in the United States... Read More →
Saturday April 12, 2025 12:00pm - 1:00pm PDT
Montvale Event Center: Ella's Theater 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

12:00pm PDT

Decompress with Pets
Saturday April 12, 2025 12:00pm - 3:30pm PDT
We are thrilled to be partnering with our favorite local non-profit animal shelter SpokAnimal to bring a space to the festival where folks can spend some quality time with adoptable animals! SpokAnimal will be bringing cats and kittens into the third floor lounge for a few quiet hours of decompression during the busy festival day. Research shows that petting our animal friends can lower cortisol and increase oxytocin and other happy hormones! Make sure to stop by to lower your heart rate and learn more about the important work SpokAnimal is doing in our community. SpokAnimal will also be hosting our special open mic in the second floor lounge featuring Jessica E. Johnson following this event.

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. 

Tickets will be on sale via this link on Monday, March 3rd! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

 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! 
Saturday April 12, 2025 12:00pm - 3:30pm PDT
Montvale Event Center: Third Floor Lounge 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

12:30pm PDT

Drop In and Write with Spark Central
Saturday April 12, 2025 12:30pm - 1:30pm PDT
Aspiring writers unite! You're invited to be a part of Spark Central’s supportive writers' community. If you found yourself struck by inspiration during a festival event, desperately jotting down notes for your own work, look no further than this uninterrupted hour of focused writing time! You are also encouraged to bring works in progress to share, or get inspired with creative prompts. Hosted by local writer and Spark central volunteer, Jenny Davis.

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. 

Tickets will be on sale via this link on Monday, March 3rd! Please note that the link will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

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!  
Authors
avatar for Jenny Davis

Jenny Davis

Jenny Davis is an essayist who teaches journalism at Gonzaga University. Jenny's work has appeared in literary magazines including Creative Nonfiction and Gettysburg Review; she has also served as the managing editor at Guernica, a journal of politics and art. She received her... Read More →
Saturday April 12, 2025 12:30pm - 1:30pm PDT
Montvale Event Center: Second Floor Lounge 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

1:00pm PDT

Rural American Writing with Willow Springs Books
Saturday April 12, 2025 1:00pm - 2:00pm PDT
Join us in celebrating the release of Dan Morris' Tree, Moss Fungus, and Fern, published by Willow Springs Books. This event will be a reading and discussion of writing in the Northwest, featuring Dan Morris, John Keeble, and Jonathan Johnson, in celebration of Willow Springs Books' John Keeble Series in Rural American Writing. Tree, Moss Fungus, and Fern is the second publication in this series.

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. 

Tickets will be on sale via this link on Monday, March 3rd! Please note that the link will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

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!  
Saturday April 12, 2025 1:00pm - 2:00pm PDT
Montvale Event Center: Third Floor Ballroom 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

1:30pm PDT

Dear Writer: Creativity in Community
Saturday April 12, 2025 1:30pm - 2:30pm PDT
Writing can sometimes feel like a lonely art: the solitary act of creation between the writer and the page. But that doesn’t have to be the case. While academia often offers writers an opportunity to share and shape one another’s work, there can be many avenues for finding a creative community exchanging process methods, and sharing avenues for inspiration. Join authors Maggie Smith, Molly Olguin, Tara Campbell, Jennifer Yu, and Lauren Westerfield in a discussion about the beauty of artistic community and writerly connections, both inside and outside academia. Maggie Smith is an award-winning poet and nonfiction author whose latest book, Dear Writer, is a practical guide to the writing life for artists of all experience levels and backgrounds. Molly Olguín is a Seattle-based fiction writer whose debut collection The Sea Gives Up the Dead is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. Tara Campbell writes a broad variety of genres, including poetry, essays, short stories, and vivid speculative fiction novels; she currently teaches creative writing at Hugo House, John Hopkins University, and Clarion West, among other places. Jennifer Yu is a young adult novelist currently studying and teaching at the University of Idaho; her most recent book, Grief in the Fourth Dimension, explores how identity and community affect the way our lives (and deaths) are remembered. Lauren Westerfield, is a local poet, essayist, and professor whose debut collection Depth Control is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. Don’t miss this powerful discussion on creativity and community. Purchase the author's books via Auntie's Bookstore!

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. 

