Author Talks
We help non-profit organizations identify the kind of literary event that is right for their community, book one of our authors, and promote the event. Organizations then schedule the event directly with the author, pay travel expenses, may contribute to honorarium (paid by Colorado Humanities) and work with us to promote the event. Our authors include 2024 Colorado Book Awards finalists and winners. They can read from their work, lecture, lead workshops, or join book club discussions about their work.
Please note that we are only able to financially support events hosted or co-hosted by non-profit organizations.
Due to delays in the federal budget process that affects our funding, we will not be making any new program commitments for Author Talks between February 24th and March 31st. Please contact Valerie Eddy, 303.894.7951 x15, or valeri
Upcoming Events
Day of the Children & Day of the Book Celebration with Ana Crespo
April 19 @ 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Rooted in Reading
April 27 @ 12:00 pm - 3:00 pm
2024 Finalists and Winners
Click on the Authors below for a biography and information about their work.
Anthology
Peter Anderson
Reading Colorado
A high-octane road trip through the diverse literary landscapes of the Centennial State, Reading Colorado gathers narratives of exploration, stories from the mining and agricultural frontiers, urban tales reflecting the emergence and growth of Denver and the Front Range, and a diverse range of contemporary voices, from the Plains to the Peaks, who invite readers into their home territory.
Peter Anderson’s books include Heading Home: Field Notes, a collection of flash prose and prose poems exploring rural life and the modern-day eccentricities of the American West, and First Church of the Higher Elevations, a collection of essays on wildness, mountain places, and the life of the spirit. He lives with his family on the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado where he launched the Crestone Poetry Festival, an annual gathering of southwestern poets.
History
J.v.L Bell
Women of the Colorado Gold Rush Era
In Women of the Colorado Gold Rush Era, authors J.v.L. Bell and Jan Gunia present the lives of ten unforgettable women who called Colorado home during the turbulent years of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush. The collection of biographies reveals the heroism of Native American, Hispanic, Anglo, and African American women whose perseverance, hard work, and wisdom helped lay the foundation for the state of Colorado. In their presentations (usually in PowerPoint format), the authors discuss their reasons for writing the work, their methods of research, an overview of Colorado pioneer women’s lives, and the highlights of two or more of the biographies.
J.v.L. Bell has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Colorado State University and an M.A. from Colorado School of Mines. She loves writing and researching Colorado history, and in 2015 she left engineering and sold her first Colorado historical mystery, The Lucky Hat Mine, to the Hansen Publishing Group. Women of the Colorado Gold Rush Era is her fifth publication. She lives in Westcliffe.
Juvenile Literature
Rachel Bithell
Brave Bird at Wounded Knee: A Story of Protest on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
From her home in Denver, Colorado, Patsy Antoine doesn’t usually give much thought to her relatives living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Most of her classmates don’t even know she’s part Lakota. But in February 1973, she learns the tiny town of Wounded Knee has been occupied by protestors and surrounded by federal law enforcement. When Patsy and her father visit Pine Ridge, she learns more about her heritage and the clashing perspectives on the Wounded Knee occupation. As she connects with her roots, Patsy must grapple with the complexities of the conflict and of being biracial.
Rachel Bithell writes about history, culture, and science for kids and their caregivers. Her writing has been featured in several national magazines. This is her first book. As a foster and adoptive parent and former teacher, she has cared for and taught many children with diverse strengths, interests, backgrounds, and needs. She lives in Castle Rock.
Poetry
Mariella Saaverdra Carquin
Maps You Can’t Make
Trauma takes up real space within us, and it can be so difficult to hold. How do we access that place of longing and loss, of fragmented memory and grief? How do we carry it as we walk in the world? There’s no map for this, no clear path through the internal landscape it reshapes, no easy way to make meaning of our lives in that disoriented state. Mariella Saavedra Carquin confronts hard truths in this powerful debut collection, pushing through layered complexities of immigration, race, and identity to find a way forward.
