Speakers Bureau
We help non-profit organizations identify the kind of literary event that is right for their community, book one of our Speakers Bureau 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. Colorado Humanities contracts with the speakers and pays honoraria, which hosts may also contribute to.
Our speakers include 2020, 2021, and 2022 Colorado Book Awards finalists and winners. They can read from their work, lecture, lead workshops, or join book club discussions about their work. If you are interested in booking one of our Speakers Bureau presenters, please complete the application at least 8 weeks prior to your desired event date.
Our mission at the Colorado Center for the Book is to encourage a love of reading and books among people of all ages through diverse cultural activities. For more information, contact Mary Hickey, 303.894.7951 x19, mary
February Presentations
Susan J. Tweit – February 9 @ 7:00 pm, Zoom
Colorado Book Award finalist Susan J. Tweit, author of Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying, and Karen Comba, author of The Snipers We Couldn’t See: A Memoir of Growing Up with My Mother’s Schizophrenia, will hold the panel discussion Remembrance & Reflection: The Art of Memoir to recount difficult life experiences with honesty and vulnerability. Hear how they took their pain to the page, ultimately creating stories of resilience, hope, and life itself through the art of memoir.
Wayne Miller – February 18 @ 7:00 pm, Old Firehouse Books
Colorado Book Award winner Wayne Miller (We the Jury) situates his poems in life’s looming dilemmas, vowing–and inviting us–to “expand our relationship with Death” and with every challenging, uncomfortable subject we meet.”
Andrew Schelling (The Facts at Dog Tank Spring) speaks to the vastness of the American West while embodying traditions of Europe and Asia with echoes of Shakespeare, women poets of old India, and classical Chinese verse. As one reviewer said, The Facts at Dog Tank Spring is “less a book than a world.”
Collectively, these award-winning poets expand our perspective on the emotional and the natural; as Schelling writes, “life looks bigger.”
Melissa Payne and Carter Wilson – February 25 @ 2:30 pm, Harmony Library
Colorado Book Award finalist Melissa Payne (The Night of Many Endings) and Colorado Book Award winner Carter Wilson (The Dead Husband) host Rich Revelations & Suspenseful Stories. Authors of suspenseful stories with deep undercurrents and nuanced characters, hear how they unfold rich narratives while building reader anticipation.
Looking For Love in All The Wrong Places…or Oh Brothel, Where Art Thou?
Randi Samuelson-Brown lecture at La Veta Library
2022 Finalists and Winners
Click on the speakers below for a biography and information about their work.
Historical Fiction
Mario Acevedo
Mario Acevedo is an award-winning editor and a bestselling author of fantasy, action, and historical novels, including short stories. He lives in Denver.
Luther, Wyoming
Two Civil War veterans find themselves on both sides of the law when they corral a murderous bandit and help themselves to his stolen loot. Their plans go south when the bandit’s gang shows up wanting vengeance and their money in this tale of larceny, betrayal, and the return of a lost love to help set things right.
Thriller
Alison Ames
Alison Ames has previously written nonfiction on the internet, mostly about music and tarot cards. To Break a Covenant is her debut novel, and her next book, It Looks Like Us, will be published in September 2022. Alison lives in Longmont.
To Break a Covenant
Moon Basin has been haunted for as long as anyone can remember since a mine explosion killed 16 people. The ex-mining town relies on its haunted reputation to bring in tourists, but there’s more truth to the rumors than most are willing to admit, and the mine still has a hold on everyone who lives there. No matter how many vans of ghost hunters roll through, nobody can get to the bottom of what’s really going on.
Anthology
Carina Bissett
Carina Bissett is a writer, poet, and educator working primarily in the fields of dark fiction and fabulism. Her short fiction and poetry have been published in multiple journals and anthologies, and she lives in Colorado Springs.
Shadow Atlas: Dark Landscapes of the Americas
Believing the ancient peoples knew some lands were given over to shadow and spirit, the Umbra Arca Society, a centuries-old private league of explorers, dedicated their lives to uncovering the oldest mysteries of the Americas. The Shadow Atlas collects their adventures.
Biography
Jane Little Botkin
Jane Botkin became intrigued with Jane Street after learning her grandmother, born in 1898 in Denver, worked as a domestic in a Boulder mansion in 1916. Botkin has won five awards, including two Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America and the Caroline Bancroft History Prize for Frank Little and the IWW: The Blood That Stained an American Family. Jane lives in New Mexico.
The Girl Who Dared to Defy: JaneStreet and the Rebel Maids of Denver
Setting Jane Street’s story within the wider context of early twentieth-century class struggles and the women’s suffrage movement, this book paints a fascinating and ultimately heartbreaking portrait of one woman’s courageous fight for equality Street’s story relays an astonishing drama populated by burlesque dancers, con men, radicals, thugs, pimps, muckraking journalists, and undercover agents.
Mystery
Jodi Boswersox
Jodi Bowersox has been an actress, seamstress, designer, business owner, homeschool teacher, choir director, and artist. Her romance novels span genres from faith fiction to suspense to time travel to sci fi, with small town, big city, and interplanetary settings. She lives in Colorado Springs.
Red Rabbit on the Run
After being kidnapped and sold to a brothel, schizophrenic Tiffany Morrow emerges from a bad drug-induced trip in the custody of a couple who claim to be taking her home to Denver. She doesn’t know how much time had passed since she’d been carried out of that vile cabin in the Amazon, but she can’t go home until she proves someone is embezzling funds from her mother’s corporation.