Tickets are on sale via this link! Please note that the link will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

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!
Authors
avatar for Molly Olguín

Molly Olguín

Molly Olguín is a queer writer, educator, and monster aficionado. Her forthcoming collection The Sea Gives Up The Dead was chosen by Carmen Maria Machado for the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction. She has stories in magazines like Quarterly West and The Normal School. She was the... Read More →
avatar for Jennifer Yu

Jennifer Yu

Jennifer Yu is a young adult novelist currently living in Moscow, ID, where she writes and teaches English at the University of Idaho. When not writing or teaching, you can find her weeping intermittently about the Boston Celtics, photos of the Earth from outer space, and the etymology... Read More →
avatar for Lauren W. Westerfield

Lauren W. Westerfield

Lauren W. Westerfield is the author of Depth Control: Essays & Autofictions, a hybrid collection forthcoming in 2025 from Unsolicited Press. Her essays and poetry have most recently appeared in FENCE, Seneca Review, Willow Springs, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, and Ninth Letter... Read More →
avatar for Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith is the author of seven award-winning books: Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Lamp of the Body, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, and Good Bones, named by the Washington Post as one of the Five Best... Read More →
avatar for Tara Campbell

Tara Campbell

Tara Campbell is an award-winning writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse, and graduate of American University's MFA in Creative Writing. Publication credits include Masters Review, Wigleaf, Electric Literature, CRAFT Literary, Uncharted Magazine, Daily... Read More →
Saturday April 12, 2025 1:30pm - 2:30pm PDT
Montvale Event Center: Ella's Theater 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

2:00pm PDT

Lynx House Press Reception
Saturday April 12, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
Since its inception in 1975, Lynx House Press has published more than 200 poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction titles: 172 poetry collections, 19 volumes of fiction, and nine nonfiction titles. Lynx House has sought always to publish work of outstanding verbal intensity, aesthetic merit, and social engagement and, as a result, has gathered the work of authors from a wide distribution of national and ethnic backgrounds. Come join us to peruse over 200 books which will be on display to celebrate the breadth and depth of amazing work that has been published by Lynx House Press over the last 50 years. This is a casual reception which may include short readings from local and regional writers published by Lynx House Press.

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. 

Tickets will be on sale via this link on Monday, March 3rd! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

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!  
Saturday April 12, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
Montvale Event Center: Second Floor Lounge 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

2:30pm PDT

Haunted Cities: Perspectives From the Pacific
Saturday April 12, 2025 2:30pm - 3:30pm PDT
“[U]ltimately, the place but is only a name, the City [...] a universe of rented spaces haunted by a nowhere or by dreamed-of places.” Drawing from this quote from Michel de Certeau, four authors join to explore their interactions with place and displacement — and the haunting spaces that those experiences create. From migrations across oceans to collective memory and trauma to the threat of climate disaster, these writers contend with what it means to make and remake a home. Hear short stories from Seattle residers Daniel Tam-Claiborne, Diana Xin, and Juan Carlos Reyes, and poems from Josh Fomon, all exploring movement across a city, from the known to unknown, the strange to the familiar, the secret hidden spaces, and the points of connection and meaning that echo something out of reach. From Fomon’s work with Black Ocean publishers to Tam-Claiborne’s debut novel to Xin and Reyes’ debut short story collections, this is a panel you won’t want to miss. Purchase the author's books via Auntie's Bookstore!

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. 

Tickets are on sale via this link! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

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!  
Authors
avatar for Josh Fomon

Josh Fomon

Josh Fomon's second book, Our Human Shores, will be published by Black Ocean in spring 2025. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals, including: Afternoon Visitor, Black Sun Lit’s Vestiges, Caketrain, DIAGRAM, The Destroyer, DREGINALD, The Georgia Review, jubilat, mercury... Read More →
avatar for Juan Carlos Reyes

Juan Carlos Reyes

Juan Carlos Reyes was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and now lives with his family in Seattle, WA. His debut fiction collection, Three Alarm Fire (2024), was released by Hinton Publishing. His short fiction, essays, and poems have been published in Moss, The Under Review, and Hawai’i... Read More →
avatar for Daniel Tam-Claiborne