Mariella Saavedra Carquin has practiced as a licensed mental health counselor in New York City in clinical, higher education, and middle school settings and now works in integrated primary care at Children’s Hospital Colorado. She is a graduate of Middlebury College, holds an Ed.M. and an M.A. in psychological counseling from Columbia University, and recently earned an M.A. in English from Middlebury. In addition to writing poetry, she has published in various academic journals on the psychological impact of microaggressions experienced by undocumented immigrant youth. Born in Lima, Peru, and raised in Miami, Florida, she currently lives outside Denver.
Science Fiction/Fantasy
Ann Claycomb
Silenced
A powerful fairy tale of four women each cursed by the same abusive man. Four enchantments. One man. But he is no handsome prince, and this is no sugar-sweet fairy tale. In this sharply written, bitingly relevant modern fable, the magic is dark and damaging, and the women are determined to rescue themselves.
Ann Claycomb is a life-long reader and writer of fairy tales, including The Mermaid’s Daughter, a modern-day reimagining of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid. She currently writes from Colorado, where she lives with her family, including a silly hairless dog and two enormous cats.
General Nonfiction
Chip Colwell
So Much Stuff: How Humans Discovered Tools, Invented Meaning, and Made More of Everything
Archaeologist Chip Colwell sets out to investigate why humankind went from self-sufficient primates to nonstop shoppers, from needing nothing to needing everything. Along the way, he uncovers spectacular and strange points around the world—an Italian cave with the world’s first-known painted art, a Hong Kong skyscraper where a priestess channels the gods, and a mountain of trash that rivals the Statue of Liberty. Through these examples, Colwell shows how humanity took three leaps that led to stuff becoming inseparable from our lives, inspiring a love affair with things that may lead to our downfall.
Chip Colwell is an archaeologist, former museum curator, and editor-in-chief of SAPIENS, a digital magazine about anthropological thinking and discoveries. He is the author and editor of 12 books, including the award-winning Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture, also published by the University of Chicago Press. He lives in Denver.
Creative Nonfiction
John Cotter
Losing Music: A Memoir
John Cotter was 30 years old when he first noticed a ringing in his ears. Soon the ringing became a roar inside his head, and then partial deafness, dizziness, and vertigo that rendered him unable to walk, work, sleep, or even communicate. When he is first told that his debilitating condition is likely Ménière’s Disease, with no reliable test or treatment, Cotter quits teaching, stops writing, and commences upon a series of visits to treatment centers. What begins as an expedition across the country navigating and battling the limits of the American healthcare system, quickly becomes something else entirely: a journey through hopelessness and adaptation to disability.
John Cotter is also the author of Under the Small Lights. He has contributed essays, theater pieces, and fiction to New England Review, Raritan, Georgia Review, Guernica, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Joyland, Commonweal, and elsewhere. He wrote this book in Colorado and much of it at the Lighthouse Writers Guild, where he has taught classes. He now lives in New England.
Children’s Literature
Ana Crespo
Lia & Luís: Puzzled!
Celebrate diversity, math, and the power of storytelling! Twins Lia and Luís have received a secret puzzle from their grandma! Can they put it together to read the hidden message? A playful exploration of geometry and sorting featuring Brazilian American characters and a glossary of Brazilian Portuguese words.
Originally from Brazil, Ana Crespo moved to the U.S. to pursue an M.A. in education. She fell in love with children’s books when she began reading them to her daughter, but she wanted to see books by Brazilian authors featuring Brazilian characters! After her son was born, she decided to write her own stories. Crespo is also the author of Mathical Award winner Lia & Luís: Who Has More?, International Latino Book Award winner The Sock Thief: A Soccer Story, and the My Emotions & Me series. She lives in Monument.
General Nonfiction
Robert Crifasi
Western Water A to Z: The History, Nature, and Culture of a Vanishing Resource
Reinventing this 20th-century genre for a 21st-century audience, Crifasi answers questions about rivers, water projects, the culture of water, the ecosystems water projects have created or destroyed, and the reliance of cities, farms, and industries on this critical resource. Organized as a collection of terms, the book addresses the most salient water issues and provides helpful background information regarding their origins and implications. Travelers, adventurers, students, and anyone interested in water will find this a handy and entertaining reference guide.
