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This year's Spokane International Film Festival (SpIFF) runs from March 6 to 8, 2026.The festival includes over one dozen feature films plus live interviews and blocks of themed programming like Worlds of Animation, Queer Shorts, Best of the Northwest and the new Docs and Donuts series.Aaron Spickelmire, a longtime SpIFF planner and coordinator, talks about some of this year's special premieres and events.

Liz Hooker and Dave Aaron join us for this week's episode. Liz is the vice president of marketing and programming for the Downtown Spokane Partnership, and Dave is a local visual artist.They came in to talk about a new initiative that the DSP launched earlier this year called First Friday Face-Off.The monthly event has two artists independently create an original themed work in front of a live audience over the course of about two hours. The audience votes in real time for their favorite piece.Liz talks about the event itself, and Dave speaks to his unique experience in the inaugural First Friday Face-Off back in January.The next First Friday Face-Off is coming up on March 6. Its theme is "Women of Spokane History."

Time's running out, so be sure to vote for A Line Around Your Thoughts as Best Local Podcast in the Inlander's Best of 2026 poll before February 17!

This week we're sitting down with Tanya Morton, the executive artistic director of Spokane Children's Theatre.

In her role, Tanya has been working to cultivate a positive environment for kids, collaborate with other theaters and expand SCT's programming as well as its footprint. And she has some big news to share on that front.

Tanya also talks about upcoming SCT shows and the prep that the theater is doing for its 80th season.

On this week's episode, Spokane Poet Laureate Mery Noel Smith assures us that the kids are alright.

During her two-year tenure so far, she's spearheaded several programs to get poetry into the hands and hearts of children as well as young adults — including her most recent initiative, the selection of Spokane's first-ever Youth Poet Laureate.

Mery sheds some light on some of those programs and discusses unconventional spaces that have proven good platforms for poetry, such as farmers markets and an upcoming Inland Sessions performance on KSPS.

Support A Line Around Your Thoughts on Patreon! Visit ⁠our Patreon community⁠ to learn more.

Our guest this week is the Sandpoint-based singer, songwriter and visual artist Dario Ré.

Dario performs locally both under his own name and with the ensemble Heat Speak. His music is an eclectic and inventive mix of chamber folk, world fusion, indie pop and, of late, electronic.

We talk about that melange, including some recent singles and albums, as well as the growing divergence between his solo and band music. We also get into a frank discussion about his preferred mode of support, the patronage model.

Dario performs with Heat Speak at the Listening Room on March 28, and in June he has an exhibition at the Entropy Gallery in downtown Spokane.

Support A Line Around Your Thoughts on Patreon! Visit our Patreon community to learn more.This week, Ashley Demoville and Claire Rae Edmo are our guests. Ashley is the Dean of Visual, Performing and Applied Arts at Spokane Falls Community College, and Claire is the college's second sƛ̓x̣etkʷ Artist-in-Residence.

You can catch some of Claire's work at the Here & Now exhibition at SFCC. It runs until February 10, 2026.

Joining us in the Rogue Heart Media studio this week are Eric Woodard and Morgan Marie of Pivot Spokane.

Pivot is the long-running, local, live storytelling series that includes quarterly mainstage events featuring workshopped storytellers from the community as well as more casual, open-mic events.

With Pivot's mainstage event—themed "Rivals"—coming up on January 29, followed by the "Love Stinks" open mic event on February 11, Morgan and Eric came in to talk about what's in store for those.

As founding board members who've been with Pivot since the very beginning, they also share their thoughts on how the series has changed over the past nine years.

We're sitting down this week with Alex Calbick and Tiffany Bubna of Spokane Puppetry, which is a new organization that aims to share their passion for puppetry as a craft and puppets as a creative medium.

This year, Spokane Puppetry's previously ad hoc workshops are now a regular monthly event at both Art Salvage and Spark Central.

The first workshop of 2026 is at Art Salvage on January 10, and the second is at Spark Central on January 17. This month's workshop theme is shadow puppets.

Alex and Tiffany came in ahead of those workshops to talk about how the two of them came together around puppetry and why it's such an exciting and unique art form.

And to help make their case, they brought with them special guests like Kritch Kriggle and Takeout. If you want to see them instead of just hearing their voices, be sure to check out the vodcast.

Happy New Year!

Because of the holidays, we've had special episodes last week and this week. Together they make a two-part retrospective featuring moments from the Lightning Round that closes every interview.

Whereas last week's episode drew from the podcast's first four months, this episode features guests from the latter part of 2025. They include Mel Antuna Hewitt, Preston Singletary & Miranda Belarde-Lewis, Ginger Ewing & Jackie Caro, Charlie Pepiton & Michael Kropf, Olivia Brownlee, Susie Leonard Weller, Darien Mack, Christina Villagomez & Sara Mortier, Karin Wedemeyer and Brett & Rose Noble.

Merry Christmas! As regular listeners know—and as our guests are sometimes surprised to discover—every interview on A Line Around Your Thoughts closes with a Lightning Round.

This is the first of two special holiday episodes that revisit some Lightning Round moments from the past year. The selections in this episode are from ALAYT's first four months.

Featured guests include Troy Nickerson & Chris Jensen, James Lowe, Shelly Wynecoop, Bryan Harnetiaux, Jess Walter, Dominique Betts & Celeste Bidwell Williams, Gwyn Pevonka, Zuill Bailey, Rachel Bade-McMurphy, Jim Mohr and Joe & Sienna Henson.