Literary Fiction
Claire Boyles
Claire Boyles received her MFA from Colorado State University, and her writing has appeared in VQR, Kenyon Review, Boulevard, and Masters Review, among others. She writes movies for the Hallmark Channel and is a proud member of the Writers Guild of America West. Claire lives in Loveland.
Site Fidelity
Firmly rooted in the modern American West, Site Fidelity follows women and families who feel the instinctual, inexplicable pull of a home they must work to protect from the effects of economic inequity and climate catastrophe. In lean, lyrical prose, Boyles evokes the bleakness and beauty of our threatened western landscapes.
Young Adult Literature
Olivia Chadha
Olivia Chadha is the author of the adult literary novel Balance of Fragile Things. Her debut YA novel, Rise of the Red Hand was the winner of the Colorado Book Award for Young Adult Literature, and is followed by the sequel, Fall of the Iron Gods. She writes speculative fiction and comic books for MG, YA, and adult audiences. She has a Ph.D. from Binghamton University’s creative writing program and her research centers on the history of exile, India’s Partition, global folklore and fairy tales, and the relationship between humans and the environment. She lives in Colorado with her family.
Rise of the Red Hand
A searing portrayal of the future of South Asian climate change, a street rat turned revolutionary and the disillusioned hacker son of a politician try to take down a ruthlessly technocratic government that sacrifices its poorest citizens to build its utopia. Uplanders lead luxurious lives inside a climate-controlled biodome while the poor and forgotten scrape by in slums threatened by rising sea levels, unbreathable air, and superbugs.
Science Fiction/Fantasy
Todd Fahnestock
Todd Fahnestock is a writer of fantasy for all ages and winner of the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age Award. Threadweavers and The Whisper Prince Trilogy are two of his bestselling epic fantasy series. He is a 2021 Colorado Book Award finalist and winner of the Colorado Authors League Award for Writing Excellence for Tower of the Four: The Champions cademy. Todd lives in Englewood.
Khyven the Unkillable
After 49 victories in the bloody Night Ring, Khyven the Unkillable is a celebrity gladiator. If he can survive one more battle, King Vamreth will free him and declare him a knight. As Khyven struggles to complete his mission, he is caught between a growing respect for a rebel queen who will do anything for her people and a ruthless king who will stop at nothing to crush her.
Illustrator
Alice Feagan
Alice Feagan is a children’s book creator known for her distinct cut-paper collage style in The Collectors and School Days Around the World. She creates playful illustrations for children’s books, magazines, apps, educational products, and games. Alice lives in Edwards.
Read Island
A rhyming celebration of nature, books, and the importance of stories, Read Island invites you to experience the diversity and wonder of a hidden and wild place.
Literary Fiction
Wendy J. Fox
Wendy J. Fox is the author of four books of fiction, including the novel If the Ice Had Held. She has written for The Rumpus, Buzzfeed, Self, Business Insider, and Ms., and her work has appeared in literary magazines including Washington Square, Euphony, and Painted Bride Quarterly. Wendy lives in Denver.
What if We Were Somewhere Else
“What if we were somewhere else?” is the question everyone asks in these linked stories as they try to figure out how to move on from job losses, broken relationships, and fractured families. Following the employees of a nameless corporation and their loved ones, these stories examine the connections they forge and the choices they make as they try to make their lives mean something in the soulless, unforgiving hollowness of corporate life.
Juvenile Literature
Megan Freeman
Megan E. Freeman writes middle grade and young adult fiction and is also a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, and her poetry collection, Lessons on Sleeping Alone, was published by Liquid Light Press. An award-winning teacher with decades of classroom experience, Megan is nationally recognized for her work leading workshops and speaking to audiences across the country. She lives in Berthoud.
Alone
When twelve-year-old Maddie hatches a scheme for a secret sleepover with her two best friends, she ends up waking up to a nightmare. She’s alone, left behind in a town that has been mysteriously abandoned. With no one to rely on, no power, and no working phone lines or internet access, Maddie slowly learns to survive on her own.
Mystery
Scott Graham
Scott Graham is the author of the acclaimed National Park Mystery series and of five nonfiction books, including Extreme Kids, winner of the National Outdoor Book Award. He lives in Durango.
Canyonlands Carnage
When suspicious deaths befall a whitewater rafting expedition through Cataract Canyon in Canyonlands National Park, archaeologist Chuck Bender and his family see that evil intent lies behind the tragedies. They must risk their lives and act before the murderer makes a risky journey on the Colorado River through Utah’s red rock wilderness even deadlier.
Historical Fiction
E.J. Levy
E.J. Levy’s fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Best American Essays, The New York Times, Orion, Salon, Rumpus, Salmagundi, Kenyon Review, The Nation, and won a Pushcart Prize. The Cape Doctor was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Barnes & Noble Best Book of Summer. Foreign editions are forthcoming in French, Spanish, and Italian. E.J. lives in Fort Collins.
The Cape Doctor
Levy’s debut novel is inspired by the life of Dr. James Miranda Barry, born Margaret Anne Bulkley circa 1795 in Cork, Ireland. Dr. Barry was an eminent nineteenth-century physician that revolutionized medicine and our ideas of gender. The novel recounts Margaret’s transformation from daughter to son in order to enter medical school and provide for her mother.
Poetry
Morgan Liphart
Morgan Liphart’s work has appeared in anthologies and journals across the United States and England, such as the University of Oxford’s Literary Imagination, The Comstock Review, and Third Wednesday. Morgan lives in Broomfield.
