Words

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! 

Culinary
Event: Opens November 11
28th Annual Fall Folk Festival

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.
Words
Event: November 2
Spinning Out: Motherhood, Myths, and Madness

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.
Cultural
Event: October 5
TERRAIN 14 – Preview Night

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!
Cultural
Event: October 6
TERRAIN 14 – Main Event

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!
Words
Event: September 23
Book Signing: Terena Elizabeth Bell’s TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE

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.”
Words
Event: October 1
Book Release: Unexpected Weather Events by Erin Pringle

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.
Words
Artist
Cecily Van Cleave

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.
Stage
Artist
Pam Kingsley

I am an actress, director and playwright. My current passion is writing for the Theatre and my plays have been produced in London UK and around the U.S., including in Boston, Cleveland, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Louisville, New Haven, NYC, the State University of New York, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Spokane. My play MOTHER’S DAY was a 2019 finalist for the James Stevenson Prize for Short Comedic Plays and won the “Audience Choice Award” at the 31st Playwrights’ Forum Festival. I had three new works selected for Stage Left Theater’s “Masterpiece Monologues” series and was then commissioned to write and perform a solo piece, SLEEPWALKING, which was featured in Stage Left’s “Empower Festival” and streamed online. SLEEPWALKING was also selected for Irondale Ensemble’s 2022 ON WOMEN Festival’s (NYC) – New Media Library. The play was streamed online and received an “Audience Choice” award. Pam’s plays FINDING MOTHER COURAGE and BOXES were selected for the 32nd Playwrights’ Forum Festival. BOXES won the “Audience Choice Award.” Recently, both THE SITTING and BOXES were produced as part of TheatreWorks Humanity Festival in greater Louisville. MINISTER OF SORROW has been selected as one of three plays featured during the Appalachian Playwriting Festival, Ashville, NC in September 2023. MINISTER OF SORROW will be part of Stage Left Theater’s 2024 Season. Pam holds a BFA in Theatre Performance and MA in Theatre Education. She has taught acting and playwriting throughout the PNW.
Visual
Artist
Luu Melon

Luu Melon is a Mexican comic artist/writer based in the Pacific Northwest. Born and raised in the Southside of Milwaukee, WI, Melon has been influenced by the urban landscape of their city and its diverse populations. Now as a Washington resident Luu aims to capture many more interesting perspectives in their work. Through an inclination of observation as a way to engage with others, Luu strives to create comics that are rooted in empathy and self-reflection. Major themes in their current work includes issues of identity, class, trauma, and childhood. Luu is currently working on their first graphic novel project, Gray Area, an explorative character study that explores themes of generational abuse and childhood trauma, and how these things can essentially flaw your own sense of self.