Get Lit! Festival 2026

Join us for our annual Book Fair at the Montvale Event Center, which includes access to more than a dozen festival events featuring festival authors Keetje Kuipers, Ally Ang, Maya Jewell Zeller, Prageeta Sharma, Joe Wilkins, Laura Read, Lindsey Drager, and many others! Events include readings, panel discussions, reading and writing sessions, an exciting rooftop reading and open mic with Foray for the Arts, and so much more! The Book Fair will host 25+ 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 year’s Book Fair and all daytime Saturday events at the Montvale Event Center are free and open to the public–no ticket purchase necessary. Come for a few events or stay all day!

This year's Book Fair is free and open to the public - no ticket is required and attendees can come and go to the Book Fair and events on all three floors of the venue as they please. We have noted in the event descriptions that some events have low capacity, so you will want to arrive early to get a seat. 

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

Auntie’s Bookstore, Girl Noise Press, Latah Books, Makeout Creek Books, Melanie Hewitt AKA LibroBuch, Arlie Press, Eastern Oregon University, Willow Springs Magazine, Willow Springs Books, Rock & Sling, Range Media, Spokane Print and Publishing Center, Western Colorado University, Poetry Northwest, Spark Central, Spokane Arts, Art Salvage, Banana Slug Books, SpokAnimal, Spokane Public Radio, Foray for the Arts, Carbonation Press, Gray Dog Press, Weird Lit, and Wishing Tree Books.

Here are some walkable locations that we recommend for lunch!

Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!

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!

This event is free and open to the public, but capacity is limited (30) so please arrive early to guarantee a seat.

Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!

Join us in celebrating the release of this year’s InRoads, an annual anthology of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry published by EWU's Writers in the Community program (WITC). WITC is 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 diverse placements; historically, WITC has taught in 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 Spark Central, Spokane Montessori School, a community writing workshop based in the Catalyst building, mentoring Spokane’s young poets with the Spokane Youth Poet Laureate office, and working with senior citizens at the Shadle Library and Corbin Senior Center. The anthology’s entries are entirely written by community members in these placements, collected throughout the year, and published in InRoads, which celebrates the students’ and community members’ writing and creativity. Come hear inspiring readings from our community and learn more about the positive impact WITC is making in Spokane. Contributors to this year’s InRoads anthology will get one free copy. Otherwise, this year’s InRoads may be purchased for $8, and previous year's editions for $5.

This event is free and open to the public.

Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!

Writing and parenting are often viewed as incompatible endeavors, but these parents are here to put that idea to bed. In this open-hearted conversation, writers Ren Cedar Fuller, Uma Kukathas, Beth Alvarado, Lisa Laughlin, and Joe Wilkins will discuss drawing inspiration from their children, parenting from the heart, and the ways these two roles enhance, rather than inhibit, one another. Joe Wilkins and Lisa Laughlin’s work focuses on the influences of place and the environment on family. Ren Cedar Fuller, Uma Kukathas, and Beth Alvarado write about the unique experiences of parenting within diverse and multicultural households. Don't miss this important and heart-led conversation on parenting and writing. 

This event is free and open to the public.

Purchase the authors' books via our official festival bookseller Auntie's Bookstore!

Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!

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 Silent Reading Party 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, and we’re offering a chance to sit in on a session with one of those chapters to experience what all the hype is about. Come join us for a special festival silent reading party that will include personal book recommendations from many of our festival authors! 

This event is free and open to the public, but capacity is limited (30) so please arrive early to guarantee a seat.

Thank you to the Silent Reading Party for partnering with us on this event.

Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!

In the last few decades, YA novels have made an undeniable impact on the literary world, encouraging young readers and adults alike to love reading. But what is a YA novel? What makes it different from adult fiction? Is it simply having a young protagonist and a simplified language profile? In this panel, we will be exploring what the YA novel is and discuss the distinct challenges presented by the YA genre. During this discussion, authors Eliot Treichel and M.L. Smoker will take us through all of these questions and more about how to authentically write in the YA voice without moralizing to young audiences. There will also be time to discuss the literary market for YA novels and help attendants decide on if YA as a genre is the right literary approach for them. 

This event is free and open to the public. 