Barefoot and Running
These poems follow a young woman’s journey from the plains of the Midwest to the mountains of Colorado. Through this journey, readers discover the deep healing found in wild spaces and bear witness to the tenacity of the human heart.
Children’s Literature
Nicole Magistro
Nicole Magistro owned The Bookworm bookstore in Edwards, Colorado for 15 years, wrote thousands of book reviews, and is a mentor, journalist, consultant, and community leader. Nicole lives in Edwards.
Read Island
A rhyming celebration of nature, books, and the importance of stories, Read Island invites you to experience the diversity and wonder of a hidden and wild place.
Science Fiction/Fantasy
Eric Maikranz
D. Eric Maikranz has been a foreign correspondent in Rome and has worked as a tour guide, a radio host, a bouncer, and as a Silicon Valley software executive. The Reincarnationist Papers is his first novel, which has been adapted into the Paramount Pictures film Infinite. Eric lives in Denver.
The Reincarnationist Papers
Discovered as three notebooks in an antique store in Rome at the turn of the millennium, The Reincarnationist Papers offers a tantalizing glimpse into the Cognomina, a secret society of people who possess total recall of their past lives.
Poetry
Wayne Miller
Wayne Miller is the author of five collections of poems, including Post- and We the Jury. He is also a cotranslator of two books from the Albanian poet Moikom Zeqo, and a coeditor of three anthologies, including Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century and New European Poets. Miller is a professor of English at the University of Colorado Denver where he edits Copper Nickel.
We the Jury
Miller faces moments of profound discomfort, grief, and even joy with a philosopher’s curiosity, a father’s compassion, and an overarching inquiry at the crossroads of ethics and art: what is the poet’s role in making sense of human behavior?
General Nonfiction
Todd Mitchell
Todd Mitchell is the author of several award-winning novels for young readers, teens, and adults including The Last Panther, The Traitor King, The Secret to Lying, and Backwards. His other recent book, a middle grade novel titled The Namer of Spirits, has been optioned for film/TV development. Todd directs the Beginning Creative Writing Teaching Program at Colorado State University and lives in Fort Collins.
Breakthrough: How to Overcome Doubt, Fear, and Resistance to Be Your Ultimate Creative Self
Mitchell works to expose the toxic success myths that hold people back to reveal radical, perspective-shifting solutions. His concise, friendly chapters weave together personal experiences with guidance from research and philosophical traditions, giving readers pragmatic ways to turn potential breakdowns into life-changing breakthroughs.
Juvenile Literature
Nancy Oswald
Nancy Oswald has written personal interest pieces, children’s plays, poetry, educational research, biography, and nonfiction articles, and her books have won the Spur Award, CIPA Evvy Award, Willa Literary Award, Will Rogers Award, Colorado Author’s League Writing Award, and has had multiple finalist recognitions. Nancy currently lives on a family ranch near Cotopaxi.
Bats, Bandits, and Buggies: A Ruby and Maude Adventure
In Colorado Springs, in the summer of 1898, thirteen-year-old Ruby is bored. What starts out as a plan to train her donkey, Maude, to pull a buggy, ends up in a prickly business deal with her friend Roy, who has run away from Cripple Creek to escape his misery working in the mines. It takes all Ruby’s courage and a little help from her friend to rescue Roy and solve the mystery surrounding Roy’s Aunt Agnes.
General Fiction
Melissa Payne
Melissa Payne is the bestselling and award-winning author of The Secrets of Lost Stones and Memories in the Drift. She has long been telling stories in one form or another, from high school newspaper articles to a graduate thesis to blogging about marriage and motherhood. Melissa lives in Conifer.
The Night of Many Endings
Orphaned at a young age and witness to her brother’s decline into addiction, Nora Martinez has every excuse to question the fairness of life. Instead, the open-hearted librarian of a small Colorado community sees only promise. As a winter storm buries Silver Ridge, a collection of lonely hearts takes shelter in the library. No matter how stranded in life they feel, this fateful night could be the new beginning they didn’t think was possible.
Author and Illustrator, Children’s Literature
Dow Phumiruk
Dow Phumiruk is a clinically retired pediatrician and the author/illustrator of 10 books with six more on the way. Her debut book, Mela and the Elephant, was a Colorado Book Awards finalist in 2019, and her book with author Helaine Becker, Counting on Katherine, is a Cook Prize winner. Dow lives in Lone Tree.
Hugsby
When Shelly adopts her pet monster Hugsby she loves everything about him. It doesn’t matter that he can’t do fancy tricks, or whistle, or blow bubbles. He gives the best hugs ever.
Anthology
Julie Rada
Julie Rada is a theatre maker, educator, and scholar who has toured nationally and internationally and has published on prison arts practice in multiple journals. Julie is currently affiliate faculty at MSU Denver and lives in Denver.
Tell It Slant: An Anthology of Creative Nonfiction by Writers from Colorado’s Prisons
In a time of unprecedented isolation, the stories we tell ourselves and each other create a sense of belonging and community. The writings in this anthology come from a Tell It Slant: Reading & Writing Creative Nonfiction correspondence course that the University of Denver Prison Arts Initiative offered in collaboration with the Colorado Department of Corrections at nine state facilities.
General Nonfiction
Julian Rubinstein
Julian Rubinstein is an award-winning, Denver-based journalist and the author of Ballad of the Whiskey Robber, a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe Best Fact Crime award. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times Magazine, as well as in Best American Crime Writing. He is a visiting professor of the practice of documentary journalism at the University of Denver.
