mountain words festival

MWLF: “Fierce Writing from the Heart” with DK Hawk

by Leave a Comment

Mountain Words Literary Festival: “Fierce Writing from the Heart” with DK Hawk

Sunday, May 29

11 am – 12:30 pm

As part of your festival pass, or $20

“Let’s get fierce on the page! I help people who don’t fancy themselves writers, to go ahead and write. Let’s revel in the mess and wriggle free from the ego. One part creative practice, one part connecting-with-others practice, my weekly writing circles help us explore our hearts and lives on the page. No judgment. No criticism. Just writing and listening to each other in deep ways.” — DK HAWK

Taking photos, sketching, collaging and putting words on the page make me feel alive. Connection with kindred spirits is the cinnamon on my apple pie. Through these creative practices, I’ve learned to speak my truth and find my voice. I allow myself to be seen for who I truly am – not what I thought the world wanted me to be. I’ve also learned that my story is important and I never know who may need to hear it.

MWLF: “Adapting Film Concepts and Technique into Your Writing Toolkit” with Manuel Aragon

by Leave a Comment

Mountain Words Literary Festival: “Adapting Film Concepts and Technique into Your Writing Toolkit” with Manuel Aragon

Sunday, May 29

10 am – 11 am

As part of your festival pass, or $20 single entry

In this generative workshop, we will compare tools from cinematic concepts after viewing film clips from Moonlight and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Through writing prompts and discussion, we will work through adapting together these cinematic concepts while learning to utilize the tools used in film in our own writing toolkit.

Manuel Aragon is a Latinx writer, director, and filmmaker from Denver, CO. He is currently working on a short story collection, Norteñas. Norteñas is a collection of speculative fiction short stories centered in the Northside, a Mexican and Mexican- American centered part of Denver, and the people, ghosts, and demons that live there. His work has appeared in ANMLY. His short story, “A Violent Noise,” was nominated for the 2020 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. He is a Periplus Collective Fellow.
He is a graduate of NYU’s Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television. His film work – writing and directing – has been featured on MTV, Pitchfork, and Stereogum. He most recently won the CineLatino Pitch Latino Award for Emerging Filmmakers with my web series, Welcome to the Northside, a comedic take on gentrification and Latino displacement in North Denver.

MWLF: “Can Beavers Save the Planet?” with Ben Goldfarb

by Leave a Comment

Mountain Words Literary Festival: “Can Beavers Save the Planet?” with Ben Goldfarb

all-ages discussion at Gunsight Bridge beaver ponds

Sunday, May 29

10 am – 11 am

Meet at Gunsight Bridge

*please no dogs

As part of your festival pass, or Pay What You Can

How do beavers engineer landscapes, and how are these industrious rodents helping us fight drought, pollution, and climate change in Colorado and beyond? Join Ben Goldfarb, author of the award-winning book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, for an informal conversation by a beaver pond. All of your burning semiaquatic-rodent questions will be answered. There may be mud!

Ben Goldfarb is an environmental journalist whose work has appeared in publications including the Atlantic, the New York Times, National Geographic, Orion Magazine, and High Country News, and has been anthologized in the Best American Science and Nature Writing. His first book, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, received the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and was named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post. His next book, on the ecology of roads, will be published by W.W. Norton & Co., and received the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant for a manuscript in progress. He lives in Buena Vista, Colorado, with his wife, Elise, and his dog, Kit — which is, of course, what you call a baby beaver.

MWLF: “Cut Up and Remix” workshop with Teow Lim Goh

by Leave a Comment

Mountain Words Literary Festival: “Cut Up and Remix” workshop with Teow Lim Goh

Sunday, May 29

9 am – 10 am

As part of your festival pass, or $20 single entry

Each of us has a native intelligence that shapes the spirit of our writing. In this hands-on workshop, we will explore techniques to cut up your old drafts, remix the language, and access the primal energy in your own work. Bring a copy of a draft you want to see in a new light and come ready to dive deep into the trembling heart of your work.

Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and a forthcoming essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been or will be featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour, and The New Yorker.

MWLF: Panel – “Wealth and Remaking the American West”

by Leave a Comment

“Wealth and Remaking the American West”; discussion with Justin Farrell author of Billionaire Wilderness followed by panel discussion with Farrell, Claire Boyles, Nick Bowlin, Rachel Monroe. Chaired by Chelsey Johnson.

Justin Farrell is a professor and author at Yale University. His research focuses on cultural sociology and environmental politics. Mostly epistemologies and power. He blends ethnographic fieldwork with large-scale computational techniques from network science and machine learning.

His books BILLIONAIRE WILDERNESS, THE BATTLE FOR YELLOWSTONE, and articles have won national scholarly awards, and he regularly presents to policymakers, including the U.S. Senate, the United Nations, the Vatican, and in major media outlets such as the New York Times, The Economist, New York Review of Books, LA Times, NPR, Washington Post, HBO, and the Financial Times. Justin is a proud first-generation college grad and Wyoming native.

Rachel Monroe is a contributing writer at The New Yorker, where she covers Texas and the Southwest. Previously, she was a contributing writer at The Atlantic and has also written for the New York Times Magazine, New York, Esquire, Harper’s, and many other publications. Her first book, “Savage Appetites: True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession,” was published in 2019; it was named a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and a Best Book of the Year by the Chicago Tribune, Esquire, and Jezebel. She lives in Marfa, Texas.

Claire Boyles (she/her) is a writer, mom, and former farmer who lives and writes in Colorado. A 2022 Whiting Award winner in fiction, she is the author of Site Fidelity, which was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award and the Best of the West Award and is a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Her writing has appeared in VQR, Kenyon Review, Boulevard, and Masters Review, among others. She is a Peter Taylor Fellow for the Kenyon Review Writing Workshops and has received support from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Foundation, the Bread Loaf Orion Environmental Writers Workshop, and the Community of Writers. She teaches in Eastern Oregon University’s low-residency MFA program in Creative and Environmental Writing.

Nick Bowlin is a correspondent for High Country News and a freelance writer. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Politico Magazine, The Nation, The Drift and other publications. He lives in Gunnison.

MWLF: “Haibun: Where Prose and Poetry Meet (and Dance and Fight and Fuck, etc.)” with Leath Tonino

by Leave a Comment

“Haibun: Where Prose and Poetry Meet (and Dance and Fight and Fuck, etc.)”

Saturday, May 28

3 pm – 4 pm

As part of your festival pass, or $20

Haibun is an old Japanese literary form that pairs prose with poetry: a block of narration, then a quick vivid haiku. The two elements create tension, energy, and space on the page—endless possibilities and excitement! In this workshop we’ll put pencil to paper and compose our own experimental haibun. We’ll also look at examples from the Japanese tradition and contemporary North American authors, and discuss how haibun can be utilized in travel writing, science writing, memoir, and other genres. Poets, prose writers, avid readers… all are welcome and none ought to feel intimidated. Mostly, we’re going to mess around and get inspired. To be held outside in the sunshine, weather permitting.

Leath Tonino has been a full-time freelance writer since 2011. He is the author of The Animal One Thousand Miles Long: Seven Lengths of Vermont and Other Adventures and The West Will Swallow You and numerous articles and essays in the Sun, the Progressive, Tricycle, Outside, Orion, Men’s Journal, Sierra, and the Utne Reader. He is the recipient of a Colorado College Award in Literature, a Bread Loaf scholarship, an Awesome Foundation grant, and two gold medals from the International Regional Magazine Association. He is a poetry editor for the Afghan Women’s Writing Project and has worked as a wildlife biologist in Arizona, a blueberry farmer in New Jersey, and a snow shoveler in Antarctica. He lives in northern Vermont.