Daniel Tam-Claiborne

Daniel Tam-Claiborne is a multiracial writer, multimedia producer, and nonprofit director. He is the author of the short story collection What Never Leaves, and his writing has appeared in Catapult, Literary Hub, Off Assignment, The Rumpus, HuffPost, and elsewhere. A 2022 National... Read More →
avatar for Diana Xin

Diana Xin

Born in the Hebei province of China and raised in the American Midwest, Diana Xin lived in Chicago, Beijing, and Missoula before landing in Seattle. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana and serves as a contributing editor for Moss. She is a recipient... Read More →
Saturday April 12, 2025 2:30pm - 3:30pm PDT
Montvale Event Center: Third Floor Ballroom 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

3:00pm PDT

Transgenerational Transgender Poetics: A Conversation for All Ages
Saturday April 12, 2025 3:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
Although transgender people have existed in world cultures from time immemorial, what is new today is the way trans and nonbinary folx are languaging themselves into being. In this panel, trans and nonbinary poets of different ages discuss how their access to broader language for their gender and sexual expression comes through their and others’ poetry. Subhaga Crystal Bacon is a nonbinary, transmasc queer elder with multiple publications including her newest book, Transitory, which brings greater awareness to the death and mistreatment of trans folk. Tennison Black is a queer transmasc nonbinary writer whose poetry, as seen in their multi-award-winning book, Survival Strategies, focuses on defiance and displacement via the body politic. Newer to the writing community are writers Juno Williams, Gwendolyn Owens, and Fig DePaolo, all queer Spokane writers who contribute to the larger creative conversation through fiction and poetry, adding surprising elements of their personal life as well as the genre they specialize in. This intergenerational panel means to emphasize how, especially at this juncture in history, intersectional community is the key to bolstering one another and our work. Purchase the author's books via Auntie's Bookstore. 

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. 

Tickets are on sale via this link! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

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!  
Authors
avatar for Fig DePaolo

Fig DePaolo

Fig DePaolo (he/they/she) was born in Spokane, Washington, and is currently studying English at Western Washington University. His writing can be found in the Wire Harp, Jeopardy Magazine, and other publications online and in print.
avatar for Gwendolyn Owens

Gwendolyn Owens

Gwendolyn Owens is a hobbyist writer from Spokane, WA. She has contributed work to the Wire Harp, where she also served as literary staff, and is frequently found browsing Auntie’s or enjoying local poetry events.
avatar for Juno Williams

Juno Williams

Juno Williams (They/Them) is a 19-year-old poet and horror-fiction writer from Spokane, WA. With a passion for storytelling that began before they can remember, Juno has spent countless hours throwing themselves into their horror writing, building a dedicated online following. Their... Read More →
avatar for Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them) is the author of four collections of poetry including the Isabella Gardner Award-winning Transitory (2023), from BOA Editions, a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry in 2024, and Surrender of Water in Hidden Places (2023), winner... Read More →
avatar for Tennison S. Black

Tennison S. Black

Queer, transmasc nonbinary writer Tennison S. Black is the author of Survival Strategies (winner of the National Poetry Series, UGA Press 2023) which recently was also awarded the NM-AZ Book Award in Arizona Poetry. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in SWWIM, Hotel Amerika... Read More →
Saturday April 12, 2025 3:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
Montvale Event Center: Ella's Theater 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

3:30pm PDT

SpokAnimal Open Mic featuring Jessica E. Johnson
Saturday April 12, 2025 3:30pm - 4:30pm PDT
Join us for an open mic that celebrates the bond between humans and animals, and shines a light on animal rescue efforts in our community and beyond! This event will begin with a reading by our special featured author Jessica E. Johnson, whose poems and essays have been featured in publications like The Paris Review, Tin House, Prairie Schooner, and Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry. Jessica will be reading from a new series of poems that center around her two cats and their rescue story. Following Jessica’s reading, the community is encouraged to sign up to read an original work of 1-5 minutes in length, preferably including the themes of animals, pets, rescue, wildlife, or nature. This event will be hosted by Yvonne Leach, a poet and alum of the Eastern’s MFA program, and a volunteer with SpokAnimal. Join us to learn more about the great work SpokAnimal is doing in our community, and celebrate the joys of animals!

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. 

Tickets will be on sale via this link on Monday, March 3rd! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration. 

