Vestal to read March 26 at CdA’s Well-Read Moose

It’s been not-quite a year since the Well-Read Moose opened in Coeur d’Alene’s Riverstone neighborhood.

And now, the independent bookseller is ramping up for a series of author events.

Next up, on March 26, will be Spokesman-Review columnist Shawn Vestal, who will read from his debut story collection, “Godforsaken Idaho.” That’s the book that won Vestal the prestigous PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction.

The reading will be from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the store, which is located at 2048 N. Main St. in Coeur d’Alene. For details, visit the store’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ TheWellReadMoose), and look for announcements of future author events in the Literary Calendar in the Sunday Spokesman-Review.

Meanwhile, that same night …

At Auntie’s Bookstore, author/playwright/ screenwriter Ian Weir will read from his latest novel, “Will Starling.”

The book, which was named a top 100 book of 2014 by Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper, is set in London in 1816. Its hero, Will Starling, is a surgeon just returned from battlefield duty in Europe who struggles to build a civilian practice. Critics have called Weir’s second novel “subversive,” and “a rollicking good yarn.” The Toronto Star said it’s a “note-perfect historical novel of body snatching, murder and evil fun.”

Weir, who was born in North Carolina, raised in Kamloops, B.C., and now lives outside Vancouver, will read at the downtown store, 402 W. Main Ave., at 7:15 p.m. March 26. For details, call Auntie’s at (509) 838-0206 or visit www.auntiesbooks.com.

Poetry in Pullman

Kathleen Flenniken, the former Washington poet laureate, will deliver the keynote speech during Washington State University’s annual Women’s Recognition and Symposium later this month.

Flenniken, who graduated from WSU in 1983 with a degree in civil engineering, worked at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation for a time before she discovered poetry. “Plume,” her 2012 poetry collection about Hanford and her hometown of Richland, was a Washington State Book Award winner.

Her talk will be from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on March 24 in the CUB Ballroom on campus. Tickets are $15 through http://womenof distinction.wsu.edu/ formtool/Signup/ index.castle?formid=5.

Robinson wins fiction prize again

Marilynne Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and Sandpoint native, on Thursday was named the winner of the National Book Critics Circle fiction prize for her 2014 novel, “Lila.”

The prize is awarded each year by members of the critics circle – nearly 700 book reviewers and book section editors.