The Holly: Five Bullets, One Gun, and the Struggle to Save an American Neighborhood
Much more than a crime story, this multigenerational saga of race and politics runs from the civil rights movement to Black Lives Matter. With a cast of billionaires, elected officials, cops, developers, and street kids, the book explores the porous boundaries between a city’s elites and its most disadvantaged citizens.
General Fiction
Blake Sanz
Blake Sanz has published fiction in Ecotone, Puerto del Sol, Fifth Wednesday Journal, and elsewhere. His writing has garnered recognition from Zoetrope: All-Story, the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sozopol Fiction Seminars in Bulgaria, and other conferences and residencies. Blake lives in Denver and teaches writing at the University of Denver.
The Boundaries of Their Dwelling
Moving between the American South and Mexico, these stories explore how immigrant and native characters are shaped by absent family and geography. This collection tracks the emotional journeys of characters seeking love and redemption beyond the barriers of their homes and cultures.
Biography
Jennifer Koshatka Seman
Jennifer Koshatka Seman lectures in history at Metropolitan State University in Denver. Her work has appeared in Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses and the Journal of the West. She lives in Loveland.
Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo
This dual biography is a historical exploration of the worlds and healing practices of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo, two curanderos (faith healers) who attracted thousands, rallied their communities, and challenged institutional powers. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they worked beyond the reach of the church, state, or state-certified health practitioners whose profession was still in its infancy.
General Fiction
Jenny Shank
Jenny Shank’s novel The Ringer won the High Plains Book Award, and her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, and McSweeney’s. Her work has been honorably mentioned by Best American Essays and the Pushcart Prize. She teaches in the Mile High MFA program at Regis University and the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver. Jenny lives in Boulder.
Mixed Company
In this book the author reveals moments of grace and connection between people of her hometown, Denver, through stories that contrast the city during its oil-bust era of economic troubles and court-ordered crosstown busing for racial desegregation with the burgeoning and gentrifying city of recent years.
History
Martin J. Smith
Martin J. Smith, a veteran journalist and former senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, is the author of five crime novels and four nonfiction books. He has won more than 50 newspaper and magazine writing awards, and his novels have been nominated for three of the publishing industry’s most prestigious honors, including the Edgar Award, the Anthony Award, and the Barry Award. He lives in Granby.
Going to Trinidad: A Doctor, a Colorado Town, and Stories from an Unlikely Gender Crossroads
Between 1969 and 2010, remote Trinidad, Colorado was the unlikely crossroads for approximately 6,000 medical pilgrims who came looking for relief from the pain of gender dysphoria, making the phrase “Going to Trinidad” a euphemism for gender confirmation surgery in the worldwide transgender community. The book takes readers deep into the often-mystifying world of gender, genitalia, and sexuality.
Creative Nonfiction
Susan J. Tweit
Susan J. Tweit’s thirteen books and hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles have won the Colorado Book Award, the EDDIE (for magazine journalism), and Foreword Book of the Year. Her commentaries have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post, and on regional public radio. Susan lives in Montrose.
Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying
Susan and her economist-turned-sculptor husband had just settled into their version of a “good life” when Richard saw thousands of birds one day, harbingers of the brain cancer that would kill him two years later. This compelling and intimate memoir chronicles their journey into the end of his life, framed by their final trip together, a 4,000-mile-long delayed honeymoon road trip.
Mystery
Wanda Venters
Wanda Venters moved to Colorado 35 years ago as a major stationed at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center. After three decades as a pediatrician, she retired and began a second career, first as a children’s author and then as a mystery novelist.
Break Bone Fever
When Dr. Gennifer Drake’s body washes up on a foggy beach on Galveston Island, Texas, Dr. Louise Finnerty, an emergency medicine physician, and Dr. Marnie Liccione, a recently widowed pediatrician from Colorado, are shocked by their friend’s death. Untangling the web of lies propagated by an EPA cabal, they fight for justice and for their lives.
Juvenile Literature
Len Vlahos
Len Vlahos is the author of The Scar Boys, a William C. Morris Award finalist and a #1 Indie Next pick, and Scar Girl, the book’s sequel. Len owns the Tattered Cover Book Store and lives in Denver.
Girl on the Ferris Wheel
This quirky and poignant romance explores what first love really means and how it sometimes hurts. Tenth-graders Eliana and Dmitri could not be more different. He’s an outgoing, self-confident drummer in a punk band. Eliana is an introspective and thoughtful movie buff living with depression.
Creative Nonfiction
Kathryn Wilder
Kathryn Wilder’s work has been cited in Best American Essays and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in such publications as High Desert Journal, River Teeth, Fourth Genre, Sierra, and many anthologies. She has been a finalist for the Waterston Desert Writing Prize and is a past and current finalist for the Ellen Meloy Fund Desert Writers Award. Kathryn lives in Dolores.
Desert Chrome: Water, a Woman, and Wild Horses in the West
This personal story of grief, motherhood, and a return to the desert entwines with the story of America’s mustangs as Wilder makes a home on the Colorado Plateau, her property bordering a mustang herd. Desert Chrome illuminates these controversial creatures’ complex American history, their powerful presence on the landscape, and ways to help both horses and habitats stay wild in the arid West, while celebrating the animal nature in us all.
Thriller
Carter Wilson
Carter Wilson is the USA Today bestselling author of eight critically acclaimed, standalone psychological thrillers, as well as numerous short stories. He is an International Thriller Writers finalist, a four-time winner of the Colorado Book Award, and his works have been optioned for television and film. Carter lives in Erie.