Purchase the authors' books via our official festival bookseller Auntie's Bookstore!

Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!

As writers, our relationships with each other have a way of deepening our understanding of our work and our careers over time. This panel, featuring Prageeta Sharma, Teresa Carmody, Maya Jewell Zeller, and Laura Read, will explore how writers sustain creative lives through chosen bonds, and how friendship shapes the ethical and imaginative dimensions of their varied genres and forms. They find their writing is often guided by a search for what endures—love, presence, the unseen—and an interest in how friendship itself becomes a spiritual practice: one of attention, reinvention, and care. Each writer will share an excerpt from their recent work, followed by a discussion on friendship and spirituality. Prageeta and Laura have published new poetry collections in 2025, Teresa a novel-in-stories, and Maya is celebrating her debut memoir. Don’t miss this dynamic reading and discussion on the power of friendship.

This event is free and open to the public. 

Purchase the authors' books via our official festival bookseller Auntie's Bookstore!

Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!

Foray for The Arts is a Spokane-based traveling multidisciplinary event 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. The first two hours will celebrate local writers solicited by Foray, and the final hour will be open mic. Writers interested in reading as part of the open-mic will need to arrive at the top of the event to sign up. Foray is known for traveling to local businesses and even local parks to present their events, in order to celebrate the unique variety of venues that Spokane has to offer while providing opportunities to connect with different parts of the community. This unique rooftop Foray hopes to give writers the exciting opportunity to share their work from a sky-high venue overlooking downtown Spokane.

Sign ups for the open mic portion will be available at the beginning of the event. Please note that the sign up list is limited, arrive early to reserve a spot directly with the hosts, Sarah and Greg. 

Featured artists include: Ciara Totton, Robert Jenson, Joe Williams, Alyus Vasquez, Christina Momono, and Asyia Gover.

This event is free and open to the public. 

Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!

One hazard of the festival is that you can be struck by inspiration at any moment. You may find yourself desperately seeking a quiet corner to jot down notes for your own work, but we’ve got you! Look no further than this uninterrupted hour of focused writing time with our friends from Spark Central! Drop In and Write is a regular program at Spark, and we’re thrilled that they have been bringing their magic to the festival for the last five years. For this session, you’re encouraged to bring works in progress or get inspired with creative prompts. This year we’ll even have prompts available from 2026 festival authors! 

Thank you to Spark Central for partnering with us on this event! 

This event is free and open to the public, but capacity is limited (30) so please arrive early to guarantee a seat.

Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!

Join us for a candid conversation about the emotional and structural challenges writers face when traditional support systems–such as MFA programs, literary communities, or familial and cultural networks–are absent or inaccessible. Karina Agbisit, a publishing professional and nonfiction writer, will be joined by Nicole Zdeb, author of the award-winning Field of Saints, and Erin Popelka, fiction writer, founder of the online community Must Read Fiction, and a licensed mental health counselor. As writers, publishers, and professionals in their various fields, they know the challenges of staying open and creative and building community when life often isn’t set up for creativity to flourish. In this discussion, they will explore how writers can navigate exposure, revelation, and insecurity, while also celebrating small victories, setting achievable goals, and learning to distinguish signal from noise in their creative lives.

This event is free and open to the public. 

Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!

For 2026’s headlining poetry event, three prize winning authors - Keetje Kuipers, Ally Ang, and Laura Read - will read from their most recent collections. Keetje Kuipers’ Lonely Women Make Good Lovers has received critical acclaim for its daring and complicated evocation of love, including a starred review from Publishers Weekly, who called it “wickedly erotic and ingenious.” Keetje is the Editor of Poetry Northwest, the oldest poetry-only literary magazine west of the Mississippi, and a a former VP on the board of the National Book Critics Circle.   Ally Ang is the author of Let the Moon Wobble, their debut poetry collection, which critics have called “a tour de force of passion, longing, and loneliness.” One of the rising stars out of Seattle, they’ve received recognition from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Jack Straw Writers Program, and more. Laura Read, former Spokane Poet Laureate and current professor at both SFCC and EWU, is the author of four poetry collections and won the Juniper Prize for Poetry in 2022. Her latest collection, The Serious World, is a deep and humorous reflection on depression, therapy, family, and the struggling life of the artist. At turns provocative, harrowing, and serene, these three authors bring comfort in dark times and inspire readers to shape and nurture their perspectives of connection. Join them as they discuss—and elevate—the genre they love.

