Tickets for Get Lit! 2005 available Sept. 1

It hasn’t even snowed yet, and Eastern Washington University is already expecting us to look ahead to the spring. Here’s why: Ticket’s to EWU’s seventh annual Get Lit! literary festival, which will be held April 17-23, go on sale Sept. 1. And if history is any guide, you’d be smart to get yours early. Most events are at The Met, where the 750-some seats go fast. David Sedaris’ first Get Lit! appearance sold out two years ago, and the same thing happened this spring for Kurt Vonnegut.

First up are festival series ticket packages, which are priced at $112.50. Containing tickets to all four main events, the series package represents a $12.50 discount off the combined price for each event.

Headliners at Get Lit! 2005 are as follows: Rita Dove and Robert Bly at The Met on April 17 ($25); Sedaris at The Met on April 21 ($40); Bob Edwards at Showalter Hall on EWU’s Cheney campus on April 22 ($20); and Salman Rushdie at The Met on April 23 ($40).

Individual tickets will go on sale Nov. 1.

Get Lit! 2005 will include more than 20 events, most of them free, ranging from children’s events to professional workshops. For more information, visit the festival Web site at www.ewu.edu/getlit.

Lit by the lake

If kayaking across a lake by moonlight, then sitting in front of a campfire listening to a writer weave tales, sounds interesting, Lost Horse Press and Full Spectrum Tours have something just for you.

It’s called Lit on the Lake. On Aug. 29, Sandpoint writer Rory Metcalf will lead the 2004 Full Moon Literary Paddle Series expedition to Lake Pend Oreille’s Fisherman’s Island.

Metcalf has written articles and essays for publications such as The Village Voice, Amtrak Express and Black Canyon Quarterly. Not only has she written for DC comics and the ABC soap opera “Ryan’s Hope,” but she had fiction published in the Minneapolis Review of Baseball/Elysian Fields Quarterly and, most recently, Talking River Review.

For those needing equipment, the cost is $99 (plus Idaho sales tax). If you have your own kayak, the cost drops to $84 (plus tax). Groups must number eight or more.

To inquire further, call Full Spectrum Tours at (208) 263-5975.

Future reads

The final week of August is here — where is the time going? — but there’s still time to send in reviews of this month’s Spokesman-Review Book Club read, Craig Lesley’s novel “Winterkill.” Just pop a comment in the mail and send it to: Book Club, The Spokesman-Review, 999 W. Riverside Ave., Spokane, WA 99210-1615. Or visit the paper’s Web site ( www.spokesmanreview.com), click on the “Book club” notation down the left-hand column and follow the instructions.

Or just e-mail it to me: danw@spokesman.com.

Looking ahead, we’ve got a change of pace coming up in September: 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). Finley’s book, as the description goes, is a “look at how each major faith tradition incorporates prayer into daily life.”

As for October, in honor of the third Spokane is Reading project, we’ve decided to make that science fiction month. While Spokane is Reading will feature sci-fi author Orson Scott Card’s novel “Ender’s Game,” the S-R Book Club is opting for a local sci-fi author: John Dalmas. We’ll read Dalmas’ 2001 novel “Soldiers” (Baen Books, 608 pages, $7.99 paper).

And in November, we’ll turn to Laura Kalpakian. The Bellingham author has won multiple prizes, including Pacific Northwest Booksellers Awards for “Dark Continent and Other Stories” (1990) and “Graced Land” (1993). We’ll read “Educating Waverly” (Perennial, 336 pages, $12.95 paper), Kalpakian’s coming-of-age novel from 2002 about a lonely young woman attending school on a fictitious island in Puget Sound.

Unless otherwise noted, all events are free and open to the public.

The reader board

“ Darlene Cohen (“The One Who Is Not Busy: Connecting With Work in a Deeply Satisfying Way”), reading, 7:30 p.m. Monday, Auntie’s Bookstore, Main and Washington (838-0206).

“ Sara Williams (“The Don Juan Con”), reading, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Auntie’s Bookstore.

“ Robert H. DeMotte (“From Heaven With Love”), signing, 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Borders Books, 9980 N. Newport Highway (466-2231).