The Dead Husband: A Novel
One family, one murderer, one victim, and one witness… but no one in the house is innocent. Twenty years ago, a boy disappeared and only Rose and her family know what happened to him. Haunted by guilt, Rose escaped into a new life. Now she appears to have it all: a marriage, a son, and a career. But then her husband is found dead, and foul play is suspected.
2021 Finalists and Winners
Literary Fiction
Andrew Altschul
Andrew Altschul is the author of the novels Deus Ex Machina and Lady Lazarus. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Esquire, McSweeney’s, The Wall Street Journal, Ploughshares, Fence, One Story, and other publications, as well as numerous anthologies. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, he has received fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, the Ucross Foundation, and the Fundación Valparaíso. He directs the Creative Writing program at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
The Gringa
Inspired by the real-life case of activist Lori Berenson, Stanford grad imprisoned for life in Peru after a bloody government raid, Andrew Altschul’s third novel maps the blurred boundaries between fact and fiction, author and text, resistance and extremism. Part coming-of-age story, part political thriller, The Gringa asks what one person can do in the face of the world’s injustice.
Young Adult Literature
Fleur Bradley
Fleur Bradley is the author of the Double Vision trilogy. She’s passionate about two things: mysteries and getting kids to read. Fleur regularly does school visits and speaks at librarian and educator conferences on reaching reluctant readers. Originally from the Netherlands, Fleur now lives in Colorado Springs. Xavier Bonet is a self-taught illustrator and comic book artist. He has worked with such companies as Penguin Random House, SkyHorse publishing or Capstone. Xavier lives in Barcelona.
Midnight at the Barclay Hotel
When JJ Jacobson convinced his mom to accept a surprise weekend getaway at the illustrious—and haunted—Barclay Hotel, he never imagined he’d find himself involved in a murder mystery. But when his mother is blamed for the hotel owner’s death, he realizes his weekend is going to be anything but ordinary.
Anthology
Rachel Delaney Craft
Engineer by day and writer by night, Rachel Delaney Craft writes middle grade, young adult, and speculative fiction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the children’s publications Cricket, Ask, and Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide, as well as RMFW’s award-winning anthology Found.
Wild: Uncivilized Tales from Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers
Fearless or feral? Liberating or life-threatening? The wild side of life takes many forms. It seeps through the cracks of our world in the form of stray cats, tenacious weeds, oppressive relationships, and haunting memories. These fourteen stories by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers explore the wildness that lives inside all of us-and what happens when we let it out.
Children’s Literature
Nancy Bo Flood
Nancy Bo Flood has a Ph.D. in experimental psychology and child development and is the author of several books, including Warriors in the Crossfire and Soldier Sister, Fly Home. Julianna Swaney is the illustrator of #1 New York Times bestselling We Are the Gardeners by Joanna Gaines and several other picture books. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
I Will Dance
Like many young girls, Eva longs to dance. Unlike many wouldbe dancers, Eva has cerebral palsy. She doesn’t know what dance looks like for someone who uses a wheelchair. Then Eva learns of a class for dancers of all abilities. With the encouragement of her instructor and classmates, Eva’s dream of dancing comes true.
Creative Nonfiction
Kelsey Freeman
Kelsey Freeman focuses on indigenous rights, immigration policy, and social justice. Her first book No Option but North: The Migrant World and the Perilous Path Across the Border won the Colorado Book Award for creative nonfiction and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in general nonfiction. She has spoken and interviewed across the country on immigration policy. Kelsey has also worked for Central Oregon Community College where she ran a college-readiness program for Native American high school students. She is now studying international policy as a Knight Hennessy Scholar at Stanford University.
Children’s Literature
Kimberlee Gard
Kimberlee Gard is an award-winning and bestselling children’s author who spent her childhood running from books instead of reading them. Her passion for inspiring an early love of reading grew out of her own experience with learning disorders. Kimberlee lives on a small farm in Colorado.
Snoozapalooza
Count to 10 with Mouse and the pile of cuddly forest creatures that invite themselves to join the slumber party as they hibernate for winter together in one furry heap to endure the snowy season. With adorable illustrations and rhyming verse, Snoozapalooza will warm even the deepest chill.
Creative Nonfiction
Johanna Garton
A graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, Johanna Garton also has a law degree from DePaul University College of Law. Several years of living and working in Asia inspired her to write her first book, Awakening East. She lives in Denver.
Edge of the Map: The Mountain Life of Christine Boskoff
How did a girl from a small Midwestern town become one of the world’s top female alpinists? A role model to many, Christine Boskoff avoided media and fame, preferring to find adventure in the most remote regions. But when she and partner Charlie Fowler disappeared while climbing in China, the world was riveted by the dramatic search.
Thriller
Sue Hinkin
Sue Hinkin is a former college administrator, TV news photographer, and NBC-TV art department manager. She was a Cinematography Fellow at the American Film Institute. Her debut novel, Deadly Focus was a 2018 International Book Award finalist. The second book in the series, Low Country Blood, was a Reader’s Choice award winner and Silver Falchion finalist. Sue lives in Littleton, Colorado.
The Burn Patient: A Vega and Middleton Novel
Lucy thought she’d seen her uncle’s murderer, Gary Mercer, Hollywood bad boy and black tar heroin czar, die in Guerrero. She didn’t know officials never found his body. Back from the dead with a new face, his perverted sights are set on Bea’s beautiful, naïve teenage daughter, Alyssa. Trafficking her into the porn industry would be the perfect instrument of revenge.