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!
Authors
avatar for Jessica E. Johnson

Jessica E. Johnson

Jessica E. Johnson is a writer, educator, and arts organizer. She is the author of the memoir Mettlework, the book-length poem Metabolics, and the chapbook In Absolutes We Seek Each Other. A longtime community college instructor, she lives in Portland, Oregon and co-hosts the Constellation... Read More →
Saturday April 12, 2025 3:30pm - 4:30pm PDT
Montvale Event Center: Second Floor Lounge 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

4:30pm PDT

Poetry Salon
Saturday April 12, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT
Join us for a salon-style discussion centered on the power of poetry and its place in the world. Our annual Salon is a chance for 4-5 poets to sit down together to discuss their craft—how they came to it, how they sustain it, and what gifts it can bring to those they share it with. Each poet brings a unique perspective and vast experience to the table, and every year we are stunned at the magic that takes place within these conversations. This year’s Salon includes poets with award-winning debut collections alongside seasoned veterans with several collections and impressive accolades. Our 2025 Salon includes Danez Smith, author of four poetry collections, multi-award winner and MFA professor at Randolph CollegeTennison S. Black, winner of the National Poetry Series of 2023 with their book, Survival Strategies; Subhaga Crystal Bacon, the author of four poetry collections including Transitory, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; Margot Kahn, co-editor of a New York Times Editors’ Choice anthology and author of three other collections; and Rena Priest, who uses her published nonfiction poetry to address history and culture. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from some of the most talented contemporary poets from our region and beyond!

*Note that a Book Fair Pass is required which is $25+fees and covers entry for all 12+ events at the Montvale Event Center along with entry into the Book Fair. You will be able to come and go all day with this ticket. Tickets are on sale now via this link! *Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

Purchase books by these poets via Auntie's Bookstore!

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!  
Authors
avatar for Danez Smith

Danez Smith

Danez Smith is the author of four collections including Don’t Call Us Dead, Homie, and, most recently, Bluff. They are also the curator of Blues In Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes. For their work, Danez has won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book... Read More →
avatar for Margot Kahn

Margot Kahn

Margot Kahn is the author of Horses That Buck (University of Oklahoma, 2008), winner of the High Plains Book Award; A Quiet Day with the West on Fire (Floating Bridge, 2021); and The Unreliable Tree (Northwestern University, 2025). Her poems, essays, and reviews appear in New England... Read More →
avatar for Rena Priest

Rena Priest

Rena Priest is a writer and enrolled member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation. Priest’s writing draws on history, science, and culture to tell stories and ask questions. Priest served as the 6th Washington State Poet Laureate (2021-2023) and was named the 2022 Maxine Cushing Gray... Read More →
avatar for Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them) is the author of four collections of poetry including the Isabella Gardner Award-winning Transitory (2023), from BOA Editions, a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry in 2024, and Surrender of Water in Hidden Places (2023), winner... Read More →
avatar for Tennison S. Black

Tennison S. Black

Queer, transmasc nonbinary writer Tennison S. Black is the author of Survival Strategies (winner of the National Poetry Series, UGA Press 2023) which recently was also awarded the NM-AZ Book Award in Arizona Poetry. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in SWWIM, Hotel Amerika... Read More →
Saturday April 12, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT
Montvale Event Center: Ella's Theater 1019 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, WA, USA

7:00pm PDT

An Evening with Danez Smith and Maggie Smith
Saturday April 12, 2025 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Get Lit! is thrilled to welcome two award-winning, groundbreaking writers, Maggie Smith and Danez Smith, to Spokane. Maggie is the author of seven books of poetry and prose including her most recent craft book, Dear Writer, a New York Times bestselling memoir titled You Could Make This Place Beautiful, and poetry collections like Good Bones, and Goldenrod. Danez is the author of four award-winning poetry collections, including Bluff and Homie. A poet, performer, and cultural critic, Danez has been featured in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The New Yorker, GQ, and more. Maggie and Danez are two of the most engaging and celebrated voices writing today, and we are thrilled to present this opportunity to put them on stage together for both a reading and a discussion. Maggie and Danez will join poet EWU MFA alum Aileen Keown Vaux for a rich conversation on creativity and craft. And stick around after the event for a book signing with Auntie's! You can also purchase books from Auntie's ahead of time using this link!

