Get Lit! Festival
April 10th – 13th, 2025
Get Lit! Programs is a non-profit literary arts organization housed within Eastern Washington University.
We are responsible for the Get Lit! Festival, Washington State’s longest-running annual literary festival, which has grown over the last 27 years from a single day of readings to, historically, a week-long celebration of literature. Get Lit! is currently a four-day festival, Thursday through Sunday, which includes full days of readings, craft classes, panel discussions, literary happy hours, virtual events, a book fair, and more— all offered for free or at low-cost. Each festival brings a diverse lineup of highly sought-after authors to our region, while also celebrating our local literary talent.
In addition to the festival, Get Lit! also helps to promote EWU’s Visiting Writers Series and works closely with EWU’s Writers in the Community program, which places graduate students into local spaces of need to teach creative writing.
It is our mission, both in our festival programming and our educational outreach, to celebrate the arts, amplify diverse voices, and empower creativity.
Save the date for 2026: April 16-19 *Sunday, April 19th will be virtual.
Get Lit! is a non-profit organization and relies on grants, community partners, sponsors, donations, ticket and merchandise sales, as well as other fundraising efforts in order to run our annual festival and educational outreach programs. We also rely on interns and volunteers from the community. If you would like to help support our program, please donate online today. To learn how to sponsor an event or festival author, and/or get involved as a volunteer, email us at getlit@ewu.edu.
History
Founded in 1998, Get Lit! Programs is a non-profit literary arts organization housed within Eastern Washington University’s College of Arts, Letters, and Education. Get Lit! Programs is responsible for the Get Lit! Festival, the region’s only annual literary festival, which has grown from a single day of back-to-back readings to a celebration of literature that features over forty events and sixty authors and brings in thousands of attendees from Spokane and the surrounding region. The festival presents a diverse line up of highly sought-after authors while also highlighting our talented local literary community. With help from generous community partners and sponsors, the festival offers free and low cost readings, writing workshops, craft classes, poetry slams, panel discussions, literary happy hours, and much more.
Get Lit! has historically run many different community outreach programs funded by grant dollars, including Writers in Residence, a program that places published authors in local schools to teach 10-week creative writing courses to students who may not normally have access to a creative writing curriculum. We hope to be able to bring back some of these outreach programs in the future.
In 2023, Get Lit! Programs celebrated its 25th anniversary, an exciting accomplishment that shows us how beloved Get Lit! is in our community. It continues to be our mission, both in our festival programming and our educational outreach, to advance the arts, celebrate diversity, and empower creativity.
Part of our goal each year is to partner with local businesses and artists. Here are some of the artists we’ve been fortunate enough to work with over the past few years.
Our 2025 artwork was designed by Kate Reed!
Our 2022 artwork was designed by Nick Malara!
Our 2023 artwork was designed by Tiffany Patterson!
Our 2024 artwork was designed by Reinaldo Gil Zambrano!
Staff: 2024-2025
Kate Peterson earned her MFA from Eastern Washington University in Spokane, where she now works as Director of Get Lit! Programs. Her poetry and prose has been published in many literary magazines including Crab Creek Review, Rattle, Sugar House Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Packingtown Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Grist won the Floating Bridge Chapbook Prize and was published in 2016. Contact Kate via kpeterson4@ewu.edu or 509-828-1435.
Mackenzie Draper is an agender writer from the Pacific Northwest. They fell in love with reading as a young child, and, ever since learning what an editor does, has always dreamed of making that their career. Mackenzie got their AA at SFCC and their BA at Gonzaga University. They live with their fiancee and two cats in Spokane and attend Eastern Washington University’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program as a first year fiction student. Mackenzie can be reached at getlit@ewu.edu.
Ava Kerst graduated from Whitworth University with a degree in Elementary Education before pursuing Eastern’s MFA program. She is a first-year fiction student who combines her love for writing and young people by writing about young people. When she isn’t conjuring up story ideas, she’s probably playing her cello, winning at board games, or snuggling with her eternally tiny cat, Casper.
After a very short career as a pro beach volleyball player and a long career in private equity, a stunning fall from grace forced Bruce Asper to leave that life behind and start over clean. Always an observer and reader, he endeavored to become a writer. He called upon his decades observing the cast of characters in his hometown of Newport Beach and the people he met on his journey of recovery to write Local Summer, his first manuscript. During Covid, he ran beach camps and worked as a Sober Companion so he could write daily. He applied to MFA programs, eventually landing at Eastern Washington. Bruce resides in Spokane, where he can be found observing Lilac City on his vintage Schwinn while listening to profane hip hop.
Emily Ladd is a long-time Spokanite and a first-year fiction student in EWU’s MFA program. When they aren’t writing or reading, Emily can be found organizing local writing meet ups, moonlighting as a dog trainer, and exploring different ways to cook potatoes.
Sarah Rooney is a poet who created “Speakeasy” a spoken word open mic that started in March of 2022 at Bijou South. They co-organize Foray for The Arts with Greg Bem. Foray is an organization that puts on free multiple disciplinary events at different locally owned businesses featuring local performers. They are pursuing their MFA in Creative Writing at EWU with the hope to refine their craft while putting together their next collection. Their first chapbook, Mother Media was published in October of 2023 by Grey Dog Press. They’ve been featured at local events like Emerge and Terrain. They love being part of an active, creative community that inspires people to collaborate, communicate, and grow.
Get Lit! Programs employs one full-time staff member, and one graduate student assistant from The MFA at EWU. The program relies heavily on student interns and volunteers from The MFA at EWU as well as other local colleges and universities. Get Lit! strives to create an interactive learning environment that connects students with members of the community. Special thanks to all of our interns! If you are interested in becoming a Get Lit! intern or in volunteering for the festival, please contact us: getlit@ewu.edu.