Romance
Jennie Marts
Jennie Marts is the USA Today bestselling author of award-winning books filled with love, laughter, and always a happily-ever-after.
A Cowboy State of Mind: A Creedence Horse Rescue Novel
In a brilliant extension of her hockey-playing cowboy stories, bestselling author Jennie Marts has created a horse rescue ranch in fictional Creedence, Colorado. Compassionate but practical cowboys, feisty determined women, and the gentle, beautiful horses that need their help make up the backbone of this exciting new series.
Creative Nonfiction
James McVey
James McVey is a professor emeritus of the University of Colorado and the author of four books, including The Way Home: Essays on the Outside West and The Wild Upriver and Other Stories.
Bridging Worlds: A Sherpa’s Story
Pemba Sherpa and co-author James McVey take readers on Pemba’s life journey from a poor, remote Nepalese village in the Khumbu, to accomplished mountaineer, expedition leader, and successful US businessman, and back to Khumbu to build a bridge and hydroelectric power plant, and bring hundreds of thousands of dollars in earthquake relief to his native people.
History
Jeff Miller
Over the course of his long career as a writer, magazine editor, and historian, Jeffrey B. Miller has started six magazines. He is the author of Stapleton International Airport: The First Fifty Years and the co-author of Facing Your Fifties: Every Man’s Reference to Mid-life Health. His books Behind the Lines (2014) and WWI Crusaders (2018) were named Kirkus Best Books of the Year.
Yanks Behind the Lines: How the Commission for Relief in Belgium Saved Millions from Starvation during World War I
During World War I, the nongovernmental US-led Commission for Relief in Belgium saved nearly ten million civilians from starvation, becoming the largest food relief program ever seen. Miller interweaves history with personal stories of volunteers, diplomats, a Belgian woman who started a dairy farm to feed Antwerp’s children, the autocratic head of the Belgian relief organization, and the founder of the American organization, Herbert Hoover.
History
Jeri Norgren
Jeri L. Norgren has spent most of her life exploring Colorado’s mountains. As a member of the Denver Fortnightly Club, she has authored numerous papers on various topics, including the one that grew into this book. Three-time winner of a Colorado Book Award, John Fielder is an American landscape photographer, nature writer, publisher, and conservationist. He is known for his landscape photography, scenic calendars, and numerous coffee table books and travel guides.
Colorado’s Highest: The History of Naming the 14,000-Foot Peaks
Through extensive research of the early Colorado mining days, Norgren’s essays pair with John Fielder’s photographs of the fourteeners (many never before published), Robert L. Wogrin’s sublime oil paintings and sketches, and historical sketches from the 1870s by artists of the Hayden Survey to make a classic Colorado history book.
Mystery
Barbara Nickless
Barbara Nickless is the Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author of the Sydney Rose Parnell series, which includes the award-winning Blood on the Tracks and Dead Stop. Her essays and short stories have appeared in Writer’s Digest, Criminal Element, and elsewhere. She lives in Colorado.
Gone to Darkness
Iraqi war vet and former railway cop Sydney Parnell is the youngest homicide detective in Denver’s Major Crimes Unit. Along with her K9 partner and former nemesis-turned-mentor, she investigates a shocking series of crimes and a horrifying conspiracy that threatens the detectives’ lives and promises to bring their beloved city to its knees.
History
Randi Samuelson-Brown
Randi Samuelson-Brown is the author of The Beaten Territory, an historical fiction novel. Originally from Golden, she now lives in Denver.
The Bad Old Days of Colorado: Untold Stories of the Wild West
Coloradans relish just how “bad” things used to be: the terrain, the inhabitants, and especially the quality of whiskey. While fearless lawmen, industrious entrepreneurs and resilient miners and ranchers were the backbone of society, its underbelly teemed with gambling “hells,” seedy brothels, and shady characters who rarely did an honest day’s work.
Creative Nonfiction
Pemba Sherpa
Born in the remote Khumbu region of Nepal, Pemba Sherpa distinguished himself as a mountain guide before migrating to Boulder at 19. He founded Ascent International and is the owner of Sherpa Chai Tea Company and Sherpa’s Adventurer Restaurant in Boulder. As a result of his success in business, Pemba has helped Nepalese build a bridge and a hydroelectric plant, and is planning a medical clinic. He has led more than 20 trips to Nepal for the Colorado Mountain Club.
Bridging Worlds: A Sherpa’s Story
Pemba Sherpa and co-author James McVey take readers on Pemba’s life journey from a poor, remote Nepalese village in the Khumbu, to accomplished mountaineer, expedition leader, and successful US businessman, and back to Khumbu to build a bridge and hydroelectric power plant, and bring hundreds of thousands of dollars in earthquake relief to his native people.
Science Fiction/Fantasy
David R. Slayton
David R. Slayton lives in Denver with his partner, Brian, and writes the books he always wanted to read. White Trash Warlock is his first novel. In 2015, David founded Trick or Read, an annual initiative to give out books along with candy to children on Halloween as well as uplift lesser-known authors or those from marginalized backgrounds.
White Trash Warlock
Adam Binder has the Sight. For much of his life, it’s been a curse. After his brother committed him to a psych ward, Adam is ready to live life on his own terms. Following a trail of cursed artifacts to Denver in search of his father, he learns a terrible spirit has taken possession of his brother’s wife. To survive and save his family, Adam will have to bargain with very dangerous beings—including his first love.