Robert R. Crifasi works in water management and planning and is an environmental scientist with more than 25 years of experience. He has worked as an environmental planner with Denver Water, served as the water resources administrator for the City of Boulder, and was the president of several Boulder Valley ditches. He is an award-winning photographer and the author of A Land Made from Water.
Historical Fiction
Annie Dawid
Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown
Paradise Undone, A Novel of Jonestown is a part real, part imagined retelling of the tragic events that led to the biggest single loss of civilian life in the U.S. in the 20th century. On November 18, 1978, 909 people died in the Guyanese jungle. Published on the 45th anniversary of this tragic day, Annie Dawid’s compelling story of Jonestown explores the tragedy through the voices of four protagonists—Marceline Baldwin Jones and three other members of the Peoples Temple.
Annie Dawid lives and writes in south-central Colorado. An English professor and director of creative writing for 15 years at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, Dawid left full-time teaching for full-time writing. She founded and operated BloomsburyWest, a retreat for writers and artists, from 2006 to 2012. She teaches creative writing online for the University of Denver.
General Nonfiction
Thomas Dybdahl
When Innocence is Not Enough: Hidden Evidence and the Failed Promise of the Brady Rule
In this compelling work of narrative nonfiction, Thomas L. Dybdahl illustrates the promise and shortcomings of the Brady rule through deft storytelling and attention to crucial cases. With a seasoned defense lawyer’s unsparing eye for detail, Dybdahl chronicles the evolution of the Brady rule—from its unexpected birth to the series of legal decisions that left it defanged and ineffective—and shows us a path forward.
Thomas L. Dybdahl has degrees in theology, journalism, and law, and is a former staff attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where he worked in both the trial and appellate divisions and tried 25 homicide cases. He lives in Boulder.
Anthology
Sara Frances
Unplugged Voices: 125 Tales of Art and Life from Northern New Mexico, the Four Corners and the West
This collection of unplugged narratives from adventurers, survivors, historians, musicians, seers, ranchers, artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, advocates, and writers is a backward look by many voices with substance, dimension, and assurance, stepping out from behind the horizontal assertiveness of recorded history. These stories vigorously and inevitably illuminate both the physical geography of the West and the fabric of its society.
Sara Frances is a curator of stories, editor, interior and cover designer, illustrator, and publisher, and a 60-year photojournalist from Denver. A common theme in her work is visual storytelling centered on verbal narratives unique to the Southwest and West, captured through personal interaction with people in a diversity of cultural and social environments.
History
Steve Friesen
Galloping Gourmet: Eating and Drinking with Buffalo Bill
Galloping Gourmet explores an unfamiliar side of a familiar character in American history, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody. In this entertaining narrative, Steve Friesen explores the evolving role of eating and drinking in Buffalo Bill’s life (1846–1917). Equally comfortable eating around a campfire on the plains or at Delmonico’s in New York City, he dined with leading celebrities of his day. Friesen also addresses the controversies surrounding Cody’s drinking, his death, and his ongoing culinary legacy, and includes an appendix of more than 30 annotated period recipes.
Steve Friesen has published numerous articles about American history and is currently a contributing editor for True West magazine. He received his M.A. from the Cooperstown Museum Program in 1976 and has worked in museums for over 40 years. He was superintendent of museums for the City of Greeley, director of the Molly Brown House in Denver, and he retired in 2017 after serving as director of Denver’s Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave for 22 years. He is also the author of A Modest Mennonite Home, Buffalo Bill: Scout, Showman, Visionary, and Lakota Performers in Europe. He lives in Colorado.
Thriller
Nichelle Giraldes
No Child of Mine
Essie Singh has defined herself by her ambitions, a fiercely independent woman whose only soft spot is her husband, Sanjay. She never imagined herself as a mother. It was never a part of the plan. But then she finds out she’s pregnant, and as Essie’s pregnancy progresses, both her and Sanjay’s lives are warped by a curse that has haunted her family for generations, leaving a string of fatherless daughters in its wake. When she’s put on bedrest, Essie trades the last aspects of her carefully planned life for isolation in what should be a welcoming home, but she isn’t alone.