*This event is ticketed ($25+fees). Tickets are on sale via this link! Please note that the link  will take you to our Humanitix event page where you can select this specific event along with any other ticketed events you would like to attend. This system allows you to check out once for multiple tickets, and does not require registration.

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!  
Authors
avatar for Aileen Keown Vaux

Aileen Keown Vaux

Aileen Keown Vaux is a queer poet, essayist, and teacher whose chapbook Consolation Prize was published by Scablands Books. Their debut, full-length poetry book Sad Man Happy Hour is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. Passionate about supporting the literary ecosystem through in-depth... Read More →
avatar for Danez Smith

Danez Smith

Danez Smith is the author of four collections including Don’t Call Us Dead, Homie, and, most recently, Bluff. They are also the curator of Blues In Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes. For their work, Danez has won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book... Read More →
avatar for Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith is the author of seven award-winning books: Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Lamp of the Body, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, and Good Bones, named by the Washington Post as one of the Five Best... Read More →
Saturday April 12, 2025 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Bing Crosby Theater 901 W Sprague Ave, Spokane, WA 99201, USA

9:00pm PDT

Foray: Get Lit! Festival Edition
Saturday April 12, 2025 9:00pm - 11:00pm PDT
Foray for The Arts is a traveling multidisciplinary event that was founded by Greg Bem and Sarah Rooney. The event is intended to provide a place for local artists of all kinds to perform with each other in order to collaborate, network, and gain experience. This event series travels to local businesses in hopes to celebrate the unique variety of venues that Spokane has to offer while providing opportunities to connect with different parts of the community. This Foray event hopes to give the writers a flexibility to showcase their writing as well as pair it with possible other creative talents. This special festival edition of Foray is composed of 2025 festival authors Lauren Westerfield, Juan Carlos Reyes, Kristen Millares Young, Josh Fomon, Daniel Tam-Claiborne, Diana Xin, and Tiffany Midge alongside Spokane writers Margaret Albaugh, Shraya Singh, and Taylor Waring. 

Purchase books by these writers via Auntie's Bookstore.

This event is free and open to the public. Attendees will enter the event via Emma Rue's, but readings will take place on the People's Waffle side through an interior curtain near the bar. Thank you to Foray and Emma Rue's 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!
Authors
avatar for Shraya Singh

Shraya Singh

Shraya Singh is an ex-engineer, writer, and teacher from India who just graduated with an MFA in fiction from Eastern Washington University. She loves frogs, Lord of the Rings memes, and epic fantasy and you can find some of her work in The Southern Review, The Spokesman-Review... Read More →
avatar for Daniel Tam-Claiborne

Daniel Tam-Claiborne

Daniel Tam-Claiborne is a multiracial writer, multimedia producer, and nonprofit director. He is the author of the short story collection What Never Leaves, and his writing has appeared in Catapult, Literary Hub, Off Assignment, The Rumpus, HuffPost, and elsewhere. A 2022 National... Read More →
avatar for Diana Xin

Diana Xin

Born in the Hebei province of China and raised in the American Midwest, Diana Xin lived in Chicago, Beijing, and Missoula before landing in Seattle. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana and serves as a contributing editor for Moss. She is a recipient... Read More →
avatar for Greg Bem

Greg Bem

Greg Bem (he/him) currently resides in Spokane where he is a librarian at Spokane Community College. After 14 years supporting literary arts in Seattle, Greg has focused his life in Spokane on running Carbonation Press, volunteering at local organizations like Spark Central, and co-running... Read More →
avatar for Josh Fomon

Josh Fomon

Josh Fomon's second book, Our Human Shores, will be published by Black Ocean in spring 2025. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals, including: Afternoon Visitor, Black Sun Lit’s Vestiges, Caketrain, DIAGRAM, The Destroyer, DREGINALD, The Georgia Review, jubilat, mercury... Read More →
avatar for Juan Carlos Reyes

Juan Carlos Reyes

Juan Carlos Reyes was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and now lives with his family in Seattle, WA. His debut fiction collection, Three Alarm Fire (2024), was released by Hinton Publishing. His short fiction, essays, and poems have been published in Moss, The Under Review, and Hawai’i... Read More →
avatar for Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum is the author of the novel Elita (published by TriQuarterly Press/Northwestern University Press in January, 2025) and the story collection Outer Stars, which won the 2025 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction (UNT Press) and will be published in the... Read More →
avatar for Kristen Millares Young