Juvenile Literature
Sonja K. Solter
Sonja K. Solter is currently a creative writing mentor to youth with the Society of Young Inklings and enjoys writing poetry and prose for children of all ages. When You Know What I Know is her debut novel. She lives in Louisville, Colorado.
When You Know What I Know
One day after school Tori’s uncle did something bad. While telling her mom was a brave thing to do, she doesn’t believe her at first. Her grandma still takes his side. And Tori doesn’t want anyone else—even her best friend—to know what happened. A sensitive, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful novel in verse about one girl’s journey in the aftermath of abuse.
Biography
Cary Unkelbach
Cary Unkelbach grew up in a family that bred, raised, trained, and showed their Walden Labrador retrievers for more than forty years. She has worked as a newspaper reporter, prosecutor, and civil litigator, and has written articles for various publications. Cary lives in the central Colorado mountains.
Heartbreak Kennel: The True Story of Max and His Breeder
Nearly 100 Labrador retrievers are discovered one hot summer day in a rural Colorado field, abandoned by Dodie Cariaso, a college-educated woman from an upper middle-class Midwestern family. What drove this tragedy? Former journalist and prosecutor Cary Unkelbach unfolds a riveting account of how Dodie’s early success as a potter devolves into unimaginable neglect.
Anthology
Natasha Watts
Natasha Watts is a writer, audio producer, and teacher. Motherhood keeps her curious and attentive to detail, traits that have served her well as a writer of science fiction.
Wild: Uncivilized Tales from Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers
Fearless or feral? Liberating or life-threatening? The wild side of life seeps through the cracks of our world in the form of stray cats, tenacious weeds, oppressive relationships, and haunting memories. These 14 stories by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers explore the wildness that lives inside all of us—and what happens when we let it out.
2020 Finalists and Winners
Creative Nonfiction
David Boop
David Boop is an author, screenwriter and award-winning essayist. He worked as a DJ, film critic, journalist, and actor before his releasing his debut novel, the sci-fi/noir She Murdered Me with Science.
Straight Outta Deadwood
The West that was rides again, with the West that could have been, in this follow-up to Straight Outta Tombstone! Return to the Old West with a new posse of top authors who spin tales of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Contributing authors include: Charlaine Harris, Mike Resnick, Jeffrey Mariott, Jane Lindskold, Shane Hensley, Stephen Graham Jones, and D.J. Butler.
Juvenile Literature
Lija Fisher
Lija Fisher has performed on stages across New York, California, Florida, Colorado and Alaska. In 2017 she was a Writer in Residence with Aspen Words. Prior to becoming an author, she trained for a while (a very short while) to be a Hollywood stunt person.
The Cryptid Keeper
Life has gotten complicated for thirteen-year-old Clivo Wren. After taking up his deceased father’s mission to find the extraordinary creature whose blood grants everlasting life, Clivo is spending his summer not at camp or hanging out with his friends, but jetting all over the world tracking cryptids, while keeping his aunt Pearl in the dark about his dangerous adventures.
Creative Nonfiction
Jenny Forrester
Jenny Forrester is published in a variety of periodicals. Her work is included in Putnam’s Listen to Your Mother anthology. She also published a memoir, Narrow River, Wide Sky
Soft Hearted Stories: Seeking Saviors, Cowboy Stylists, and Other Fallacies of Authoritarianism
In poetic prose, Forrester navigates leaving a life in one state and picking up in another, and repeating the process through various and vast personal, social, and political landscapes. Through her personal story and investigation of change, Forrester explores how we hide away the most valuable parts of ourselves that help us survive change.
Science Fiction/Fantasy
Cate Glass
Cate Glass is the pseudonym of Carol Berg, an author who has written fifteen epic fantasy novels, won numerous Colorado Book Awards, and earned national and international acclaim. A former software engineer with degrees in mathematics and computer science, she was raised in Texas and now resides in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies.
An Illusion of Thieves
In Cantagna, being a sorcerer is a death sentence. Romy escapes her hardscrabble upbringing when she becomes courtesan to the Shadow Lord, a revolutionary noble who brings laws and comforts once reserved for the wealthy to all. When her brother, Neri, is caught thieving with the aid of forbidden magic, Romy’s aristocratic influence is the only thing that can spare his life.
Creative Nonfiction
Pam Houston
Pam Houston is the prize-winning author of Contents May Have Shifted, among other books. She is professor of English at the University of California–Davis and lives on a ranch at 9,000 feet in Colorado near the headwaters of the Rio Grande.
Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country
Through her travels from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska, and life on her 120- acre homestead high in the Colorado Rockies, Houston explores what ties her to the earth. The ranch becomes her sanctuary, a place where she discovers how the natural world has mothered and healed her, and helped her learn “to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief” and “to love the damaged world and do what I can to help it thrive.”
Mystery
Emily Littlejohn
Emily Littlejohn was born and raised in southern California and is a former librarian. In addition to writing, she is raising a family and working in city government in the Denver metro area. Her acclaimed debut novel, Inherit the Bones, was followed by her second, A Season to Lie.
Lost Lake
On a bright Saturday in early spring, Detective Gemma Monroe responds to a missing person call at Lost Lake. When she arrives at the shore, she meets three friends who have been camping there: the fourth of their group, Sari Chesney, has disappeared in the night without a trace. As Gemma begins to understand the complex dynamics of the supposedly close-knit friendship group, she realizes that more than one person is lying to her—and that the beautiful, still waters of Lost Lake may hide more terrible secrets.
