Northwest Arts Review

Charlie Pepiton is the Producing Artistic Director of Square Top Theatre and Assistant Professor of Theatre and Dance at Gonzaga University. Square Top Theatre is the recipient of a Spokane Arts Grant Award (SAGA) for their upcoming production, Scent of a Thousand Rains. 

There will be three shows in the Spokane area, two at Mt. Spokane's Vista House on September 13 and 14 and a third at the Downtown Spokane Public Library on October 3. 

Shann Ray is a poet, short story writer, and novelist who grew up in Montana and Alaska and spent part of his childhood on the Northern Cheyenne reservation. He is the author of seven books including most recently a short story collection, Blood Fire Vapor Smoke and a poetry collection, Sweetclover, both of which were published this year.

Steve Almond is the author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction including the New York Times best-sellers, Candyfreak and Against Football. He was also the host of the popular podcast Dear Sugars with fellow author Cheryl Strayed.

Almond's latest book, William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life is part of the "Bookmarked" series from Ig Publishers, in which authors talk about their favorite novels and how they've impacted their life and work. The subject of Almond's book is the 1965 novel Stoner by John Williams. 

McCarrthy moved to idaho in 1977 to work trail crew in the Selway-Bitteroot Wilderness for the U.S. Forest Service. He later ran a range crew and worked on ranches in Hells Canyon and the Salmon River country. He started writing about winderness as a reporter for he Lewiston Morning Tribune, where he also covered cops, courts, arts, and agriculture for 10 years. He swited to environmental organizing and advocacy for two decades, as the conservation director for the Idaho Conservation league and Idaho Forest campaign durector for the Wilderness Society.

John Keeble is the author of eight books, including the new novel The Appointment: The Tale of Adaline Carson, a fictionalized account of the daughter of the famous frontiersman Kit Carson. His previous novels include Yellowfish, Broken Ground and The Shadows of Owls. His short fiction collection, Nocturnal America, won the Prairie Schooner Prize for short fiction and was published by the University of Nebraska press. He is also the author of Out of the Channel, the definitive study of the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Gregory Spatz is the author of a new collection of "bookmatched" stories and novellas, What Could Be Saved, and of the novels Inukshuk, Fiddler's Dream and No One But Us, and the short story collections Half As Happy and Wonderful Tricks. His stories have appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, Glimmer Train Stories, Shenandoah, Epoch, Kenyon Review and New England Review.

The Spokane Print and Publishing Center is a new organization located in the West Central neighborhood of Spokane. According to their Facebook page, "The main function of the SPPC is to teach you how to do all the printing and publishing things, but that’s not all! Writing, bookbinding, screenprinting, writing, editing, design, RPG and table-top game design, zines, letterpress, printmaking..."

Simeon Mills is a writer, cartoonist, and teacher. His novel The Obsoletes is just out from Skybound Books.

Washington Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna has launched an interactive map which highlights poems about places in the state, connected by a network of highways. You can see the map, and submit your own poem at WashingtonPoeticRoutes.com.

The national finals of Poetry Out Loud, a poetry recitation contest for high school students, takes place April 30th and May 1st in Washington, DC. After competitions at both the regional and state levels, just one outstanding student is chosen to represent each state and US territory. For Washington, that student is junior Madeline Luther, from the small north central Washington town of Okanogan.