At the Library: Native author in Colfax for luncheon on Nov. 1
Join us this November to celebrate Everybody Reads and Native American Heritage Month as we invite author Beth Piatote to discuss her book, “The Beadworkers,” at several locations across the Palouse and Lewiston-Clarkston Valley November 1-4. “The Beadworkers” is a short story collection set in Native Idaho and the Northwest.
We will be hosting Piatote for a luncheon to meet the author at The Center at Colfax Library at noon on Nov. 1. Those attending will hear a reading from Piatote and engage in a community conversation with the author during the question-and-answer portion of the event.
Residents can order an optional catered lunch to be delivered from Serfes Foods at www.whitcolib.org/er2022lunch/ or by calling (509) 397-4366 by Tuesday. You can choose between a fall turkey sandwich with cranberry-sage cream cheese or a vegetarian harvest bowl with roasted butternut squash, feta, pumpkin seeds, and more autumn goodness. Both meals come with an apple-spice cake for dessert. Attendees are also welcome to bring their own lunch or simply come to listen.
Residents can pick up their copy of “The Beadworkers” at any branch of Whitman County Library as well as local participating libraries and bookstores. We even have extra copies of the Everybody Reads book in preparation for this event, but there is no need to have read the book to attend.
Everybody Reads is a regional program that builds a shared reading experience around a single book to foster curiosity, spark discussion, and celebrate a love of story and engagement.
About “The Beadworkers”: Piatote’s story collection grounds its stories in the landscapes and life worlds of Native Idaho and the Northwest, exploring the inventive and unforgettable pattern of Native American life in the contemporary world. Told with humor, subtlety, and spareness, the mixed-genre works of this short story collection find unifying themes in the strength of kinship, the pulse of longing, and the language of return. Inventive and filled with vibrant characters, “The Beadworkers” draws on Indigenous aesthetics and forms to offer a powerful, sustaining vision of Native life.
About the author: Piatote is an associate professor at the University of California – Berkeley, a creative writer of fiction, poetry, plays and essays and an Indigenous language revitalization activist/healer specializing in Nez Perce language and literature. Beth is Nez Perce, enrolled with Colville Confederated Tribes. She is involved in ongoing efforts to repatriate ancestors from museums as part of a larger movement for reparation and redress.
For a full schedule of events surrounding Everybody Reads, visit everybody-reads.org.
Sarah Phelan-Blamires is the adult services librarian at Whitman County Library.