This event is free and open to the public.

Purchase the authors' books via our official festival bookseller Auntie's Bookstore!

Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!

Have you ever wondered how an indie press or magazine gets started? Have you ever been curious about the practical skills needed to create your own anthologies or zines? Please join us for a talk/Q&A with current MFA students and graduates of Eastern Washington University’s creative writing program on the ins and outs of independent publishing; the discussion will include both getting your own work published, and also becoming the publisher! EWU's MFA program offers many opportunities to gain practical skills that can help open doors in the world of publishing, and our current students and alumni are here to help demystify the process. For one hour, speakers will give an inner look into working with presses such as Willow Springs Magazine, Willow Springs Books, Banana Slug Books, and Croak Lit Magazine. For the last hour, there will be an opportunity for individual conversations, connections, and personal help with publishing or press projects—feel free to bring something you’d like to work on!

This event is free and open to the public, but capacity is limited (30) so please arrive early to guarantee a seat.

Purchase the authors' books via our official festival bookseller Auntie's Bookstore!


Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!

Join former Montana Poets Laureate M.L. Smoker, Melissa Kwasny, and Tami Haaland for a reading and discussion exploring themes of time, landscapes, environmental change, and the important role of Indigenous people in our region’s future. With writing that acts as both rich tapestries of natural beauty and as documents for posterity’s sake, all three authors weave essential reflections on Montana and the wider northwestern region into their works. M.L. Smoker’s poetry collection, Another Attempt at Rescue, and her graphic novel Thunderous engage questions of Native American identity, history, language, and culture. Tami Haaland’s latest poetry collection, If I Had Said Beauty, is dedicated to “known and unknown” ancestors, exploring all that lies behind one’s sense of self while being grounded in encounters with wild and domestic life and intimate moments of loss and connection. Melissa Kwasny, a recent Artist in Residence at American Prairie reserve, is the author of The Cloud Path, a poetry collection that reckons with personal and collective loss and grief, and turns to the natural world for guidance and solace.

This event is free and open to the public.

Purchase the authors' books via our official festival bookseller Auntie's Bookstore!

Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!

We are delighted to present three incredible fiction writers who will each read from their fantastical works and discuss craft moves they utilize to create distinctive speculative worlds and expand the imagination into the possible. Leyna Krow, the winner of the 2026 PNBA award for her collection, Sinkhole, and Other Inexplicable Voids, will lead a discussion with TJ Fuller, author of Some Stupid Glow, and Lindsey Drager, author of The Avian Hourglass and the Shirley Jackson award-winning The Lost Daughter Collective. They will discuss how they add dimension to an idea through humor and voice, while exploring the intersections of climate change, politics, family, and place. 

This event is free and open to the public.

Purchase the authors' books via our official festival bookseller Auntie's Bookstore!

Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!

In partnership with Northwest Passages, the Spokesman Review’s book club and conversation series, we are thrilled to present this headlining event featuring two legends of the Pacific Northwest. Jess Walter is a beloved Spokane writer and the New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, several short story collections, as well as Ruby Ridge: The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family, which was a finalist for both the Pen/USA award and the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. Willy Vlautin is a celebrated novelist, a guitarist and songwriter for The Delines based out of Portland, and winner of the 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize for his bestselling novel The Horse. Willy's new novel The Left and the Lucky examines how circumstances shape our lives, and how unexpected friendship can save lives.

A book club founded on building connections under the spotlights, Northwest Passages has fostered a community of conversation through the support of the Spokesman-Review and the people of Spokane who gather for insightful discussions on writing, music, and art. We are thrilled to be partnering with them for this headlining event!

Tickets are on sale now and include VIP options and free tickets for students! Use this link to learn more about the event and secure your seat! 

Purchase the authors' books via our official festival bookseller Auntie's Bookstore!

Survey feedback is crucial to our program in many ways, including helping us obtain critical grant funding. Please take a few minutes to complete our official festival survey after you've attended any of our events! Feel free to also leave us feedback here on Sched on individual events, but it really helps us immensely when people fill out our official survey!