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Dan Webster

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News >  Features

‘Bold Spirit’ author captures one more award

Spokane author Linda Lawrence Hunt has won another award. The 2004 WILLA Literary Awards named Hunt's book "Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America" (University of Idaho Press, 301 pages, $16.95) the winner in the "Other Nonfiction" category (other than memoir/essay, that is). The WILLA Awards are sponsored by Women Writers of the West, a group of professional librarians and historians whose choices represent what they see as "the best in literature published during 2003."
News >  Features

Press leadership wants to expand the organization

Much of the initial driving force behind Eastern Washington University Press and its favorite literary child, Get Lit!, is gone. Christine Holbert, who seven years ago nurtured the first Get Lit! literary festival like a favorite child, is in Sandpoint, overseeing Lost Horse Press.
News >  Features

Gonzaga professor will offer context for Thoreau

More fun has been made at the expense of Henry David Thoreau than perhaps any other American author this side of Jacqueline Susann. Susann wrote "Valley of the Dolls." Thoreau, as you may know, is the guy who lived in the woods near Walden Pond. That isn't the most respectful way to refer to one of the great names of American literature.
News >  Features

S-R book club will look at nonfiction

Next month, we're going to tackle something in nonfiction: namely, Mitch Finley's book "Prayer for People Who Think Too Much: A Guide to Everyday, Anywhere Prayer from the World's Faith Traditions" (Skylight Paths Publishing, 224 pages, $16.95 paper). Remember, you can join the online version of the club by going to www.spokesmanreview.com/
News >  Features

‘Winterkill’ puts you in Craig Lesley’s territory

Some writers go their entire career without garnering reviews as good as the ones that Portland author Craig Lesley received for his first novel, "Winterkill." "Unforgettable," wrote the Boston Globe, with "prose as clear as the morning air."
A&E >  Entertainment

come TOGETHER

for much of the year, Spokane has a monocultural look. For the larger population, living here often feels like walking past polar bears on the Arctic ice, if you catch my drift.
News >  Features

Pair of LC grads found online literary journal

FOR MANY OF US, the hardest thing about leaving school was the loss of summer vacation. Ah, yes, sitting around the house, lounging at the lake, staying up late, sleeping until noon, eating pizza for breakfast and putting up with parents who resent the fact that, one, they have to work and, two, that they themselves are no longer young. It's all a rite of passage. Yet some students can't find enough things to do during the summer.
A&E >  Entertainment

M. NIGHT BE GIANT HE

Quick: Name five great filmmakers. You could say Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick and Federico Fellini.
News >  Features

Study says reading in decline, but not in Spokane

So I'm sitting on my friend's porch, talking about a novel that I'm in the process of reading. "How is it?" my friend asks. "Great, so far," I say. "If the first chapter is any indication, it's the best he's done so far." My friend's husband grunts. "What?" I ask. And he begins this long diatribe about genre novels, about how he never reads them. Blah-blah-blah.
News >  Features

Northwest mystery writers reading at Auntie’s

Two of the Northwest's more popular mystery writers are scheduled to read at Auntie's Bookstore over the next month. And neither will be bringing their most notable characters with them. Both will be reading from novels that aren't among the series that made them famous. First up is J.A. Jance, who reads at Auntie's on Thursday (see Reader Board below). Splitting her time between Seattle and Tucson, Ariz., Jance has written 30 novels, most of which have featured either Seattle detective J.P. Beaumont or Bisbee, Ariz., sheriff Joanna Brady.
News >  Features

Rushdie headlines Get Lit! in 2005

Get Lit!, the little literary festival that could, continues to grow. Controversial Booker Prize-winning novelist Salman Rushdie will headline a celebrity cast of writers for the 2005 event, which is scheduled April 17-23 in Spokane and Cheney.
News >  Features

Documentary ‘Super Size Me’ playing at The Met

Objectivity is what respectable journalism is supposed to be all about. Forget that it's about as easy to achieve objectivity as it is to lose weight on a fast-food diet. The point is to be as honest and forthright as you can. I refer to fast food for a reason. Hamburgers and cheeseburgers, fries and shakes are the focus of a documentary film titled "Super Size Me," which opens today for a weeklong run at The Met.
A&E >  Entertainment

Play it again, Jerry

Memo to Jerry Bruckheimer: Yo, Jerry, I'll make this fast. I know you're busy producing all those big-budget, smash-face movies. I mean, what with the two "Bad Boys" successes, "Pearl Harbor," "Pirates of the Caribbean" and its sequel (expected in 2006), not to mention the three "CSI" television franchises (Las Vegas, Miami and next New York), "Cold Case" and "The Amazing Race" reality shows (five now and counting), I don't know how you have a chance to breathe.
News >  Features

A salute to Independence

Since 1776, when the loose federation that would become the United States first flexed its philosophical muscles, people have been delivering speeches on July 4. Speakers have wrung every possible meaning out of that auspicious date. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, firecrackers, Old Glory, the price of freedom, divine inspiration, the honored dead, mom, apple pie and the girl back home are just a few topics that have become familiar themes (the final three being especially meaningful to veterans).
News >  Features

Barnes shines at fiction, too

When it comes to movies, the five scariest words in the English language are "based on a true story." When it comes to literature, stories based on the truth are becoming nearly as common as Hollywood biopics. Only the books being written, especially those set in the Northwest, are generally less scary than artfully revealing.
News >  Features

Three nationally known authors reading at Auntie’s this week

One of the worst aspects to living in this part of the Inland Northwest is that we can go weeks and weeks without getting the chance to hear a nationally known author. And then, as is the case with the coming week, we'll have three at once. Hometown favorite Sherman Alexie, Portland novelist Chuck Palahniuk and critically acclaimed memoirist Lee Stringer all will be reading from their latest works at Auntie's bookstore (see below for specific times). Stringer may be the least known to area readers. Author of "Grand Central Winter: Stories From the Street," he is a formerly homeless man who, with nothing else to do one day while curled up in a crawl-space in New York City's Grand Central Station, picked up a pencil and began writing about his life.