A lifelong book lover, Nichelle Giraldes writes female-centered horror. She earned a B.A. from Colorado College where she studied religion and mathematics. She currently lives in Colorado, where she teaches math to middle and high school students.
Juvenile Literature
Jenny Goebel
Backcountry
Emily has always excelled at sports, and her athletic abilities have given her confidence on and off the courts. When she starts to drag during her middle school volleyball season, she assumes it must be the flu, but after a particularly intense game she finds herself riding in the back of an ambulance with a paramedic telling her that her life will never be the same. Adjusting to life with type 1 diabetes isn’t easy so she jumps at the opportunity to go on a backcountry ski trip with her dad and new diabetic alert dog. But when an avalanche rips through the area, separating Emily from her father, she and her dog are left to face a challenge far greater than anything she could have imagined.
Jenny Goebel is the author of Grave Images, The 39 Clues: Mission Hurricane, and Fortune Falls. She lives in Denver with her husband and three sons.
Young Adult Literature
Byron Graves
Rez Ball
In this relatable, high-stakes story of Tre, a young athlete determined to play like the hero his Ojibwe community needs him to be, the book explores the balance of grief, expectation, passion, and chasing dreams all at the same time, for the very first time. Tre learns through a series of life-changing, trust-fall moments that he’s not alone if he doesn’t want to be. In every sense, Rez Ball is a story about teamwork, family, community, and shooting and scoring, no matter the odds.
Byron Graves is Ojibwe-Lakota and was born and raised on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota, where he played high school basketball. When he isn’t writing, he can be found playing retro video games, spending time with his family, and cheering on his beloved Minnesota Timberwolves. His life in Denver is similar to what he knew growing up, but he enjoys warmer temperatures, taller mountains, and the Colorado sunshine. Rez Ball is his debut novel.
History
Jan Gunia
Women of the Colorado Gold Rush Era
In Women of the Colorado Gold Rush Era, authors J.v.L. Bell and Jan Gunia present the lives of ten unforgettable women who called Colorado home during the turbulent years of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush. The collection of biographies reveals the heroism of Native American, Hispanic, Anglo, and African American women whose perseverance, hard work, and wisdom helped lay the foundation for the state of Colorado. In their presentations (usually in PowerPoint format), the authors discuss their reasons for writing the work, their methods of research, an overview of Colorado pioneer women’s lives, and the highlights of two or more of the biographies.
Jan Gunia, a Colorado native, holds a BS in journalism from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and is a member of Kappa Tau Alpha, the national honor society for journalism and mass communications. Her passion for nineteenth century Colorado women’s history began in elementary school and continues to this day. Her extensive research of Colorado pioneers has taken her beyond Colorado to Maine and Kansas, where she visited Augusta Tabor’s former home and the Tabor land, respectively. She lives in Broomfield.
Juvenile Literature
Polly Holyoke
Skyriders
Kiesandra adores her skysteed N’Rah and she’s determined to succeed as a sky courier, but when the terrible three-headed chimerae return to menace Prekalt once more, only Kie and N’Rah know how to fight the voracious creatures effectively. But how can a shy, dyslexic girl from the borders of the Empire convince people in power to listen to her, before it’s too late? Kie and N’Rah must fight terrifying aerial battles and forge new friendships as they struggle to save their world.
Polly Holyoke is the award-winning author of the middle grade science fiction book Neptune Trilogy and the new children’s fantasy series, Skyriders. Polly grew up in Denver and enjoys skiing, hiking, and camping in the mountains. A former classroom teacher, she believes kids need to read, write, unplug from their gadgets, and spend more time daydreaming! She lives in Steamboat Springs.
