Events

Tiffany Midge|Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's

10/01/2019 - 7:00pm to 8:00pm

October kicks off not with a bang but with CHEESECAKE. Join former Moscow poet laureate Tiffany Midge for her launch of BURY MY HEART AT CHUCK E. CHEESE. Midge will be reading selections from her humorous slices of life. Sarah Vowell praised Midge as “a wry, astute charmer with an eye for detail and an ear for the scruffy rhythms of American lingo.”

Tiffany Midge is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and was raised in the Pacific Northwest. She is a former columnist for Indian Country Today and taught writing and composition for Northwest Indian College. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, the Offing, Waxwing, Moss, and World Literature Today. She’s a Pushcart Prize recipient, an award-winning poet of three collections of poetry and the author of the memoir Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese. Midge resides in Moscow, Idaho, where she served as the poet laureate. She aspires to be the Distinguished Writer in Residence in Seattle’s Space Needle.

Paula Coomer|Somebody Should Have Scolded the Girl

10/10/2019 - 7:00pm to 8:00pm

Please join us for the Palouse region release party for SOMEBODY SHOULD HAVE SCOLDED THE GIRL, a short story collection by long-time regional poet and author Paula Coomer.

Paula Coomer is a poet and literary fiction writer who occasionally writes about food and health. Books include JAGGED EDGE OF THE SKY, DOVE CREEK, SUMMER OF GOVERNMENT CHEESE, NURSES WHO LOVE ENGLISH, and BLUE MOON VEGETARIAN, among others. A long-time teacher of writing, Ms. Coomer has been a nominee for the Pulitzer and other awards. She lives in the tiny village of Garfield, Washington, where she coaches writers and organizes and facilitates Clearwater Writers, a writing retreat program on the Wild and Scenic Clearwater River near Syringa, Idaho.

Photography, Performance, Politics: Reimagining American History

10/24/2019 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm

This joint book talk by Prof. Matthew Fox-Amato and Prof. Rebecca Scofield delves into their groundbreaking studies of the histories of slavery and marginalized rodeo communities. With presentations from Fox-Amato's *Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America* and Scofield's *Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West*, these two scholars illustrate that history was not simply captured in photography and performance, but was shaped by it.

Born and raised in Emmett, Idaho, Rebecca Scofield holds a PhD in American Studies from Harvard University. She is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Idaho, specializing in 20th century American history, the history of the US West, and the history of gender and sexuality. She is currently a 2019 Whiting Public Engagement Fellow, the primary investigator of The Gay Rodeo Oral History Project and co-creator of the curated online exhibit, the Voices of Gay Rodeo.

Matthew Fox-Amato is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Idaho, where he teaches courses in American history, visual culture, and race and ethnicity. He is the author of *Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America* (Oxford University Press, 2019). He received a B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California.

Elsa Kirsten Peters|The Whole Story of Climate

10/26/2019 - 4:00pm to 5:00pm

Please join us for a book signing for the paperback edition of The Whole Story of Climate, by local geologist Elsa Kirsten Peters.

Dr. Peters grew up in Pullman, was educated in geology at Princeton and Harvard, and taught science courses at Washington State University. She is retired and devotes her time to volunteer work and long walks with friends and dogs. The Whole Story of Climate is her eighth published book. Earlier books range from murder mysteries to college textbooks and a collection of syndicated newspaper columns (as the "Rock Doc").