Arts Center

The 2009 Mid-Columbia Literary Festival is sponsored by Columbia Basin College and its partners. LitFest 2009 will host an impressive list of authors covering a wide range of styles and approaches. They will include author presentations, book signings, workshops, readings, and much more.

Jeannine Hall Gailey and Paul Brians
Poetry and Lecture
Thursday, February 12
7 PM, HUB main stage

Jeannine Hall Gailey's first book of poetry, Becoming the Villainess, was published by Steel Toe Books in 2006. Her work has been featured on NPR's The Writer's Almanac and on Verse Daily. Her chapbook, Female Comic Book Superheroes, is available from Pudding House Press. Her inspirations often come from mythological sources, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses or The Tales of Genji, folk and fairy tale collections, and of course, comic books.

Paul Brians, Emeritus Professor of English at Washington State University Pullman, has taught about and researched science fiction in both fiction and film over several decades. His best-known publication on the subject is Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction (Kent State University Press, second edition here). He has lectured on science fiction-related topics in Germany, the former Soviet Union, and several U.S. cities, including a presentation at the Seattle Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. His lecture demonstrates with stills and clips the profound influence of the old Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon movie serials on first Star Wars trilogy, with a focus on how George Lucas's depiction of Princess Leia is remarkably more conservative in its depiction of a female protagonist than the older films.

Scott Nadelson
Fiction
Thursday, March 12
7 PM, HUB main stage

Scott Nadelson is author of two story collections, The Cantor's Daughter, winner of the Samuel Goldberg & Sons Fiction Prize for Emerging Jewish Writers, and Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories, winner of the Oregon Book Award for short fiction and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers' Award. He teaches at Willamette University.

Samuel Green
Washington state Poet Laureate
Wednesday, April 22
7 PM, HUB main stage

Named Washington's first-ever Poet Laureate in December 2007, Sam Green is a native of Washington and resides on remote Waldron Island. A distinguished poet and author of ten poetry collections, including his book The Grace of Necessity (released November, 2007) which won the Washington Book Award for Poetry in 2008,  his work has appeared in numerous publications. For more than 30 years, he has served as editor of a small press focusing on the work of Washington poets. Green has served as a visiting poet in a wide range of settings, including universities, public schools, libraries, mental health centers, correctional facilities, and poetry festivals. He has been a visiting poet and poetry teacher at Seattle University for several years and is active with the Skagit River Poetry Festivals.

In a time when it's never been easier to reproduce text via computers and copy machines (anyone remember the sweet smell of ditto machines? the fragile stencils of mimeograph?), many people aren't aware how simple it is to put together an elegant chapbook. This workshop teaches three useful variations of the simple chapbook (or pamphlet), as well as a one-page magical booklet. He'll also cover a brief history of bookmaking and cover the parts of a book, answering such questions as, "What's a bastard title? What goes on a title page? Where does the acknowledgments page go, and what's appropriate there? and Does the recto know what the verso is doing?"

Sandra Cisneros
Poetry/Fiction
Tuesday, May 5
7 PM, Gjerde Center

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Cisneros', The House on Mango Street, which won the American Book Award in 1985. Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1954. She and her six brothers grew up in Mexico and Chicago. Cisneros earned a B.A. in English from Loyola University of Chicago and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. Her books of poetry include Loose Woman, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, The Rodrigo Poems, and Bad Boys. She is also the author of Caramelo; Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991), which won the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the Lannan Foundation Literary Award; and a bilingual children's book, Hairs: Pelitos. Her articles and reviews have appeared in publications including Glamour, The New York Times, and Revista Chicano-Riquena. Among her honors are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation. She has taught at many colleges and universities, including the University of California, University of Michigan, and the University of New Mexico. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.

Celebrating Young Writers
Saturday, May 9
1 PM, Barnes & Noble (Columbia Center Mall)

Participate in readings and presentation of awards for the CBC Writing Competition and Mid-Columbia Reading Foundation. Open to elementary, middle and high school students. Free ice cream and pizza!

The Music and Poetry of Ancient Mexico
Gerardo Calderon and Cindy Williams Gutierrez
Poetry/Music
Thursday, May 21
7 PM, HUB main stage

Originally from Mexico, Gerardo Calderon studied classical guitar at the Escuela Superior de Musica in Mexico City and theory and composition at Portland Community College. He plays a variety of Latin stringed instruments, as well as pre-Columbian instruments such as clay flutes, silvato de viento, teponaztles, huehuetl, tambores de agua, and tenabaris. Gerardo is the musical director of Grupo Condor Latin American Folk Music and has toured all across the United States, Canada, and Europe. Cindy Williams Gutierrez is a poet-dramatist who collaborates with artists in music, theatre, and visual art. Her poems and reviews have been published in many literary journals. She is currently finishing her first verse play, A Dialogue of Flower and Song. Three of her plays have been produced by the Miracle Theatre and Insight Out Theatre Collective in Portland, Oregon. Cindy earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast Program, with an emphasis on ancient Mexican poetics.

Join poet Cindy Williams Gutierrez and musician Gerardo Calderon for a journey to the spirit of ancient Mexico. Through a live performance of Aztec-styled poetry and music, this collaborative presentation engages in a haunting dialogue with "the ones who have gone before." The presentation features a series of poems written in the mythic voices of Nahua poet-princes and princesses accompanied by Mexican indigenous music. Musical virtuoso Calderon performs Mesoamerican rhythms on water drums, turtle shells and butterfly cocoon rattles, and other worldly melodies on clay flutes and wind whistles, to transform Cindy's poems into the "flower and song" of the ancients.