Romance
K.L. McKee
K. L. McKee worked in her local library Reference Center for twenty-nine years and earned a BA in English from Regis University. A member of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and several local writing groups, she now resides with her husband in western Colorado and writes faith-based stories full time.
Stolen Heart, Book 2: North Fork Series
A whispered promise to her dying mother burdens Abby Stewart with the debts of her con-artist father. After years of struggle, she’ll do anything to rid herself of her father’s legacy of deceit, even lay aside her own integrity to playact at being Kevin Karlson’s fiancée. Kevin, her boss, needs a beautiful and intelligent woman to stand by him as he receives an award in his hometown of North Fork, Colorado, and he’s willing to pay handsomely.
Creative Nonfiction
John Nizalowski
John Nizalowski is the author of five books, including a recent volume of poetry, East of Kayenta. He teaches mythology, creative writing, and composition at Colorado Mesa University.
Chronicles of the Forbidden: Essays of Shadow and Light
This collection of essays explores the twilight realm where the natural and the mythological intersect in the American Southwest. Nizalowski brings an American Transcendentalist framework to the Four Corners region as he relates his and his family’s exploration of its powerful landscapes and ancient sacred spaces.
Juvenile Literature
Laura Resau
Laura Resau is the award-winning author of nine highly acclaimed young adult and children’s books, including The Lightning Queen, Tree of Dreams, What the Moon Saw, Red Glass, Star in the Forest (film-optioned), The Queen of Water (with María Virginia Farinango), the forthcoming Stand as Tall as the Trees: How an Amazonian Community Protected the Rain Forest (with Patricia Gualinga, Summer 2023), and Virch (Fall 2023). Laura draws inspiration from her time abroad as a cultural anthropologist and ESL teacher. She enjoys collaborating with women from Ecuador and Mexico to share their stories and celebrate their voices. Loved by kids and adults, her novels have garnered seventeen starred reviews and many honors, including the IRA YA Fiction Award, the Américas Award, five Colorado Book Awards, spots on “best-of” booklists from Oprah, School Library Journal, the American Library Association, Bank Street, and more. Resau’s writing has been called “vibrant, large-hearted” (Publishers’ Weekly on Red Glass) and “powerful, magical” (Booklist on What the Moon Saw). Resau lives with her family in Fort Collins, Colorado and donates a portion of her royalties to Indigenous rights organizations in Latin America.
Poetry
David J. Rothman
David J. Rothman is the Jackson Hole Center for the Arts Executive Director, and has written several volumes of poetry and published poems in scores of other journals and books. He is the co-founder of the Crested Butte Music Festival and the Gunnison Valley Poetry Festival and Reading Series, and the founding publisher and editor of Conundrum Press (now an imprint of Bower House Books of Denver).
My Brother’s Keeper
An enlightening, disturbing, and profound journey as the poet mourns his wayward brother and celebrates renewal by writing of his youngest son, a young man about to stand for his bar mitzvah, the Jewish rite of passage from boyhood to manhood. Rothman’s gift for language lifts his artful interweaving of images from the merely personal to universal.
General Nonfiction
Connie Shoemaker
Connie Shoemaker developed an interest in Muslim women while spending four years in Cairo, Egypt with her husband and children, teaching English and writing for several news organizations. The co-founder and director emerita of Spring International Language Center, she is a board member of Immigrant Pathways Colorado.
Taste the Sweetness Later: Two Muslim Women in America
Two Middle Eastern women live in the grip of murderous dictators. While the Kurdish Iraqi’s family escapes to the United States, the other, a young Libyan, dreams of studying in America. Displaying courage, determination, and unwavering hope essential to the true spirit of America, the women serve as inspiration for anyone who faces difficult and seemingly insurmountable hardships.
Pictorial
Jill Tietjen
Jill Tietjen is a speaker, electrical engineer, and co-author of Her Story: A Timeline of the Women Who Changed America, which received the Daughters of the American Revolution History Award Medal. She has conducted research into historical women around the world for the past 30 years.
Hollywood: Her Story, An Illustrated History of Women and the Movies
This book pays tribute to the spirit, ambition, grit and talent of women filmmakers and artists. Featuring more than 1200 actresses, directors, stuntwomen, screenwriters, composers, animators, editors, producers, and cinematographers, stunning photographs capture and document the women who worked their magic in the movie business.
Short Story Collection
Jennifer Wortman
Jennifer Wortman, a National Endowment of the Arts fellow, has published work in TriQuarterly, Glimmer Train, Electric Literature, Copper Nickel, among others. A Colorado Review associate fiction editor, she teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop.
This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love.
Thirteen full-length and flash stories explore love in its gritty and beguiling forms—sexual, platonic, filial, and beyond. As characters in various stages of life navigate love, they court obsession, madness, and transcendence.
Short Story Collection
Emily Wortman-Wunder
Emily Wortman-Wunder, an award-winning essayist and fiction writer, has been published in Kenyon Review, Creative Nonfiction, Nimrod, and High Country News, and is the winner of the 2019 Iowa Short Fiction Award.
Not a Thing to Comfort You
From a lightning death on an isolated peak to the intrigues of a small town orchestra, the glimmering stories in this debut collection explore how damaged, fierce, and unpredictable nature worms its way into our lives. Over and over, the natural world reveals itself to be unknowable, especially to the people who study it most. These tales of scientists, nurses, and firefighters catalog loneliness within families, betrayals between friends, and the recurring song of regret and grief.
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