Summer Stories 2024: The Falls

Now in its 11th year, The Spokesman-Review's Summer Stories series is visiting The Falls. The Falls will feature works by acclaimed regional writers Shawn Vestal, Tiffany Midge, Sam Ligon, Jess Walter and Kate Lebo. This year's series, which runs through Labor Day weekend, will feature four first-time Summer Series participants: "Wild and Distant Seas" author Tara Karr Roberts, "The Strange Beautiful" author Carla Crujido and Eastern Washington University master's of fine arts creative writing students Liina Koivula and Shraya Singh.

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Latest Stories

‘Escape Velocity’

By Tara Karr Roberts

Jessy uses her lawn-mowing money to buy a map of Idaho and a map of Washington at the quick stop. She cuts them apart, glues them together on a piece of cardboard like a puzzle, and measures out a hundred kilometers along Highway 2 from her …
‘Destiny Falls’

By Carla Crujido

1.

I call myself an Expo widow, even though my husband, Stan, is very much alive. Two years ago, he joined the Expo ’74 Commission and became a ghost in our marriage. One year ago, he moved us into a penthouse apartment in the newly built …
‘Aatankwadi’

By Shraya Singh

As I listen to my mother talk, I’m glad that I’m running and that the sound of my steps hitting the asphalt, the undulating rhythm of my breathing, can mask the groans and sighs escaping my lips. Her fanaticism, talking about the elections in India and how …
‘Below the Dam’

By Shawn Vestal

We peel back the chain-link fence beneath the rusted sign that reads No Trespassing! Area May Flood at Any Time! Beside the words on the placard, a cute, curvy wave bears down with deadly intensity upon a stick figure, arm raised in stick-figure desperation.

“That guy’s dead,” …
‘Avoid the Darkness’

By Liina Koivula

Shirley hustled her kid through the door of my apartment building and told me the train was coming in, the one with nuclear warheads our action group was protesting.

“I need to be there,” I said. My body had no worthy use besides obstructing forces of annihilation. …
‘The Princeling’s Keeper’

By Samuel Ligon

My people could not believe they’d ever tire of your M&M’s or Marlboro cigarettes or brightly lit stores filled with whiskey and vodka – too much, even for Russians to drink. Or the disgrace of your President Nixon. Or the heroism of your Patty Hearst. Or the …
‘A Mystery or a Problem or a Garden’

By Kate Lebo

The neighbors want to put a gazebo at the back of their yard, near our garage. “Sounds fun,” I say. “For who?” says Jordan, whose job it will be to build the thing.
‘Smleech, Smleech, Smleech’

By Tiffany Midge

Whenever you are reminded of the falls you think of salmon – baked, grilled, or your favorite, roasted on cedar planks over coals in the open air. During afternoon foods lab you ruminated out loud with a classmate about your dream of opening an Indigenous cuisine restaurant, …
‘Swabbies’

By Jess Walter

In the spring of 1974, I lost my basketball scholarship to Gonzaga University. We’d sleepwalked through another 13-13 season, 7-7 in the Big Sky Conference – GU’s sixth straight season of middling hoops. Coach Buonchristiani had inherited most of us from the previous coach, and he was eager …