Kristen Millares Young

Kristen Millares Young is a book critic, essayist, and author of the novel Subduction, named a staff pick by The Paris Review. Winner of Nautilus and IPPY awards, Subduction was a finalist for two International Latino Book Awards and Foreword Indies Book of the Year. Her work appears... Read More →
avatar for Lauren W. Westerfield

Lauren W. Westerfield

Lauren W. Westerfield is the author of Depth Control: Essays & Autofictions, a hybrid collection forthcoming in 2025 from Unsolicited Press. Her essays and poetry have most recently appeared in FENCE, Seneca Review, Willow Springs, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, and Ninth Letter... Read More →
avatar for Sarah Rooney

Sarah Rooney

Sarah is nonbinary queer a poet who created “Speakeasy” Open Mic on March of 2022. They co-organize Foray for The Arts a multidisciplinary traveling event series in Spokane with Greg Bem that was started in Jan 2024. They are pursuing their Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing... Read More →
avatar for Tiffany Midge

Tiffany Midge

Tiffany Midge is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and was raised by wolves in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Brooklyn Rail, Real Simple, First American Art Magazine, World Literature Today, McSweeney’s, and more. Midge’s poetry collections... Read More →
avatar for Taylor Waring

Taylor Waring

Taylor Waring is a writer, educator, and musician dwelling in Spokane, WA. He teaches English at North Idaho College. He performs with the psychedelic doom band, Merlock, the death rock band Cruel Velvet, and the blackened doom band Desertdweller.
avatar for Margaret Albaugh

Margaret Albaugh

Margaret Albaugh is a Chinese American photographer and visual artist. Her personal work is informed by social issues, primarily identity, race, and gender norms. She is inspired by topics that scratch at contentious or thought-provoking issues and is intrigued by the nuances of human... Read More →
Saturday April 12, 2025 9:00pm - 11:00pm PDT
Emma Rue's 17 S Howard St, Spokane, WA 99201, USA
 
Sunday, April 13
 

9:00am PDT

Women Ecopoets as Conduits of Social Change and Empowerment
Sunday April 13, 2025 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
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! 
Authors
avatar for Dorinda Wegener

Dorinda Wegener

Dorinda Wegener was selected as a Poets & Writers 2024 Get The Word Out Poetry Cohort Participant. Her debut collection, Four Fields, was published by Trio House Press in July 2024. Wegener’s essays and poems can be found on LitHub, THRUSH, Mid-American Review, Indiana Review... Read More →
avatar for Dorsía Smith Silva

Dorsía Smith Silva

Dorsía Smith Silva is the author of In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry, 2024), poetry editor of The Hopper, and professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. She has received scholarships and fellowships from Bread Loaf and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute... Read More →
avatar for Jessica Gigot

Jessica Gigot

Jessica Gigot is a poet, farmer, and coach. She lives on a little sheep farm in the Skagit Valley. Her second book of poems, Feeding Hour (Wandering Aengus Press, 2020) was a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Award. Jessica’s writing and reviews appear in several publications... Read More →
avatar for Nadia Alexis

Nadia Alexis

Nadia Alexis is a poet, writer, and photographer born and raised in Harlem, New York City to Haitian immigrants. Her debut full-length collection of poetry and photography, Beyond the Watershed, was published with CavanKerry Press in March 2025, and it was also a finalist for the... Read More →
Sunday April 13, 2025 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
YouTube

10:30am PDT

Aftermaths: Poets on Nationhood, Fatherhood, and Selfhood
Sunday April 13, 2025 10:30am - 11:30am PDT
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!
Authors
avatar for Jed Blore

Jed Blore

Jed Blore is a writer, poet, and MFA candidate at Eastern Washington University. Originally from Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, Jed has been fortunate to also call Washington State (Seattle, and now Spokane) home. Previous iterations of Jed include Global Health Academic, Science-to-Policy... Read More →
avatar for Andrés Cerpa

