2016 Get Lit! Festival

My Worst Job and Other True (or False) Confessions

What was your worst job interview, or job, or date, or marriage?  The most exquisitely embarrassing moment, the time you wished the earth would open and swallow you?  Tell of that hellhole you crawled out of to laugh another day, and in the confessions (real or imagined) you write in this workshop!

Bring your own pen/pencil and paper and be ready to write! $20 students/$30 general. Registration through BrownPaperTickets.com

Special thanks to our partners INK and the Spark Center for hosting this workshop.

Paul Harding is the author of two novels about multiple generations of a New England family: Enon (Random House, 2013) and Tinkers (Bellevue Literary Press, 2009), which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the PEN American Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers.

Nance Van Winckel is the author of five books of fiction, most recently Ever Yrs, a novel in the form of a scrapbook, andBoneland: Linked Stories. Pacific Walkers, her sixth collection of poems, was a finalist for the 2014 Washington State Book Awards. Nance is a professor at EWU’s Inland Northwest Center for Writers and the recipient of two NEA fellowships, among many other prizes.

Literature is one way humans can attempt to make sense of our complicated relationship with nature. The theme transcends genre, allowing for in depth exploration of the way we interact with our natural world and, in turn, the way it affects us. In this panel, local authors will discuss their work and the way the wilderness is involved within it. Panelists include: Shann Ray, author of the novel American Copper; Sharma Shields, author of the novel The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac; Kris Dinnison, author of the novel You and Me and Him; Jonathan Johnson, author of the poetry collections In the Land We Imagined Ourselves and Mastodon, 80% Complete; Andrea Scarpino, author of the book-length poem What the Willow Said as it Fell; and Ellen Welcker, author of two chapbooks and the book The Botanical Garden.

Rough Magic is a New York-based band sprung from Cornelius Eady’s long and celebrated literary life, and from his desire to extend the boundaries of language expression to include the songs he had produced over the years and those that had emerged from a renewal of his musical creativity. In January of 2013, Eady released Book of Hooks, a two-CD and chapbook set of original tunes on Kattywompus Press. Almost by “magic,” a group of poet-musician-composers converged who shared Eady’s vision that text, melody, harmony, and rhythm all have an equally strong place in artistic expression. Rough Magic calls upon troubadour traditions and evokes the sounds and storytelling of blues greats like Muddy Waters, folk legends such as Woody Guthrie and the unexpected grooves and subject-matters of the Talking Heads. At the same time, band members hold a keen sense of innovation, as they are all working text-and-music makers engaged in building new combinations of words and sounds. (Courtesy of www.corneliuseadyandroughmagic.com)

As fiction writers, we strive to build worlds that readers can enter. We want our audience to experience our stories through our characters’ eyes and ears. In this workshop, we will explore the use of images and objects as a way to hook readers, immerse them in our stories, and keep them glued to the page. As we write and develop our craft, we will also have the chance to share our work. This will be an activity-based workshop with several writing activities/sessions, short craft discussions, analysis of a short excerpt, and opportunities for participants to share work.

Two-hour writing workshop with fiction writer Serena Crawford.
Workshop registration via BrownPaperTickets.com.

Serena Crawford’s story collection, Here Among Strangers, won the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction. Her work has appeared in Epoch, Ascent, The Rumpus, Beloit Fiction Journal, The McNeese Review, and elsewhere. She has taught creative writing for Writers in the Schools, the University of Portland, and the University of Oregon. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and an Oregon Literary Fellowship, she lives in Portland, Oregon.  

WORD PYROMANIA: EXERCISES THAT CAN SPARK.  

The playwright Tom Stoppard was once asked, “Where do your ideas come from?” He answered, “I wish I knew. I’d move there.” Nevertheless, he’s had a career full of ideas, and he’s shaped them into great plays. For instance, a friend gave him a note once, telling him Freud, Lenin, and James Joyce all lived on the same block in Zurich in 1916 and he should write a play about it. It turned out to be true and that the dadaist Tristan Tzara lived nearby also, but no play arose from those facts until Stoppard discovered that Joyce and a minor diplomat named Henry Carr were embroiled in a lawsuit and counter suit over the cost of a suit. Carr had purchased it as his costume for the part of Jack Worthing in Joyce’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest, and Joyce wouldn’t pay him back. The play is called Travesties. It’s pretty brilliant. And the point is that it probably came not from facts and ideas but from fun with language, from the multiple meanings of the word “suit.”

This poetry workshop will be about fun with words. We’ll take a shot at one or two exercises less about whamming our ideas into lines for poems and more about letting language discover what it wants to. 

Layers of Landscape: Harnessing the Power of Place

Though we live in a world chock full of chain restaurants and department stores, on-screen communications, and cross-country airplane travel, we ignore the power of place at our own psychological and, increasingly, physical peril. Truly, place and landscape are active forces in all our lives. They shape and re-shape us; they offer us foundation and refuge; they challenge us to be good citizens of our biotic and built communities. In life and in writing, we ought to be aware of this; we ought to try to understand and harness the power of place. This session offers writers four ways they might begin to do just that. Participants are asked to bring a pen and paper or a laptop computer for in-session writing.

$20 students/$30 general. Workshop registration through BrownPaperTickets.com.