MWLF: Panel Discussion: Writing through Displacement

by Leave a Comment

Mountain Words Literary Festival: Panel Discussion: “Writing through Displacement”

Friday, May 27

4 pm – 5 pm

As part of your festival pass, or Pay What You Can

Panel discussion: “Writing through Displacement”; finding language for new ideas of belonging and identity within the experience of cultural, geographic, or internal displacement. With Steven Dunn, Suzi Q Smith, Teow Lim Goh, Bernardo Wade and others.

Steven Dunn is a 2021 Whiting Award winner, and shortlisted for Granta’s “Best of Young American Novelists.” He is the author of two books from Tarpaulin Sky Press: water & power (2018) and Potted Meat (2018), which was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award, and has been adapted for a short film entitled The Usual Route, from Foothills Productions. Steven was born and raised in West Virginia, and after 10 years in the Navy, he earned a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Denver and an MFA from Stetson University. He teaches in the MFA programs at Regis University and Cornell College.

Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning artist, organizer, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. She has created, curated, coached, and taught in Denver for over 20 years, managing the largest poetry festivals that Denver has seen to date. The author of poetry collections Poems for the End of the World, A Gospel of Bones, and Thirteen Descansos, Suzi is also a singer-songwriter, playwright, and multi-disciplinary creative. Currently, she is Affiliate Faculty with Regis University’s Mile High MFA, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and DU’s Prison Arts Initiative, and she serves as the [margins.] Conference Director for The Word.

Bernardo Wade is a writer/artist from New Orleans, Bernardo Wade tries at poems & rides his bike around Bloomington, IN, because IU funds his present period of studying with others. He currently serves as Associate Editor of Indiana Review, is a Watering Hole Fellow, and moonlights as an equity and justice advocate. He was recently awarded the 2021 Puerto del Sol Poetry Prize and has words in or forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Black Warrior Review, Guernica, Cincinnati Review & others.

Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and a forthcoming essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been or will be featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour, and The New Yorker.

Arvin Ramgoolam is a father, writer, and co-owner of Townie Books and Rumors Coffee and Tea House with his wife Danica in Crested Butte, CO. He is the 2020 recipient of the Adina Talve-Goodman Fellowship from One Story and a MacDowell Fellow in 2022. His work focuses on otherness and place, especially minorities in the American West. Arvin is currently at work on a novel reimagining the American West and challenging the architecture of the myth of Western white masculinity. His short stories are meditations on culture through the lens of pop culture, music, art, comic books, and video games.

 

MWLF: “Notes from Underground: Writing Rich Dialogue” with Chelsey Johnson

by Leave a Comment

Mountain Words Literary Festival: “Notes from Underground: Writing Rich Dialogue” with Chelsey Johnson

Friday, May 27

2 pm – 3 pm

As part of your festival pass, or $20 single entry

Great dialogue hums with characterization, action, subtext, and surprise—entire stories contained in a single exchange. In this workshop, we’ll study clips and passages, and we’ll do hands-on practice in writing pithy, vivid conversations, from arguments to connections to revelations.

Chelsey Johnson’s debut novel Stray City came out with Custom House/HarperCollins in 2018, and her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, Gulf Coast, The New York Times, and NPR’s Selected Shorts, among others. She received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford, as well as fellowships to the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Signal Fire Arts. Born and raised in rural northern Minnesota, she now lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, where she is an associate professor of fiction at Northern Arizona University’s MFA and undergraduate programs. A second novel is in the works.

MWLF: “Three Keys to Flash Fiction: Interruption, Omission, and Quickness”

by Leave a Comment

What makes flash fiction spark? In this workshop, we’ll explore three keys to flash fiction that works: interruption, omission, and quickness. We’ll look at these techniques in several flash stories, then discuss how we can apply these techniques to our own work. Attendees will leave with several exercises for further exploration.

Candace Nadon holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine and PhD in English from Georgia State University. She teaches Creative Writing and literature at Fort Lewis College (her alma mater) and for the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Western. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in New Flash Fiction, Five Points, Hartskill Review, New Mexico Review, Platte Valley Review and others. A fifth-generation Coloradan, her work explores the lives of women in the contemporary West.