‘Home Ground’ author reading at Auntie’s

In such books as “Of Wolves and Men” and “Arctic Dreams,” Oregon author Barry Lopez has established himself as one of America’s leading naturalist writers.

Lopez will be in Spokane on Monday to read from his latest work, “Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape” (Trinity University Press, 480 pages, $29.95), for which he served as editor.

The reading begins at 7:30 p.m. at Auntie’s Bookstore, 402 W. Main Ave.

“Home Ground” is a study of language from a geographical point of view. Lopez asked 45 poets and writers – among them Barbara Kingsolver, Terry Tempest Williams, William Kittredge and Jon Krakauer – to “define terms that describe America’s land and water forms.”

Among the region’s more familiar names, you’ll find Kim Barnes, John Keeble, Robert Michael Pyle and Kim Stafford.

Barnes’ definition of “lahar,” she explains, is “Japanese for rapid mudflow associated with volcanic activity.”

She goes on to explain that it was a lahar that both buried the residents of Pompeii in A.D. 79 and that killed more than 23,000 Colombians in 1985.

“This marvelous book enlivens readers to the rich diversity of Americans’ complex relationship to the land,” wrote Publishers Weekly in a starred review.

Kids on the Rock

Children grow up in the strangest places. And one of the strangest places is prison.

Spokane author Claire Rudolf Murphy has a made a history of looking at and writing about history for teen and younger readers in such books as “Gold Rush Dogs” and “A Child’s Alaska.”

In her new book, “Children of Alcatraz: Growing Up on the Rock” (Walker & Company, 64 pages, $17.95), she tells the story of children who grew up at the San Francisco island penitentiary.

As a reviewer wrote for the Travel for Kids Web site (www.travelforkids.com), Murphy’s book offers a “fascinating look at the kids who lived on Alcatraz, children of correctional officers. The island had a post office, bowling alley and movie theater, kids played on the rocks and abandoned cannons, dressed up at Halloween to go trick-or-treating, and took a boat to attend school.”

Murphy says that two participants in the 1969-71 American Indian occupation of Alcatraz, both of whom now live in Spokane, will be present at her reading Friday at 7:30 p.m. at Auntie’s.

Feel the heat

First it was a slide-show lecture. Now Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” has become both a book and a film.

The movie will be screened Thursday at 7 p.m. in Showalter Hall on Eastern Washington University’s Cheney campus as part of the EWU Film Society’s fall film series.

Admission is $4 ($3 for EWU students). For more information, see www.ewu.edu/filmsociety.

First time for Trueman

It’s not every day that you get invited to the White House. But that’s exactly what’s happened to Spokane author Terry Trueman who writes books for young adults (“Stuck in Neutral,” “No Right Turn”).

As part of next weekend’s National Book Festival, Trueman and his wife, Patti Nasburg, will attend a black-tie dinner Friday at the Library of Congress. The next morning, Trueman and other invited authors will have breakfast at the White House with First Lady Laura Bush.

The big news, of course, is that Trueman was forced to dress up for the dinner.

“I had to buy a tux,” he said. “Fifty-eight years old and I’d never bought a tux.”

Award time

Deer Park writer Laurie Klein’s essay “A Meeting of Waters” won first prize in the New Letters Awards for Writers Contest. Klein’s essay, said the judge, was “inventive in its imagery and metaphor. Thoroughly professional in its execution.”

For her efforts, Klein will receive $1,500 and be published in the spring awards issue of New Letters magazine.

New Letters is a quarterly literary magazine published by the University of Missouri-Kansas City. For further information, go to www.newletters.org.

Book talk

•Friends of the Cheney Community Library Book Discussion Group (“The Master Butchers Singing Club,” by Louise Erdrich), 7 p.m. Wednesday, Cheney Community Library, 610 First St. Call (509) 893-8280. Note: This first fall meeting is being held on Wednesday instead of the usual fourth Tuesday of the month. For more information, e-mail Joan Tracy at jtracy@icehouse.net.

Reader board

•Barry Lopez (“Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape”), reading, 7:30 p.m. Monday, Auntie’s Bookstore, Main and Washington. Call (509) 838-0206.

•Frank Zafiro (“Under a Raging Moon”), reading, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Auntie’s Bookstore.

•Linda Beutler (“Gardening with Clematis”), slide presentation, 7 p.m. Wednesday, Auntie’s Bookstore.

•Claire Rudolf Murphy (“Children of Alcatraz: Growing Up on the Rock”), reading, 7:30 p.m. Friday, Auntie’s Bookstore.

•Ron Lovell (“Searching for Murder”), reading, 7 p.m. Friday, Valley Hastings, 15312 E. Sprague Ave. Call (509) 624-0667.

•Yiyun Li (“A Thousand Years of Good Prayers”), reading, 7:30 p.m. Friday, University of Idaho College of Law Courtroom, Moscow. Call (208) 885-6489.