Gonzaga University’s literary journal, Reflection, will be hosting an hour-long workshop for undergraduate students wishing to expand their own writing in the hopes of future publication. This event will take place on April 16th at the Spokane Convention Center as part of the Get Lit! Festival. The focus of this workshop will be to encourage students to continue producing work that may be considered for their own school publications. The workshop itself will consist of two 20-minute prompts in which the students will be able to create pieces based off of these prompts. Following the writing, there will be an opportunity for the writers to share a piece that they began in the workshop with the incentive that these works will eventually grow into pieces to be considered for their school literary journals in the upcoming year. Gonzaga is excited to get students thinking, producing, and submitting as part of this highly esteemed GetLit! Festival and we hope to see you there!

Free, no pre-registration required. Spokane Convention Center, Room 202A.

Tom Van Deusen is a cartoonist from Seattle, Washington. He has numerous self-published titles including, "Scorched Earth" and "Eat, Eat, Eat". His comics have appeared in The Seattle Weekly and online with Study Group Comics and Boing Boing. He is a founding member of Intruder, Seattle's free, long-running comics newspaper. He has performed his hilarious comic stories at Short Run, Pecha Kucha, Gridlords and Sugar City. Tom also runs the micro-publisher Poochie Press Publications, which has published Dennis P. Eichhorn's "Real Good Stuff" and Kelly Froh's "The Weeknight Casserole Collection".

Sage Hill Press launches the second volume of Railtown Almanac, which ventures into the realm of prose, collecting short stories and essays from accomplished authors and emerging writers of all ages. Featured readers include Laurie Klein, Chris Cook, Travis Laurence Naught, Jaime Baird, Maya Jewell Zeller, Jennifer Catlin, Mary Kunkel, Aileen Keown Vaux, Anne Kilfoyle, Molly Smith and Melissa Dziedzic. The book will be available for purchase before and after the reading at the vendor table. Railtown Almanac celebrates the talent and vitality of Spokane’s literary and artistic community.

During 2015, six female authors in Spokane launched their debut books, leading to the obvious question, What's in the water? The group was profiled in the Inlander, each with different perspectives on how their book came to be published. During Get Lit!, they will discuss their rising success in publishing, from getting an agent to editing their manuscripts to promoting their books. Sharma Shields explores the mystical side of the Pacific Northwest as she follows her protagonist’s obsession to find Bigfoot in The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac. In War Bonds, Cindy Hval, a columnist for The Spokesman Review, tells the often overlooked stories of couples and their romances during World War II. Stephanie Oakes, author of The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly, crafts the poetic tale of a young girl coming to terms with her dark past in the Kevinian cult, which cost not only years of her life but also her hands. S.M. Hulse gives hope to graduate students in her MFA-thesis-turned-novel Black River, a modern-day Western set against past violence in its characters’ lives. In the young adult novel You and Me and Him, Kris Dinnison explores the bonds of friendship as two characters struggle to maintain their relationship while interested in the same guy. This panel will be moderated by Chey Scott, writer and listings editor for the Inlander. Free admission!

If You Ain’t No Place

Our title is from Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town.  In his book, Hugo reminds poets of the importance of identifying the “where” of a poem and how rooting creativity to place can allow the imagination to grow in unexpected ways.  In this workshop, we will explore ways to connect our imagination to the real and imagined landscapes of Spokane and, more broadly, Washington. 

There are many ways, of course, that we can think about “place.”  Perhaps specific flora and fauna conjure up place for us (salmon and Arrowleaf Balsamroot, delicious huckleberries).  Perhaps titles of towns and neighborhoods or geological phenomena do the same (Anacortes, Mt. Rainier, Hillyard, and Twisp; The Columbia, Steptoe Butte, and sharp columns of basalt, to name only a few).  Perhaps people—individuals or groups—make a “where” vivid in our minds (The Legion of Boom or the Wobblies, Chief Garry or Ken Griffey Junior, Jimmy Marks or Kurt Cobain, Hope Solo or Sherman Alexie, Bing Crosby or Cathy McMorris Rodgers—to name only a few). 

Using a controlled range of diction and some parameters regarding line and sound texture, we will form a supportive community to draft a poem that might reveal something about where we are and who we are.

Theatre is perhaps the most collaborative art form. Directors, scenic designers, actors, lighting designers, costumers, sound engineers and makeup artists all work together toward a shared vision to create a living work of art. Throughout the process, they challenge and inspire each other. A creative spark in one field will open up new ideas and understandings in others. However, there is often one artist within the project who is isolated from this collaborative synergy: the playwright.

While some playwrights believe in the value of their isolation, assuming it results in their work being “pure” or “unadulterated,” I contend that they revel in their lonely garret to the detriment of their work and of the art of theatre. The greater the ability to listen and respond to the other artists involved, the stronger the synergistic effects will be. Developing a script with the director and actors who will eventually stage it provides a chance to test every line and action against the truth of performance.

But if this isn’t possible, what can be done? This workshop will explore techniques for gaining the benefits of collaboration even when one is working alone. We’ll discuss ways to tap into the writer’s imaginative powers to collaborate with hypothetical actors and to see one’s work as part of the grand, interlocking machinery of theatre. This will result not only in stronger writing, but ones more likely to find production.

We will also examine the roots of character, action, conflict and arc to determine what makes a scene – and how a scene is not a script and a script is not a play and a play is not theatre. We’ll discover what is needed for each of these building blocks to lead to the next. Finally, we’ll consider the value of subtext, mystery and uncertainty in creating true theatre.

The reading will take place Saturday, April 16, from 4-5 p.m. in the Conference Theater at the Spokane Convention Center. The event is free and open to the public.