Q&A: Get Lit! Festival returns for its 26th year offering dozens of live and virtual literary events

click to enlarge Q&A: Get Lit! Festival returns for its 26th year offering dozens of live and virtual literary events
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Get Lit!'s Kate Peterson.

For two-plus decades, writers have gathered in Spokane every April to celebrate the literary arts, from poetry and prose to nonfiction and short stories. And this year is no different as Eastern Washington University's Get Lit!, the Inland Northwest's annual literary festival, will have more than 40 events over the next few days, April 11 through 14.

We took some time to sit down with Get Lit!'s director, Kate Peterson, to chat about the literary festival's impact on the region, what events are coming back this year, and just how much work goes into it. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

INLANDER: What does it mean to you to be the Get Lit! Festival's director?

PETERSON: Get Lit! has been around for 26 years, so it is special to me to be in a position to be able to highlight the community and the writers that we have here in Spokane. It means a lot to me to help other writers do what they love and help them find opportunities to be creative and be inspired by the events that we present.

Why is this festival such a staple in the Inland Northwest?

We're not the only literary festival in Washington state anymore, but we are the longest-running literary festival in the state. Get Lit! has become a community tradition here in Spokane. This is a real writer's town, so this is our annual celebration of the region's talented pool of writers.

One comment that we got from a writer a couple of years ago is that this festival is more of a writers festival, rather than a readers festival. A lot of book festivals gear more toward the reader, and while of course our events are for readers too, we're thinking about the writer, and we're thinking about how we can inspire other writers.

What kind of work goes into each year's festival?

It's fun for me to be able to put some of these events together, but most of them are submitted via our submissions portal from May 1 to Sept. 1. So sometimes when those submissions come in, we're doing a little bit of curating or putting them together behind the scenes. We're thinking about who would work well together, whose work is similar, who we could put on stage together and give them a really awesome opportunity.

When we say put it all together, that means from the ground up because we don't get any money from Eastern to run the festival. So we're raising all of the money, booking all of the authors, booking all of the venues, and finding all of the volunteers to help run all the events.

How long does that usually take you?

It's an 11-month-out-of-the-year job.

This year y'all are holding an entire day of virtual events [Sunday]. Is there a reason for that?

There's a few different reasons. We learned a lot during the height of the pandemic, and we wanted to make the festival more accessible to people who can't come out in person no matter whether we're in a pandemic or not. So we made that decision to keep virtual, from here on out.

I think sometimes because it's been around so long, people might just go, "Oh, that's always gonna be here," but that's not always the case. There are budget cuts all the time. Even though we would love to keep bringing in all these writers, we can't afford it. So virtual is a great solution for that.

Are there any returning classics that people should look forward to this year?

Poetry Salon is one of our staples. This year is going to be the first time, at least since I've been director, that we've had it at the Magic Lantern Theatre. Our Conversations Over Coffee events have become staples in the festival's schedule. Those are a little more laid back. People can just come and talk about whatever they want in little groups. People can find other writers who are doing similar things or if they want to, they can find a writing group or start a book club.

Why should folks come out — in person or virtually — to the festival this weekend?

It's so joyful to come out in the springtime when the weather's finally nice and there's just a bunch of writers in town who are all energized, excited and inspired. It's a fun experience to come out to get unprecedented access to some of these really amazing writers that we're bringing in. ♦

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Colton Rasanen

Colton Rasanen has been a staff writer at the Inlander since 2023. He mainly covers education in the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene area and also regularly contributes to the Arts & Culture section. His work has delved into the history of school namesakes, detailed the dedication of volunteers who oversee long-term care...