Tribune Columnist Offers Collection Of His Best Work

Collections of newspaper columns are usually a good cure for insomnia. The reason: Removed from the immediate issues that inspired them, most columns have the shelf life of shellfish.

But for 10 years now, Lewiston Tribune roving reporter David Johnson has been writing a column that is as readable now as it was the first time it appeared in print

The reason: His column, which runs under the title “Everyone Has a Story,” is really a collection of Inland Northwest personal histories.

Every week, Johnson pulls a name at random out of the phone book, sets up an interview and proceeds to tell the person’s (family’s, pet’s) story for his readers. Those stories have included an Asotin, Wash., family struggling to keep its farm, an isolated man and his dog in Orofino, Idaho, and a woman bus driver in Lewiston.

A selection of Johnson’s columns have been collected in “The Best Of Everyone Has a Story” (Tribune Publishing, 98 pages, $10.95). If you can’t find it in an area bookstore, contact the Lewiston Morning Tribune at (800) 745-9411.

Word rewards

For three years now, BSU’s Hemingway Western Studies Series at Boise State University has been sponsoring a unique writer/artist contest called the Rocky Mountain Artist’s/Eccentric Book Competition.

The purpose, according to a press release, “is to encourage the creation of beautiful, terrifying, intriguing and ingenuous - as well as inexpensive - books which will change, if not the world, at least the Inter-Mountain West.”

Competition specifics are a bit involved. For more information, contact Tom Trusky, Editor, Hemingway Western Studies Center, Boise State University, Boise, ID 83725.

Poet’s corner

Four Spokane Falls Community College colleagues perform an event titled “October, The Night Beat Was Born” at 7 tonight at the Anaconda Restaurant, S510 Freya. Admission is a $5 donation.

The event commemorates the first public reading of the poem “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg, which took place on Oct. 7, 1955. Reading in character will be Terry Trueman as Ginsberg, Ed Reynolds as Gregory Corso, Terry Steiner as Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Steve Reames as Gary Snyder.

Reader board

John and Gail Goeller, coauthors of “Spokane’s Guide to Healthy Aging,” will discuss their book at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Auntie’s Bookstore, Main and Washington.

Poet Robert Wrigley, author of “In the Bank of Beautiful Sins,” will read from his book at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Auntie’s Bookstore.