Andrés Cerpa

Andrés Cerpa is the author of two books of poetry, Bicycle in a Ransacked City: An Elegy (2019) and The Vault (2021), which was longlisted for a National Book Award and celebrated as one of the best poetry books of 2021 by The New York Times. A recipient of a McDowell fellowship... Read More →
avatar for Ayokunle Falomo

Ayokunle Falomo

Ayokunle Falomo is Nigerian, American, and the author of Autobiomythography of (Alice James Books, 2024), AFRICANAMERICAN’T (FlowerSong Press, 2022), two self-published collections and African, American (New Delta Review, 2019; selected by Selah Saterstrom as the winner of New Delta... Read More →
avatar for Matthew Nienow

Matthew Nienow

Matthew Nienow is the author of the recently released collection, If Nothing, as well as House of Water (2016), both from Alice James Books. His work has appeared in Gulf Coast, New England Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry, and has been recognized with fellowships from the... Read More →
Sunday April 13, 2025 10:30am - 11:30am PDT
YouTube

1:30pm PDT

The Joys of Middle Grade
Sunday April 13, 2025 1:30pm - 2:30pm PDT
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!
Authors
avatar for Heather Murphy Capps

Heather Murphy Capps

Heather Capps is an award-winning author of Upper Middle-Grade books about history, social justice, science, & magic. She is a mother of two and an education equity activist. As a biracial author, Heather is passionate about creating diversity in publishing. Her critically acclaimed... Read More →
avatar for María José Fitzgerald

María José Fitzgerald

María José Fitzgerald is a storyteller from Honduras. Her cuentos usually include friendships, conservation, family, and a sprinkle of magic and mystery. She grew up snorkeling and hiking in Central America, where nature and culture nourished her soul. Her debut novel, Tu... Read More →
avatar for Meg Eden Kuyatt

Meg Eden Kuyatt

Meg Eden Kuyatt teaches creative writing at colleges and writing centers. She is the author of the 2021 Towson Prize for Literature winning poetry collection Drowning in the Floating World and children’s novels including the Schneider Family Book Award Honor-winning Good Different... Read More →
avatar for Sydney Dunlap

Sydney Dunlap

Sydney Dunlap is an award-winning author and former elementary school teacher who has worked extensively with youth facing challenging circumstances. She enjoys reading and writing heartfelt, hopeful books that explore tough topics that aren’t often addressed in middle grade literature... Read More →
Sunday April 13, 2025 1:30pm - 2:30pm PDT
YouTube

3:00pm PDT

Creativity Down Under: A Reading and Conversation with Australian Writers
Sunday April 13, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm PDT
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. Link coming soon!

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!
Authors
avatar for Anne-Marie Te Whiu

Anne-Marie Te Whiu

Anne-Marie Te Whiu is an Australian-born Māori who belongs to Te Rarawa iwi in Hokianga, Aotearoa NZ.  She lives in Wangal Country in Australia. She is a cultural producer, festival director, writer, editor and weaver. Her writing, including poetry, fiction and non-fiction has... Read More →
avatar for Ashley Hay

Ashley Hay

Ashley Hay is the internationally acclaimed author of the novels The Body in the Clouds and The Railwayman’s Wife, which was honored with the Colin Roderick Award by the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the most prestigious... Read More →
avatar for James Bradley

James Bradley

James Bradley is an Australian writer and critic. His books include the novels Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist, Clade and Ghost Species, a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, and a work of non-fiction,  Deep Water: The World in the Ocean. His new novel, Landfall, will be published... Read More →
avatar for Kyra Geddes

Kyra Geddes

Born in Adelaide as the daughter of German immigrants, Kyra Geddes spent her infancy in the South Australian opal fields before moving to Sydney. Following a successful career in marketing, Kyra returned to university to study English and pursue her life-long dream of writing, publishing... Read More →
avatar for Laura Jean McKay

Laura Jean McKay

Laura Jean McKay is the author of The Animals in That Country (Scribe 2020) - winner of the prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award, The Victorian Prize for Literature, the ABIA Small Publishers Adult Book of the Year and co-winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2021... Read More →
avatar for Melanie Cheng

Melanie Cheng

Melanie Cheng is the author most recently of The Burrow (Tin House). She is an award-winning author and doctor based in Melbourne, Australia. Her writing has been published in the Guardian, The Age, The Saturday Paper, and The Big Issue, among many others.
avatar for Sulari Gentill

