Book Notes : ‘Cheap Motels’ author reading

In 2001, Barbara Ehrenreich laid bare the myth that anyone can make it in America.

Her book “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” demonstrated just how difficult it is to make a living – to have an actual functional life – while working on the survival wages of an unskilled worker.

Michael D. Yates has added to Ehrenreich’s argument with his book “Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate: An Economist’s Travelogue” (Monthly Review Press, 208 pages, $15.95).

Yates, who will read from his book at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Auntie’s Bookstore, is a retired professor of economics. He took early retirement in 2001 and since then has traveled around the country with his wife, living for extended periods and examining life in such varied spots as Miami and Manhattan, Colorado and Oregon.

Here are some of the things he has to say about Portland:

“”After a year, we knew that Portland was not a good place to earn a living. Unless you were willing to work more than one job (local writer Chuck Palahniuk says everyone in Portland has three jobs), double and triple up in tiny apartments, shop in thrift stores, eat generic food and drink the cheapest beer, you couldn’t make it there in the blue-collar job world.”

“”Portland has a national reputation as a liberal city. …But Portland’s progressiveness was superficial. … (W)hen it came to two critical issues, labor and race, Portland was the very opposite of liberal, it was backward and oppressive.”

“”Our dinner at Hurley’s [which cost Yates $140] told us something important about Portland, and about the United States itself. An abiding inequality haunts this city and every city in the country. It strikes you like a hammer. In a city with one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates, with homeless children on every street corner, with adult beggars at every highway entrance ramp, diners were packed cheek by jowl in a restaurant whose prices were surely among the highest in the nation.”

Yates did have something good to say about the city:

“Portland is laid out for walking. Anything we needed we could get on foot. The city is a haven for those want fresh, healthy food.”

As long as you have the money to pay for it.

Gribble Press

Once upon a time, there was a Spokane-based literary journal named Heliotrope. It is no more.

But don’t mourn, lovers of all things literary. The husband-wife publishers of Heliotrope, Tom Gribble and Iris Gribble-Neal, have created a new enterprise they’re calling Gribble Press. And they’re inaugurating the press with a contest.

“The Press is introducing a line of chapbooks, to be published three times a year,” Gribble-Neal said in an e-mail.

The first contest involves poetry (the second two are fiction and creative nonfiction), which carries a deadline of Oct. 31. An entry fee of $15 per manuscript could earn you $250 and 25 copies.

For further information, go online at www.greymaredit.com or call (509) 951-6099.

Dog-day writers

Sandpoint-based Lost Horse Press will hold a weekend writing workshop on Aug. 10-12 called Dog Days Poetry and Prose Writing Workshops in Sandpoint. Workshop teachers will be Melissa Kwasny for poetry and John Keeble for fiction/nonfiction.

Workshop fees are $150. Classes will be limited to 12 students. For additional information, go online at www.losthorsepress.org, e-mail www.losthorsepress@mindspring.com or call (208) 255-4410.

By the way, Kwasny’s poetry collection “Thistle” won the silver prize for poetry given out annually by Foreword Magazine.

Teaching tots

Get Lit! has been reaching out to area schools for years. Now the annual literary festival is expanding even further.

Get Lit!’s Young Writers Program, which is sponsored by Eastern Washington University Press, has signed seven schools to participate in its Writers-In-Residence Project for 2007.

The program will pair a “teaching writer” with each of the schools. Those hired, besides earning an honorarium, will teach weekly workshops (October through May) with students between grades two and 12.

In addition to proven teaching ability and experience, applicants must have graduate-level writing skills, a record of publication and an advanced degree and/or professional experience.

For further information, call Marny Lombard at (509) 981-4030, or e-mail her at getlitkids@mail.ewu.edu.

King movie

Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film “The Shining,” which was adapted from the Stephen King novel, will be shown at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the downtown branch of Spokane Public Library, 906 W. Main Ave. The event is free and open to the public. Call (509) 444-5300.

Book talk

“Auntie’s Morning Book Group (“A Sudden Country: A Novel,” by Karen Fisher), 11 a.m. Tuesday, Auntie’s Bookstore, Main and Washington. Call (509) 838-0206.

“Auntie’s Evening Book Group (“Plain Truth,” by Jodi Picoult), 7 p.m. Tuesday, Auntie’s Bookstore.

“Auntie’s Youth Book Group (“Fly by Night,” by Francis Hardinge), 2 p.m. Saturday, Auntie’s Bookstore.

The reader board

“Chuck Lehman (“Angels Three Six: Confessions of a Cold War Fighter Pilot”), reading, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Auntie’s Bookstore.

“Michael D. Yates (“Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate: An Economist’s Travelogue”), reading, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Auntie’s Bookstore.

“T. Dawn Richard (“A Wrinkle in Crime”), reading, 7:30 p.m. Friday, Auntie’s Bookstore.

“Kary Lee (illustrator of Stacy A. Nyikos’ book “Dizzy”), signing, 1 p.m. Saturday, Auntie’s Bookstore.