Get Lit! Festival 2023 Recap

For three years, the Spokane Chapter has supported the annual Get Lit! Festival in Spokane, working with them to bring Japanese American authors to the festival. Get Lit!, a non-profit literary arts organization housed within Eastern Washington University, is a four-day festival with readings, writing workshops, craft classes, open mics, panel discussions, literary happy hours, and more.

Our mission is to support authors who share the history, traditions, culture and experiences of Japanese Americans. This year we sponsored “Celebrating the Japanese American Experience with Betsy Aoki and Elaine Cockrell” on April 23, 2023. Betsy Aoki is a poet, fiction writer and game producer, who blends technology and the Asian American experience in her writing. Elaine Cockrell wrote the fiction book “A Shrug of the Shoulders”, about the Portland assembly center, internment camps, and the Farm Security Administration labor camp near Nyssa, Oregon.

Photo left to right: Betsy Aoki, Rod Tamura (Board Member of the Spokane Chapter JACL) and Elaine Cockrell