Get Lit! Festival 2026

Writing a poem is always a vulnerable undertaking, but it becomes an even more delicate and dangerous act when we as people rather than as poets are implicated in the act. The Latin root of the word humility, “humus,” means "of the earth." So to humble ourselves inside the poem—to attempt to answer the question of what we’ve sometimes gotten painfully, harmfully wrong as we’ve moved through the world—is work that requires getting a little muddy. What might it be like for our poems to get down in the dirt, to put ourselves and our poems at worm level? In this class, we will concentrate on writing towards the places in our poems where humility manifests itself as a clarity of vision of ourselves in relation to the world. We’ll accomplish this through reading, drafting, and revision that asks each of us to create a poetics of humility that yields not a poem of regret but of wonder—at change, at realization, at the endless, humble prospect of still-to-be-seen possibility.

This is a ticketed event. Tickets ($35 + fees) are on sale now!

Purchase Keetje Kuiper's 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!

Into the Body, Out of the Mind
Writing is a solitary, sedentary act—but how can we harness the wisdom and flow of our bodies to innovate in how we use our words? This generative, multidisciplinary workshop will draw from unexpected sources to encourage us to think about language as a physical force. You need absolutely zero drawing skills for this class, but bring blank (not lined!) paper and a pencil (other materials welcome: bring colored pencils, pens, or watercolors if you have them). Come prepared to explore your senses, move your body, and surprise yourself. Be aware that some of the work samples used in this class will touch on heavy themes.

This is a ticketed event. Tickets ($35 + fees) are on sale now!

Purchase Tessa Hulls' 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!

Dialogue, Dialogue, Dialogue: A Fiction Craft Class with Willy Vlautin

How I fell in love with novels is dialogue. As a kid I read all my mom’s John D. MacDonald and John le Carré thrillers and found myself constantly skipping to the dialogue sections. Dialogue was where the drama hid, where the characters sparred, romanced, deceived, and despaired. The more I studied it the more I learned that every writer approached dialogue differently. There was no right or wrong way. The trick was to find your own way, your own style. We’ll look at dialogue masters like Roddy Doyle and Elmore Leonard and we’ll also examine the power of dialogue in film. We’ll discuss a handful of dos and don’ts, and of course we’ll have a dialogue writing prompt at the end, where time permitting, we’ll share what we’ve written.

This is a ticketed event. Tickets ($35 + fees) are on sale now!

Purchase Willy Vlautin's 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 us for an exciting ticketed preview party to get to know our Book Fair vendors the night before our Book Fair officially opens to the public! You’ll have a more intimate opportunity to shop and get to know all of the bookish organizations, local non-profits, booksellers, literary journals, artists, and much more. We have asked all Book Fair vendors to offer something extra fun and exciting for this special preview night. That could be hands-on activities like making collages with Art Salvage or a printmaking demo with SPPC; or, special deals like buy-one-get-one free on titles from Latah Books! We will also have light snacks available for purchase at the venue, along with some special cocktails and mocktails inspired by the festival! We can’t wait to share what else everyone has planned. Don’t miss this exciting way to kick off our 2026 festival Book Fair! 

In addition to the deals and activities, we are thrilled to present an opportunity for authors and attendees alike to get FREE headshots taken by Freeze Frame Visuals! More information on that and how to sign up on the night, coming soon.

Grab your tickets ($10 + fees) here!

We can’t wait to share what else everyone has planned. We will update this listing to include more information on what special activities or deals the vendors have in store as we get closer to April. Don’t miss this exciting way to kick off our 2026 festival Book Fair and support our vibrant bookish community!

Book Fair vendors include: 

Auntie’s Bookstore, Girl Noise Press, Latah Books, Makeout Creek Books, Melanie Hewitt AKA LibroBuch, Airlie 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, The Fig Tree, Gray Dog Press, Weird Lit, and Wishing Tree Books.

Carbonation Press will be giving away a free poster-sized version of the cover art for the anthology Down River, Deep Root signed by contributors. Join us on Friday night to learn how to win!

This event is ticketed. Tickets will go on sale March 10th and links will be included here and on our website. 

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!

Every writer knows there’s never one way to tell a story, which makes the writer’s memoir rich for experimentation. We are thrilled to welcome this panel of award-winners and groundbreakers, Tessa Hulls, Mita Mahato, Maya Jewell Zeller, Lauren Westerfield, and Margaret Albaugh, for our Friday night headlining event celebrating memoirs that defy genre. This panel features writers at varying stages of the memoir writing process from drafting and experimenting with forms, to celebrating their debut, to the Pulitzer Prize. These writers all work in many genres and a vast array of mediums including photography, and they will inspire us all with what hybridity makes possible. Whether it's the intergenerational turmoil of Tessa Hulls’ Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel Feeding Ghosts, or the shifting landscape of rural American poverty in Maya Jewell Zeller's rhizomatic memoir-in-essays Raised by Ferns—all five of these writers present both their lives and their crafts in genre-defying leaps of literary prowess.

This is a ticketed headlining event ($35 + fees). Tickets are on sale now! 

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

There will also be a FREE livestream option available for this event! Here's the link to watch live!

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!