Student Spotlight:
Laine Houghton
MA in Literature and Writing

Laine Houghton is a graduate student in the Masters of Literature and Writing program.  Laine will graduate in June 2020.

What projects have you worked on that you would like to highlight?

In the realm of school work, I’m in the middle of my thesis: I’m looking at how Faulkner’s centering of the plantation house aesthetic in the gothic undermines his ideological critiques of white supremacy. 

I’m applying to WSU’s Doctoral program of American Studies and Culture this December. I’ve begun slowly accumulating research on the kinship rituals of white supremacists, most notably their ‘dog whistling’ culture. But I’ve recently become interested in the possible astroturfing going on in the quarantine protests.

Outside of school-however-I’m working on my comic series Olympys Weeping, an action adventure sci-fi comic. If sci-fi Indiana Jones had a love child with super punk Fast and the Furious, it would be Olympys Weeping; or most accurately it would be my main characters Lania’kea and Vulcan Sprig.

How have your EWU experiences shaped you?

I came to Eastern in the fall of 2013 right out of my senior year of high school, so EWU has been a site of monumental change for me — and that’s not just talking about degree swaps. As much as we shape our surroundings, they also shape us. I wouldn’t be the individual I was if it were not for the experiences I’ve had on campus: EWU women’s rugby team, the protests, and the professors alike.

What important lessons or tips do you have for future students?

Start connecting with your classmates early — most likely you’ll be in classes with them for a few years anyways and when you do finally talk to them, you’ll kick yourself for not doing so earlier. They are experiencing the same things you are — lean into it!

Other than that, just remember to play — remember that this is all a learning experience and part of that experience is growing pains. Play allows us to stretch, to laugh, to cry, so that we don’t become overwhelmed by the state that is our sovereign minds and the world right now. Reaching out to your classmates can help with this too — because I can guarantee they need a laugh as much as you do.

Is there anything else you would like to share with readers?

The moment we find ourselves in right now is not easy; no one should kid themselves that it is. The only way we pull through this difficult time stronger than we went into it, is if we support one another. I’ve been lucky enough to be a member of an amazing cohort that truly supports each other as a family. We are not islands unto our own — we are an ecosystem: dependent on one another for our continued growth and beauty. 

Student Spotlight:
Rose Hall
MA in English Literature and Writing

Rose Hall is a graduate student in the Master’s program in English Literature and Writing. She graduates in June 2020.

What projects have you worked on that you would like to highlight?

There are so many exciting projects I’ve gotten to work on. Last year, I got to write and present a project on Victorian literature. It was about how Bram Stoker’s Dracula and George Du Maurier’s Trilby expose the strange way Victorian’s view their relationships as food and hinted about how we use similar language when discussing food and relationships as well. This project was particularly exciting because I got to travel to London and Paris afterward on a class trip to see the culture preserved in museums myself. 

The other project I really want to highlight happened earlier this school year. I collaborated with Megan Favaro and Laine Houghton in the creation of a video game called Little Women in Horror. The game requires students to play through pop culture and literature that feature stereotypes surrounding women in horror. The project was so exciting for me because it was completely different from anything I have attempted to do in my degree. The game required us to learn a software called Gdevelop, which provided a lot of commands and functions for us. We wanted to create a completely original game, customize it to our exact specifications, and had no coding experience. We had to spend days learning how to string together command lines, dialogue trees, and scene variables. It was one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever done but really fun and rewarding. 

How have your EWU experiences shaped you?

What this program has instilled in me is grit, unwavering persistence and passion in the face of impossible situations. We are asked unanswerable questions every day by the individuals who make up this program. In fact, it is really the individuals who have shaped me.  This school is not always a space free of discrimination and hate. I’ve been let down and I’ve seen my students and peers let down by the politics and institution that is higher education. 

However, in this program, there are really inspiring peers and teachers who have taught me that we need to relentlessly care about problems with no perfect solution. These people in the English program, who have always seen the best in me even when we challenge each other, have shaped me into the kind of person who never gives up on herself, as a student and an unanswerable question. 

What important lessons or tips do you have for future students?

Yes, start getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. English degrees ask you to push boundaries and stumble your way through unmarked paths. It is intellectually and emotionally challenging, but don’t be afraid to lean on your teachers and peers for support, even if you don’t agree all the time.

There are so many career paths you can take with an English degree if you market your skills effectively. I’ve applied for all kinds of jobs, including writing jobs, college instructing, advising, even HR and recruiting positions. It might not be the exact job title but in five years I’ll still be an English teacher. That is I will still be having tough conversations, asking questions, motivating people to be what they want to be, and helping them to say what they want to say. Whether it is in an academic setting or not, I will be an English teacher.

Is there anything else you would like to share with readers?

I had a really low reading level throughout grade school, and it still takes me extra time to process written words. However, here I am with a degree that requires significant amounts of reading, and I wanted to say thank you to all the teachers, friends, and family members for being patient and supportive over the years. As a teacher myself, I hope we can all be supportive and patient resources for our students and each other as we adjust to the changes the Coronavirus has forced upon us.

