Get Lit! offers hint of mystery

There’s a mystery to Get Lit! 2007.

Not that we don’t know who’s responsible for it. As has been true throughout the literary festival’s nine years of existence, the host is Eastern Washington University Press.

Not that we don’t know who’s showing up. The lineup for this year’s festival has been developing over the past several months and is now complete.

And not that we don’t know what there will be to see and/or do. Just go to the end of this story (or go online at www.ewu.edu/getlit) to check out what’s being offered.

The mystery, such as it is, involves the work done by some of the most-recognized authors who are showing up this year.

Take Walter Mosley, for example. Mosley will give a talk titled “A Writer’s Life, Easy Rawlins Style” at 7:30 p.m. Friday on EWU’s Cheney campus (followed by a presentation titled “This Year You Write Your Novel” at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at the Spokane Club).

Easy Rawlins is the protagonist of a Mosley-created crime series comprising books such as “Devil in a Blue Dress,” “Black Betty” and “Bad Boy Brawly Brown.”

Then there’s Jonathan Lethem, who will be doing a reading/signing of his latest novel, “You Don’t Love Me Yet” at 10 p.m. Saturday at CenterStage Theater. Lethem is known among mystery fans for his 1999 novel “Motherless Brooklyn.”

Portland writer Karen Karbo is the author of three young-adult detective novels, the latest of which – “Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs” – features her 13-year-old protagonist investigating the case of a precious ruby. Karbo will teach a writing workshop from 9 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday morning at the Spokane Club and will be part of a reading that afternoon at 2:30.

Two writers with ties to EWU, John Keeble and Samuel Ligon, also have put out crime-genre novels – or at least books with crimes at their hearts. Keeble, a professor emeritus of creative writing who will be part of Tuesday’s 7:30 p.m. EWU faculty/alumni reading at the Spokane Club, wrote “Yellowfish” in 1980 and “Broken Ground” in 1987.

Ligon, who teaches creative writing and is faculty editor of the student-run literary journal Willow Springs, wrote “Safe in Heaven Dead” in 2003. He will be part of a writing panel that will be held at noon Saturday at the Spokane Club.

And don’t forget Jess Walter. The Spokane-based author will engage in a conversation with another writer with Spokane connections, Seattle-based New York Times reporter Timothy Egan (and author of the National Book Award-winning nonfiction study “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl”) at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Bing Crosby Theater.

Walter has written three crime novels, the last of which – 2005’s “Citizen Vince” – won the 2006 Edgar Award for Best Novel.

But Get Lit! isn’t about any single genre of literature. And most of the above writers, particularly Mosley and Lethem, have tried their luck in a variety of genres.

“I think it’s broadened,” Walter says of Get Lit!, “and I think that’s a great thing. What started as a literary festival has moved to a book festival. … The festival still brings in these amazing poets and amazing literary novelists, but I do think they bring in people who interest readers, and that’s the best thing I think a festival like this can do.”

Mosley, for example, has written a how-to book on writing (“This Year You Write Your Novel”), Lethem has tackled science-fiction (“Gun, With Occasional Music,” “Amnesia Moon”), Keeble’s latest work is a story collection (“Nocturnal America”) and Walter’s National Book Award-nominated novel “The Zero” is less a mystery than a Kafkaesque study in existentialism.

What Get Lit! tries to do is engage lovers of the written word on every level, which is why this year’s festival is filled with poets such as Alberto Rios, Tess Gallagher, Jim Daniels, Christopher Howell, Nance Van Winckel and Tod Marshall. With short-story writers such as Charles D’Ambrosio, Ann Pancake and Ann Joslin Williams. With memoirists such as Natalie Kusz, Bounsang Khamkeo and Jonathan Johnson.

This year will see the inclusion of an environmental writer. Donald Worster, who will speak at Spokane Community College on Wednesday, is the author of the award-winning “A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell.”

And for the first time, even Sherman Alexie – who wrote his own kind of crime novel with 1996’s “Indian Killer” – is making the scene. Alexie, raised in Wellpinit, Wash., and a 1985 graduate of Reardan High School, will give an Auntie’s Bookstore-sponsored talk at 2 p.m. next Sunday at the Bing Crosby Theater.

No mystery there. Get Lit! seeks out the best, and Alexie certainly deserves to be included in that crowd.