Words of all types: writing, spoken word, storytelling and more! All genres welcome. Seek out a book club or writing group, mark your calendar for visiting authors, or find ways to tell your story live onstage. If you are specifically interested in poetry, check out our Poet Laureate page, too!
Benefit show supporting the recovery of Jacob Johns with a poetry performance by Alyssa Matuchniak and Micah Bournes.
Jacob Johns-Indigenous artist and activist.
Jacob was shot in the chest by an aggressor while leading a gathering in song and prayer.
Mr. Sletner, also known by his alias Raw B, is far from your ordinary artist. For nearly three decades, he has been a dynamic presence in the Pacific Northwest’s music scene, serving as a music producer, musician, DJ, emcee, and performer. His profound musical background has allowed him to effortlessly blend the realms of hip-hop and electronic music, earning him a devoted following and keeping him at the forefront of musical innovation.
The Spokane Fall Folk Festival is the premier annual multicultural event in the Inland Northwest. Since 1996 the Folk Festival, sponsored by the Spokane Folklore Society, has been bringing music and dance from many different traditions to the two-day event each November. This Festival showcases regional musical artists and performing groups who represent cultures from around the globe and has inspired similarly styled festivals. What makes this festival shine is that we advertise our schedules and highlight performers in advance to encourage attendance. In 2023 the festival received the Inlander’s Best Of poll award for 3rd for the Best Arts Festival. Spokane Folklore Society is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization dedicated to fostering American and International cultures in Spokane.
Spinning Out: Motherhood, Myths, and Madness
On THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 7pm, Spark Central will host a book launch party for Alexandra Teague’s Spinning Tea Cups: A Mythical American Memoir, and Maya Jewell Zeller’s out takes/ glove box, featuring special guests and co-emcees, authors Kate Lebo and Laura Read. Lebo and Read will share briefly from their own work before welcoming Teague and Jewell Zeller.
Teague’s memoir, according to Kathryn Nuernberger, “recounts growing up in a family of ‘feral Victorians’ in the eccentric occult town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. With essayistic ruminations on matters of faith, kitsch, mental health, gun violence, and memory, Spinning Tea Cups has all the page-turning pleasures of an engaging story, along with insight, wisdom, and exquisite prose.”
Jewell Zeller’s book of poems, according to Diane Seuss, “could be said to be an ‘oocyte opera’ of ovarian orbits and eddies, each month offering up its ‘vermilion funeral.’ Zeller’s surrealism is embodied and embedded in myth, fairy tale, the realm of the family, and the kingdom of the natural world.” Seuss called the book “the kind of deft performance only a mermaid or a mother could pull off.”
Both authors will read for 15 minutes and then be available to sign books, which will be available for purchase.
This event, complete with refreshments, is free and open to the public.
Terrain is the region’s largest multimedia art and music event. Featuring work by hundreds of artists, celebrating new energy and fresh ideas from all over the artistic spectrum, we try to showcase a little of everything that’s happening to make the Inland Empire a more vibrant, cultural and beautiful place to live.
Preview Night was created in response to requests for a more intimate way to experience Terrain. Think of it as a sneak peek of the main event, and an opportunity to engage with the artists and the artwork in a chill setting. Skip the lines, meet the artists, buy art first, and support Terrain!
Always on the first Friday in October, Terrain is an annual, one-night-only, juried multimedia art and music event celebrating artists in the Spokane area. From painting to poetry to interactive art and film, we try to showcase a little of everything that’s happening to make the Inland Empire a more vibrant, cultural and beautiful place to live. In addition to all the visual art, there will be a full musical lineup, literary readings, film screenings, dance and other performances, food trucks, beer garden, photo booth, thousands of your closest friends, and more!
In this experimental short fiction collection, Terena Elizabeth Bell combines image and word to recount events of the past three years: climate change, Alzheimer’s increases, the corona pandemic, and the January 6th attack on the US Capitol. As Heavy Feather Review puts it, “TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE is working overtime to sound the alarm; to wake us all up; to point, and shout, and say this is what’s happening, right f*cking now. Pay attention.”
Patrick Piper is an engaging singer/songwriter and storyteller who plays an eclectic mix of blues-inspired Americana/Folk, Classic Rock, and Texas Country, from John Prine to Bon Jovi and Guy Clark to Buddy Guy. He plays the ukulele like Taj Mahal and sings like he broke up the Beatles.
Join the celebration of the official release of Erin Pringle’s newest book, Unexpected Weather Events, a collection of of strange, sad, and beautiful stories.
Erin will read from the book, followed by a book-signing. Books will be available for purchase. Expect music, joy, and perhaps light refreshment.
About her: Erin is also the author of the novel Hezada! I Miss You (AWST 2020) and two story collections, The Whole World at Once (WVU/Vandalia Press 2017) and The Floating Order (Two Ravens Press 2009). Her work has been a finalist in the CLMP Firecracker Award, selected for performance in L.A.’s New Short Fiction Series, and earned an Artist Trust Fellowship. She grew up in the rural Midwest, has her MFA from Texas State University, and called Spokane home for over a decade. She lives with her son Henry, partner Heather, and a reckless menagerie of pets.
Bodies in Conversation will be presented at The Magic Lantern Theater as a multimedia event: a screening of a short art film, live music, and a new play.
I write literary historical fiction, mostly set during the nineteenth century. My work explores how women might have experienced family, identity, displacement, love, and ambition. My novel Yewspring was independently published in 2023, and my writing has been published in the journal Persuasions, The Copperfield Review and online. I hold a M.A. in English Literature from Mercy College, where my culminating thesis on George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell was chosen as the program’s Thesis of the Year. I live in rural northeast Washington with my family.
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