Student Spotlight: Lauren Gilmore

BA in English: Literary Studies

Lauren Gilmore is a student in the English Bachelor of Arts program with an emphasis in Literary Studies. She will graduate in March 2021.

What projects have you worked on that you would like to highlight?

Right now, I am preparing to teach a class at Spark Central for teens and adults called Reconstructing Cityscapes: A Creative Introduction to Critical and Cultural Theory. It was going to be in-person in May, but because of COVID-19 I am adapting it as an online class. The course is designed to offer critical tools that have the potential to fundamentally reorganize our society to people who are excluded from traditional academic spaces. I am interested in finding more ways to connect with the public. I am also currently preparing an article about Stephen King, arguing for the relevance of #MeToo and Twitter discourse in addressing embodied authorship and resistance in commercial horror texts.

Additionally, I’m working on several creative projects, including a revision of a young adult horror novel. I have also been working with a student-led organization to put together a social justice symposium, Pencils Down: Confronting Hate with and in the Humanities, which has been a really rewarding way to strengthen partnerships between students and the wider community. We are working now on finding the best ways to digitize this work, and will additionally be hosting student-focused support groups over Zoom.

As far as past projects, I worked on a Digital Humanities project in a course taught by Kate Crane and Ian Green that explored the social and historical hauntings of places. We created digital projects that corresponded to different physical places on campus that could be accessed by QR Code. For another course, I curated and printed a zine titled Carrion that explored the potential for social change from within Humanities departments through a collection of personal essays that addressed the academy’s role in wider civic discussions. This included participants from Eastern, as well as the wider community, and students and faculty from universities in other states.

I was attempting to model a form of scholarship that is rooted in listening, though this has guided a lot of my projects and not necessarily come into clarity. Before coming to Eastern, I published a collection of poetry, Outdancing the Universe, with University of Hell Press, and organized and completed a cross-country poetry tour where I performed at various poetry slams, bookstores, and other venues. While at Eastern, I completed another collection of poetry, and the manuscript is currently under consideration with my publisher.

How have your EWU experiences shaped you?

I would say that I’ve become a lot more confident in my ability to communicate and think critically. Before college, most of my writing projects were creative (poetry and fiction) but through my classes I’ve become more and more excited about improving my academic and argumentative writing skills. It’s also become incredibly clear to me that I would like to be an educator, at some level and at some capacity, because I find it to be a very worthwhile, as well as devastating and exhausting, joy.

What important lessons or tips do you have for future students?

I think it’s really important to find your allies, both students and faculty, and take care of your mental health. Hold onto the texts and authors and friends that remind you that the work you are pursuing is urgent. Try your best to remain diligent about working against a scarcity mindset. The competition isn’t between you and other students or writers, but between all of us and all of those forces that work against us.

Is there anything else you would like to share with readers?

Lastly, I try to remember that universities can be very insulated, distorted spaces that somehow make things seem both less and more important than they are at the same time. To combat this, I try to continually remind myself that earnest effort in this field is for improving our sense of the stakes, becoming more articulate communicators, creating something we think is beautiful, allying with wider communities, etc. and not the way to join an intellectual elite or elevate yourself above other forms of knowledge production.

2019 Get Lit! Programs
Celebrate 21 Years.

Get Lit! Programs celebrated its 21^st year this April with dozens of events, outstanding authors, festival-inspired food and drink, and our second annual book fair at the Montvale Event Center.

We presented events throughout downtown Spokane, Coeur D’Alene, and on Eastern’s campuses in both Cheney and Spokane. We are thankful to our many sponsors, including the many Eastern programs and departments who helped us to bring in New York Times best-selling author Roxane Gay for our headlining reading.

We were also lucky enough to present Tommy Orange, winner of the PEN/Hemingway award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Kaveh Akbar, a major new voice in contemporary poetry; Claudia Castro Luna, Washington State’s Poet Laureate; and many other writers with a diverse range of important stories to tell.

Surveys showed that hundreds of our attendees were attending the festival for the first time. As Get Lit! continues to grow, it is our mission to continue to prioritize diversity and to serve EWU students along with our vibrant literary community.

This year we presented free events to students in EWU’s Intro to Literature course, American Indian Studies students, and others, including students from Cheney High School, On Track Academy, the Community Colleges of Spokane, and more. We also held special private events for students and young people, including sending writers to work one-on-one with patients at Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital.

Get Lit! also received many honors this year, including an Inclusion Award from Spokane Arts for our dedication to bringing diverse authors to the festival each year from our community and beyond. We also won a Washington State Governor’s Arts Award for our contributions to the cultural vitality of our state. We were also nominated for EWU’s Diversity and Inclusion Award.

Visit our website for more information on becoming a sponsor for next year’s festival, or how to work with us to bring high-quality educational programming from best-selling writers to your classrooms. We are also currently open for submissions for Get Lit! 2020. Learn more and submit via getlitfestival.org.