Sulari Gentill

Published in English in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US, and in the translation in more than a dozen territories, Sulari Gentill is the author of the multi-award-winning Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, ten historical crime novels (thus far) chronicling the life and adventures... Read More →
Sunday April 13, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm PDT
YouTube

5:00pm PDT

Celebrating EWU MFA Alumni
Sunday April 13, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm PDT
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!
Authors
avatar for Emily Ladd

Emily Ladd

Emily Ladd is a writer with a short attention span. At any given time, they may be working on several different novels, a few short stories, and three cups of coffee all at once. Emily received their bachelor's degree in art and communication and celebrated by immediately jumping... Read More →
avatar for Kimberly Lambright

Kimberly Lambright

Kimberly Lambright's second poetry collection, Doom Glove, was published in September 2024 from PRROBLEM Press. She is also the author of Ultra-Cabin, winner of the 42 Miles Press Poetry Prize, 2016. She is a MacDowell Colony fellow, and her poetry appears in Phoebe, Columbia Poetry... Read More →
avatar for Laura Stott

Laura Stott

Laura Stott is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, The Bear's Mouth (Lynx House Press, 2024); Blue Nude Migration, a poetry and painting collaboration (Lynx House Press, 2020); and In the Museum of Coming and Going (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2014). Her poems have... Read More →
avatar for LeAnn Bjerken

LeAnn Bjerken

Originally from Minnesota, LeAnn Bjerken holds an MFA in creative writing from Eastern Washington University. A former journalist, freelance writer and mermaid performer, she has temporarily traded her fins for legs in order to better keep up with her toddler. Her Chapbook, Ordinary... Read More →
avatar for Rob Carney

Rob Carney

Rob Carney is the author of Accidental Gardens (creative non-fiction) and nine books of poems, most recently The Book of Drought (Texas Review Press 2024), which won the XJ Kennedy Prize for Poetry and received a Kirkus starred review. He has received the Milton Kessler Memorial Prize... Read More →
avatar for Sunni Brown Wilkinson

Sunni Brown Wilkinson

Sunni Brown Wilkinson is a poet and essayist. Her  second full-length poetry collection, Rodeo, was selected by Patricia Smith as winner of the 2024 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and will be published in 2025 by Autumn House Press. Other books are The Marriage of the Moon and the Field... Read More →
Sunday April 13, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm PDT
YouTube

6:30pm PDT

Mothering the Future
Sunday April 13, 2025 6:30pm - 8:00pm PDT
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!
Authors
avatar for Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder

Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder

Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder is the author of MOTHER, CREATURE, KIN: What We Learn from Nature’s Mothers in a Time of Unraveling (Broadleaf Books, 2025). Exploring the worlds of North Atlantic right whales, tidal salt marshes, barn owls, and strange, single-celled organisms, she... Read More →
avatar for Christina Rivera

Christina Rivera

Christina Rivera is a Pushcart Prize-winning essayist from Colorado whose girlhood was bordered by coastlines of Pacific Ocean. Her work has appeared in Orion Magazine, The Cut, Kenyon Review, River Teeth, Terrain.org, and more. Rivera’s debut book, MY OCEANS: Essays of Water... Read More →
avatar for Jennifer Case

Jennifer Case

Jennifer Case is the author of We Are Animals: On the Nature and Politics of Motherhood (Trinity University Press, 2024) and Sawbill: A Search for Place (University of New Mexico Press, 2018). Her essays have appeared widely in journals such as The Rumpus, Orion, Ecotone, Literary... Read More →
avatar for Jessica E. Johnson

Jessica E. Johnson

Jessica E. Johnson is a writer, educator, and arts organizer. She is the author of the memoir Mettlework, the book-length poem Metabolics, and the chapbook In Absolutes We Seek Each Other. A longtime community college instructor, she lives in Portland, Oregon and co-hosts the Constellation... Read More →
avatar for Martha Park

Martha Park

Martha Park is a writer and illustrator from Memphis, Tennessee. Her first book, World Without End: Essays on Apocalypse and After, is forthcoming from Hub City Press in May of 2025. Her writing, graphic essays, and illustrations have appeared in Orion, Oxford American, The Guardian... Read More →
Sunday April 13, 2025 6:30pm - 8:00pm PDT
YouTube
 
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