Historical Fiction
Buzzy Jackson
To Die Beautiful
It’s 1940 and Hannie Schaft is a shy 19-year-old law student living in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands with ambitious goals for her future. But dreams die in wartime, and Hannie’s closest friends are no longer safe as fascism insidiously rises in her country. Based on real events, To Die Beautiful is a timely look at how fascism flourishes and what good people do to fight back.
Buzzy Jackson is the award-winning author of three books of nonfiction and has a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley. A recent fellow at the Edith Wharton Writers-in-Residence, she is also a member of the National Book Critics Circle. She lives in Colorado.
Mystery
Ausma Zehanat Khan
Blood Betrayal: A Detective Inaya Rahman Novel
In Blackwater Falls, Colorado, veteran police officer Harry Cooper is hot on the heels of some local vandals when the situation turns deadly: believing one of them has a gun, Harry opens fire, and a young Black man is killed. Meanwhile, in nearby Denver, a drug raid goes south, and a Latino teen is also killed. With the Denver Police force spread thin between the two cases, protests on both sides of the cases begin. Detective Inaya Rahman and her boss Lieutenant Waqas Seif have to consider the guilt of the perpetrators and their victims to discover the truth of what really happened on one fateful night in Blackwater Falls.
Ausma Zehanat Khan holds a Ph.D. in international human rights law with a specialization in military intervention and war crimes in the Balkans. She is the author of the awardwinning Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty mystery series, which begins with The Unquiet Dead, as well as the critically acclaimed Khorasan Archives fantasy series. She is also a contributor to the anthologies Private Investigations, Sword Stone Table, and The Perfect Crime, and the former editor-in-chief of Muslim Girl magazine. A British-born Canadian, a former adjunct law professor, and a former Colorado resident and activist, Khan now lives in D.C. with her husband.
Novel
Nazlı Koca
The Applicant: A Novel
It’s 2017 and Leyla, a leftwing Turkish twenty-something living in Berlin, is scrubbing toilets at an Alice in Wonderland-themed hostel to stay afloat while awaiting a verdict on her visa status. Having failed her master’s thesis and sued the German university over its decision, she is on the verge of losing her student visa and being forced to return to Istanbul, a city she thought she’d left behind for good.
Nazlı Koca is the author of The Applicant (Grove, 2023), which was called “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Chambermaid” by The New York Times and won the Colorado Book Award for Best Novel. Her poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction appear in ZYZZYVA, Narrative, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame and a PhD in English & Literary Arts from the University of Denver. Born and raised in Turkey, Koca now lives in Colorado.
Mystery
Jennie Marts
Take the Honey and Run: A Beekeeping Mystery Book
As a successful mystery author, Bailey Briggs writes about murder, but nothing prepares her for discovering the dead body of the founder of her hometown of Humble Hills, Colorado. When Bailey’s grandmother’s infamous “Honey I’m Home” hot-spiced honey turns out to “bee” the murder weapon and her granny is now the prime suspect, Bailey has no choice but to use her fictional detective skills to help solve the murder and “smoke out” the real culprit.
Jennie Marts is the USA Today best-selling author of award-winning books filled with love, laughter, and always a happily ever after. She is living her own happily ever after in the mountains of Colorado with her husband, two dogs, and a parakeet who loves to tweet to the oldies.
Short Story
Theodore McCombs
Uranians: Stories
*Theodore MccCombs resides outside of Colorado and is available for virtual talks.
The five speculative stories in this kaleidoscopic collection span several possible worlds, teasing the boundaries between coexisting realities and taking up the question of queer difference from one surprising vantage after another. Each story unfolds with the depth and complexity of an entire universe; each is inhabited by characters learning to divest from a society that has marked and rejected them. Uranians brilliantly illustrates the vital role that queerness plays in every possible version of our world.
Theodore McCombs’s stories have appeared in Guernica, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and the anthology Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Born in Thousand Oaks, California, McCombs is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego, U.C. Berkeley School of Law, and the Clarion Writers Workshop. He lives in San Diego with his partner and their surly old cat, and practices environmental law with a focus on climate change. He wrote most of the stories in Uranians while living in Denver and attending writer’s workshops and classes at Lighthouse Writers Guild.
