Spokane Is Reading’s Community Read for 2024 Is “Perma Red” by Debra Magpie Earling

Posted on June 11, 2024 at 6:00 am

Spokane Is Reading 2024

For more than 20 years, Spokane Is Reading has hosted an annual community-wide read in which the greater Spokane community has been invited to read and discuss a common book together and hear from the author. This year’s selection is Debra Magpie Earling’s novel Perma Red, recently named by The Atlantic as one of “The Great American Novels.”

Be sure to add the Spokane Is Reading selection to your summer reading list. You can check out a copy of Perma Red from your library as well as the eBook and audiobook versions through OverDrive and with the Libby app. For a list of read-alike titles and related topics, check out this curated booklist.

This fall, Debra Magpie Earling will be in Spokane Valley and Downtown Spokane to read and discuss her work at two free public events. After the reading and discussion, she will be available to answer questions from the audience and sign books. Copies of Perma Red will be available for purchase from Auntie’s Bookstore at both events.

Spokane Is Reading Author Talk: Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling

For teens & adults

SPOKANE VALLEY LIBRARY
22 N Herald Rd, Spokane Valley
Thursday, Oct 24, 1pm
Doors open at 12:15pm.
Free parking is available.

SPOKANE PUBLIC LIBRARY – CENTRAL
906 W Main Ave, Spokane
Thursday, Oct 24, 7pm
Doors open at 6:15pm.
Paid parking is available in the library’s underground lot. Paid, metered parking is available on the streets until 7pm (free after 7pm).

About the Book

Dreaming of both escape and belonging on the Flathead Indian Reservation in the 1940s, Louise White Elk, a determined and beautiful young woman, comes of age as she is pursued by three dangerous men who will do anything to possess her—police officer Charlie Kicking Woman, the charismatic Baptiste, and Harvey Stoner, who owns nearly everything around him.

Praised by The Seattle Times as “haunting and memorable,” Perma Red has been awarded the Spur Award and Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for best first novel from the Western Writers Association and the American Book Award.

About the Author

Spokane-born author Debra Magpie Earling is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as professor emeritus of the University of Montana and a member of the Bitterroot Salish tribe. Her most recent novel, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea, has been awarded the Montana Book Award and the Pacific Northwest Book Award.

You can learn more about Debra Magpie Earling at the Milkweed Editions website and about Spokane Is Reading at spokaneisreading.org.

Tags: adults, books, community, reading, spokane is reading, teens