Book Notes: UI poet’s ‘Sestina’ New Yorker-bound
A University of Idaho student poet will have one of her poems published in the most prestigious mass-market publication possible: The New Yorker.
Ciara Shuttleworth’s poem “Sestina” has been accepted for an unspecified future issue of this million-circulation magazine. She wrote the poem as part of a class taught by the UI’s well-known poet Robert Wrigley, who has also been published in The New Yorker. A “sestina” is a demanding poetic form, consisting of 39 lines and an intricate pattern of word repetition.
Shuttleworth is a third-year MFA poetry candidate at the university.
The Kooskia internment story
Idaho author and historian Priscilla Wegars will present a slide show on Thursday at Auntie’s Bookstore about a little-known facet of Inland Northwest history: the Japanese internees who built U.S. Highway 12 in Idaho from 1943 to 1945.
Wegars is the author of “Imprisoned in Paradise: Japanese Internee Road Workers at the World War II Kooskia Internment Camp” (Asian American Comparative Collection, University of Idaho, $19.95).
The book tells how the federal government used 265 men of Japanese ancestry – who volunteered from other internment camps – to build the highway.
Wegars is the volunteer curator of the University of Idaho’s Asian American Comparative Collection and is a writer and historian specializing in research on Asian immigrants in the West.
Her presentation will be at Auntie’s main store, 402 W. Main Ave., Thursday at 7 p.m.
‘Blessed With Cancer’
Linda Mobley, a Washington woman and breast cancer survivor, will sign copies of her book, “Blessed With Cancer,” at Auntie’s on Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. Mobley’s book, co-written with Ronald Carr, is the story of how she made it through a challenging time in her life and emerged stronger.
O’Brien to Get Lit!
More details are emerging about Spokane’s Big Read 2011, which will feature the Vietnam War novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien.
O’Brien has been booked as one of the headliners of Eastern Washington University’s 2011 Get Lit! festival, and that will double as one of the culminating events of the Big Read.
He will appear on April 16, joined by Iraq war veteran and poet Brian Turner. It will fit nicely with the 2011 Get Lit! festival theme, “Telling the American Story.”
Many other Big Read events are being planned for March and April.