Young Adult
Ellen O'Clover
Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
Ro Devereux can predict your future. At least, the app she built for her senior project can. Inspired by the game MASH that she played as a kid, Ro’s app can predict details about your life with 93 percent accuracy, like where you’ll live and what your career will be. It can even match you with your soulmate. When MASH goes viral, an app developer swoops in to partner with Ro. It’s her dream come true—until she’s matched with Miller, her ex-best friend and the person who hates her most in the world.
Ellen O’Clover writes stories about finding your people, falling in love, and figuring it all out (or trying to, anyway). She grew up in Ohio and studied creative writing at the Johns Hopkins University before moving west to Colorado. She lives near Boulder with her rocket scientist husband and two perfect bulldogs.
General Fiction
Dow Phumiruk
Building a Dream: How the Boys of Koh Panyee Became Champions
An unforgettable tale of persistence and problem-solving based on the amazing true story of a Thai soccer team who made their own place to play. With engaging soccer scenes and atmospheric images of southern Thailand, this inspiring book follows a group of boys who became a team long before they had jerseys or even a field. Plank by plank, they built their dream.
Dow Phumiruk is the award-winning illustrator of over a dozen books for young readers, including One Girl Titan and the Wild Boars: The True Cave Rescue of the Thai Soccer Team, and Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13. She lives in Colorado, where she also works as a general pediatrician.
Science Fiction/Fantasy
Gary Raham
Not Quite Dead Geniuses at Large on an Angry Planet
How many times does a genius have to die anyway? Rudyard Albert Goldstein, inventor of the Biomic Network algorithm, asked himself—and his AI guardian, Mnemosyne (aka Nessie)—that question many times in their million-year relationship. Nessie didn’t play fair, making multiple copies of him from time to time to preserve his precocious species, H. sapiens, from natural disasters, invading aliens, their own self-destructive proclivities, and even from the now angry planet that gave them birth. Can Rudy and Nessie manage to convince multiple species, each with their own unique delusions of grandeur, to work together to avert their own extinctions?
R. Gary Raham writes science fact and science fiction and is a firm believer that the latter often excites a new generation of scientists to discover more of the former. Armed with degrees in biology from the University of Michigan, Raham taught high school science before pursuing careers in writing, illustration, and design. Raham has won numerous awards for his books, articles, and artwork. Raham’s writing has been known to make a reader laugh and think simultaneously with no known deleterious effects. He lives in Wellington.
Romance
S.E Reichert
Raising Elle
Elle Sullivan comes back to her hometown, Sweet Valley, Wyoming, bruised to hell and hiding a big secret. Determined to start her life over, she embarks on a journey to take back her power and help her family save their small horse ranch. But running into her old high school sweetheart reminds her that no road to success is easy. Raising Elle is a journey through hardships and forgiveness, and all the ways love heals even the deepest wounds.
Sarah Reichert (S.E. Reichert) is a writer, novelist, poet and blogger. She is the author of the Southtown Harbor Series and is a member of and youth coordinator for the Writing Heights Writers Association. Her work has been featured in The Fort Collins Coloradoan, Haunted Waters Press, Sunrise Summits: A Poetry Anthology, Rise: An Anthology of Change, Poetry Ireland Review, and We Are the West: A Colorado Anthology, among other journals. Her novella, Saturn Rising, was produced as a five-part audiocast from Ngano Press Studios. Reichert lives in Fort Collins with her family.
Historical Fiction
Aimie K. Runyan
A Bakery in Paris
From the author of The School for German Brides, this captivating historical novel set in post–World War II Paris follows two fierce women of the same family, generations apart, who find that their futures lie in the four walls of a simple bakery in a tiny corner of Montmartre.
Aimie K. Runyan is a multi-published and bestselling author of historical fiction. She has been nominated for a Rocky Mountain Fiction Writer of the Year award and two Colorado Book Awards. She lives in Colorado with her wonderful husband and two (usually) adorable children.
