october 20-22
2023
Peter Anderson’s most recent books include Heading Home: Field Notes (Conundrum Press, 2017), a collection of flash prose and prose poems exploring rural life and the modern day eccentricities of the American West; Going Down Grand: Poems from the Canyon (Lithic Press, 2015), an anthology of Grand Canyon poems edited with Rick Kempa, which was nominated for a Colorado Book Award; and First Church of the Higher Elevations (Conundrum Press, 2015), a collection of essays on wildness, mountain places, and the life of the spirit. Peter was the Bennett Fellow Writer-in-Residence at Phillips Exeter Academy for the 2015-16 school year. He lives with his family on the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado.
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Esther G. Belin is a Diné multimedia artist and writer, currently a Faculty Mentor in the Low Rez MFA program at the Institute for American Indian Arts. She holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, the Institute of American Indian Arts and Antioch University, Los Angeles. Her poetry collection From the Belly of My Beauty (University of Arizona Press, 1999) won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her latest collection is Of Cartography: Poems (University of Arizona Press, 2017). She is a second- generation off-reservation Native American resulting from the U.S. federal Indian policies of
termination and relocation. Her art and writing reflect the historical trauma from those policies as well as the philosophy of Saah Naagháí Bik’eh Hózho, the worldview of the Navajo people.
Sharon Corcoran is a native of St. Louis now living in Crestone. At Washington University in St. Louis she studied psychology and linguistics as an undergraduate, and completed an MFA degree in writing there. She has worked in the arts and in a university setting, and as an editor and book indexer. She also translated (from French) the writings of North African explorer Isabelle Eberhardt in the works In the Shadow of Islam and Prisoner of Dunes published by Peter Owen Ltd., London. Her poems have appeared in Kansas Quarterly, River Styx, Canary, The Buddhist Poetry Review, and One Art, among other journals. Her collection of poems is called Inventory, published in 2018.
Art Goodtimes was an Earth First! poetry editor before getting elected to five terms as a Green county commissioner in Southwestern Colorado, where U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Rifle) now represents the Third Congressional district in Congress. Art is co-director of Talking Gourds, a local and regional poetry program under the non-profit aegis of the Telluride Institute. His lastest book is Dancing on Edge (Lithic Press, Fruita, 2019).
Mark Irwin is the author of ten collections of poetry, including Shimmer (2020), A Passion According to Green (2017), American Urn: Selected Poems (1987-2014), and Bright Hunger (2004). Recognition for his work includes The Nation/Discovery Award,
two Colorado Book Awards, four Pushcart Prizes, the James Wright Poetry Award, the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, and fellowships from the Fulbright, Lilly, and NEA.
Rachel Kellum lives with her family at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains and teaches art to valley children and writing at Adams State University. Kellum earned a BFA in Art from Millikin University and an MA in English from Colorado State. Her career began as an English and art instructor at Morgan Community College for eleven years, during which time she served six years as director of the MCC CACE Gallery of Fine Art and host of Open Mic Poetry Nights. A Pushcart Prize nominee and NFSPS award winning poet, her poetry has been featured in several online journals and print collections. She leads writing workshops, performs her poetry around Colorado and blogs at wordweeds.com. Her first book, ah, published by Liquid Light Press, was released in 2012.
Kate Kingston has published two books of poetry, History of Grey, a runner-up in the 2013 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, and Shaking the Kaleidoscope, a finalist in the 2011 Idaho Prize for Poetry. Her manuscript The Future Wears Camouflage is forthcoming from Salmon Press in 2022. She is the recipient of the Atlanta Review International Publication Prize, the Ruth Stone Prize, and the W.D Snodgrass Award for Poetic Endeavor and Excellence. Kingston has been awarded fellowships from the Colorado Council on the Arts, Harwood Museum, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Jentel, Ucross, and Fundación Valparaíso in Mojácar, Spain, among others. In addition to writing her own poetry, she has translated the poetry of several Mexican authors. Kingston has served as Language Department Chairperson at Utah State University Eastern and as professor of Spanish and English at Trinidad State, Colorado. She currently lives and writes in southern Colorado.
Jesse Tsinajinnie Maloney grew up on the Leeward side of O’ahu. He went to the same High School as Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. His work has appeared in Turtle Island Quarterly, Peach Velvet Lit Mag, About Place, Cutthroat and other places. His debut full length work Health Carefully was released through Cyberwit press 2019.
In 2020 he co-hosted the late night virtual reading series Midnight Transmission with Orlando White.
He is producing a collaborative spoken word/instrumental album featuring poets Pamela Uschuk and William Pitt Root to be released in 2021.
Jesse Tsinajinnie Maloney teaches at Dine’ College and lives with his wife and cats on the Navajo Nation.
Susan Tichy is the author of six books, most recently The Avalanche Path in Summer, a muscle-memory of a life in mountains, and Trafficke, a mixed-form investigation of family, race, and language spanning from Reformation Scotland to the abolition of slavery in Maryland. Both are from Ahsahta Press. She has written extensively about war and its human consequences, including the volumes Gallowglass (Ahsahta, 2010), Bone Pagoda (Ahsahta, 2007), and A Smell of Burning Starts the Day (Wesleyan, 1988). Her first book The Hands in Exile (Random House, 1983) was selected for the National Poetry Series. Her work has been published in the US, UK, and Australia, and been recognized by numerous awards, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Now Professor Emerita at George Mason University, she divides her time between Colorado Springs and her hand-built cabin near Westcliffe. Free Verse Editions will release her seventh book, North | Rock | Edge: Shetland 2017/2019, in 2021
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer co-hosts Emerging Form (a podcast on creative process with Christie Aschwanden), Stubborn Praise (an online poetry reading series with James Crews) Secret Agents of Change (a surreptitious kindness cabal with Sherry Richert Belul), Talking Gourds Poetry Club (with Art Goodtimes) and Soul Writer’s Circle (with meditation teacher Augusta Kantra). Her poetry has appeared in O Magazine, on A Prairie Home Companion and PBS Newshour, Poetry of Presence, and in her daily poetry blog, A Hundred Falling Veils. Her most recent collection, Hush won the Halcyon Prize. She teaches poetry for parents, scientists, mindfulness retreats. One-word mantra: Adjust.
Everett Wilson earned a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from SUNY-Binghamton in 1986. Since then he’s been a bank teller, legal secretary, adjunct writing instructor, lover, husband, grieving widower, Zen monk, waiter, baker, chef, poet, bookkeeper, editor, memoirist, tantrika, chef (again?!!!), a/v tech, and husband all over again, because apparently once is just not enough.
He’s been all of these things, but is none of them.
Most recently, he finds himself meditating a lot more than is probably healthy, writing for the sake of his sanity, and baking bread again, because people gotta eat, and though you can’t eat a poem, or a menu, you can devour a good book.