Poetry
Katie Scruggs Galloway
Still and Still Moving
The poems in this debut collection concern the groundlessness of change. Written in prose, this stream of consciousness collection is as endearing as it is existential. It is at times a probing self-portrait and at others a crystalline commentary on the loneliness of disillusion.
Katie Scruggs Galloway is a poet, editor, and co-creator of Becoming // Poetry, a Colorado-based duo that has been writing spontaneous poems for strangers and hosting community writing workshops since 2019. She earned a B.A. in English and writing from Eastern Oregon University. When she’s not at her desk, you can find her creating through analogue photography and music (Color Math on Spotify). She lives in Colorado Springs.
Science Fiction/Fantasy
David R. Slayton
Dark Moon, Shallow Sea
When Phoebe, goddess of the moon, is killed by the knights of the sun god, Hyperion, all who follow her are branded heretics. With Phoebe gone, the souls of the dead are no longer ferried to the underworld and instead linger on as shades who feast on the blood of the living. Raef is a child of the night and lives in the shadows on scraps, eking out a meager existence as a thief. But when an ornate box is sequestered in the Temple of Hyperion, the chance of a big score proves too great to resist. What he finds within propels him on an odyssey across the sea and back again, altering the course of his life forever.
David R. Slayton grew up in Guthrie, Oklahoma, where finding fantasy novels was challenging and finding fantasy novels with diverse characters was downright impossible. Now he lives in Denver and writes the books he always wanted to read. His debut, White Trash Warlock, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award, and in 2015, he founded Trick or Read, an initiative to give out books along with candy to children on Halloween as well as uplift lesser-known authors or those from marginalized backgrounds.
Thriller
Caleb Stephens
The Girls in the Cabin
A dad will do anything to keep his daughters safe. But the phone lines are down. The roads are blocked. And the woman in the cabin is hiding a terrible secret. Set in the stunning wilderness of the Colorado Flat Tops, this addictive thriller packed with shocking twists will make you question everything you think you know about family.
Caleb Stephens is an author writing from somewhere deep in the Colorado mountains. His dark fiction collection If Only a Heart and Other Tales of Terror is available through Salt Heart Press and includes the short story “The Wallpaper Man,” which was adapted to film by Falconer Film & Media in 2022. He is also the author of Feeders, a speculative horror thriller available through Timber Ghost Press.
Short Story
Alison Turner
Defensible Spaces
The residents of Clayton, Colorado must learn to live with what has burned and what threatens to ignite. A bus driver confronts a rush of memories when an old flame climbs aboard; a trailer park resident attempts to save her home; a reclusive fire mitigation worker fuels public outrage. Throughout ten linked short stories, townspeople work through relationships with alcoholism, history, and each other, negotiating where and when to create their own defensible spaces that might, but will not always, keep them protected.
Alison Turner grew up in the mountains of Colorado, where she learned to endure large amounts of time in inclement weather waiting for buses. She is the co-host and co-creator of the When you are homeless podcast miniseries, and her creative work appears in Blue Mesa Review, Wordrunner eChapbooks, Little Patuxent Review, Meridian, and Bacopa Literary Review, among others. Turner facilitates writing groups and consults with writers who are experiencing homelessness. She lives in Denver.
Romance
Bethany Turner
Brynn and Sebastian Hate Each Other
Just last week, Brynn Cornell was riding high as cohost of the popular morning show Sunup. She’s the girl-next-door beauty who drives up TV ratings while never exuding anything but her trademark positivity and poise. All it took was one huge on-air mistake to make it all come crumbling down. Now she’s back in her hometown of Adelaide Springs, Colorado, working on a last-ditch attempt to convince viewers she’s not the mean girl they think she is.
Bethany Turner is a bestselling, award-winning author of romantic comedies. She was a finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s Vivian Award, and her 2022 release, The Do-Over, was named one of POPSUGAR’s Best Romance Novels of 2022. Brynn and Sebastian Hate Each Other was honored as an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Romance. Turner lives in Cortez.
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