Steven Dunn

MWLF: “Learn World-Building from Rappers” workshop with Steven Dunn

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Learn World-Building from Rappers

With a sense of urgency, rappers often build three-dimensional worlds in small spaces. We will listen to songs and discuss what we notice. We will study the rhetorical and poetic strategies rappers use, and discuss possibilities to use those strategies in our own work, whether it’s fiction, poetry, hybrid, and anything else.

Steven Dunn

A 2021 Whiting Award winner, and shortlisted for Granta’s “Best of Young American Novelists,” Steven Dunn 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.

Included in your festival pass, or $25 single entry

MWLF: Panel Discussion: Writing through Displacement

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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.

 

Mountain Words Literary Festival

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Mountain Words Literary Festival | May 25th – 29th 2022

Cheryl Strayed

Justin Farrell, Kaveh Akbar, Jessica Kahkoska, Manuel Aragon, Dominque Conway, Bernardo Wade, Shelley Read, Steven Dunn, Megha Nayer, Adrian Todd Zuniga, Claire Boyles, Mario Alejandro Ariza, James McGrath Morris, Shelley Read, Molly Murfee, Arvin Ram, Heather Hughes, Steven Cole Hughes, Chris La Tray, Chelsey Johnson, Alissa Johnson, Teow Lim Goh, Candace Nadon, & (many) others.

Also featuring (all the way from Australia),

literary festival

With Adrian Todd Zuniga

 

Full lineup and tix

Announcing the 2022 Mountain Words Literary Festival

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Announcing the 2022 Mountain Words Literary Festival

May 25 – 29

Crested Butte Center for the Arts

 

The Crested Butte Center for the Arts is thrilled to present the third-annual Mountain Words Literary Festival! Held over Memorial Day weekend, May 25-29, the festival kicks off Wednesday, May 25, with Cheryl Strayed, author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Wild and the New York Times bestsellers Tiny Beautiful Things and Brave Enough.

The festival welcomes over thirty-five nationally and internationally acclaimed authors and presenters for a five-day celebration at nine thousand feet with offerings for all ages and interests. Organizers are excited for attendees to safely gather in the stunning Gunnison Valley for workshops, readings, panel discussions, live theater, trivia, kids’ events and programming, parties, film screenings, gallery receptions, and other delights. The multi-genre festival includes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, journalism/long-form, nature writing, climate reporting, publishing, and more.

“We are enormously excited to present some of the most stimulating and thought-provoking writers and thinkers from across the state and nation and offer a rare opportunity to experience multiple genres through a deeply diverse array of topics,” said Festival Director Brooke MacMillan.“Access is paramount to the festival mission, and we offer student discounts and scholarships as needed. Our priority is to get people here for what we promise will be a life-affirming sojourn in one of the most beautiful mountainous enclaves in the world.”

Along with Strayed, other presenters include Iranian American scholar and Pushcart award-winning writer Kaveh Akbar; investigative reporter for the New Yorker, and author of the meta-true crime non-fiction best-seller Savage Appetites, Rachel Monroe; author of Billionaire Wilderness and professor at Yale University, Justin Farrell; writer and 2021 Whiting Award winner, Steven Dunn (who will offer a workshop on learning world-building from rappers); writer, director, and filmmaker, Manuel Aragon; award-winning artist and educator, Suzi Q. Smith; 2022 Whiting Award fiction winner, and climate literary fiction author, Claire Boyles; investigative reporter, climate change essayist, and This American Life contributor, Mario Alejandro Ariza; S Kirk Walsh, author of the national bestselling novel, The Elephant of Belfast; award-winning and New York Times best-selling biographer, James McGrath Morris, and local writers Shelley Read, Molly Murfee, Nick Bowlin, Anna Fenerty, Leath Tonino, and many others.

The festival includes readings from the 2022 Mountain Words Writers in Residence cohort which alongside Kaveh Akbar includes prison reform activist and author Dominque Conway, poet and artist Bernardo Wade, India-based fiction writer Megha Nayar, and writer and audio journalist Stephanie Maltarich.

Writers and readers can immerse in workshops in fiction, research, investigative reporting, playwriting, poetry, flash fiction, memoir, close reading, and others. Festival panel discussions include writing about climate; displacement; wealth and remaking the American West; publishing and others.

“The panels are really interesting for everyone. Incredible thinkers engaging in thoughtful discourse on topics that matter so much right now. If writing isn’t your thing, the panels will be,” said Festival Host and local Townie Bookstore owner Arvin Ram.

New this year and all the way from Australia, the festival’s Saturday lineup will feature the internationally renowned Literary Death Match. Called the “greatest reading series ever” by the LA Times, LDM features a mix of four established and emerging authors (Steven Dunn, Suzi Q Smith, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Boyles), who perform their most brilliant work before a live audience and a panel of three all-star judges (Rachel Monroe, Jason Antoon, Sam Robards). After a pair of readings, the judges take turns spouting hilarious, off-the-wall commentary, focusing on Literary Merit, Performance, and Intangibles before they select two authors to advance to the finals. During the finals, we trade in the show’s literary sensibility for an absurdly comical climax to decide who takes home the Literary Death Match crown — this is not to be missed!

Along with the bread & butter of any literary/book festival (readings, workshops, panel discussions) the festival offers other high-level fun for every age and interest.

Saturday will feature a “Live Theater at Lunch” performance of the Tony Award winning play, “Art” by Yasmina Reza, called, “…wildly funny, naughtily provocative…” by NY Post. The lunchtime performance will star Tony Award Nominated actor Sam Robards whose credits include Casualties of War, Beautiful Girls, American Beauty, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and other films; internationally acclaimed actor, Jason Antoon, whose work includes Fresh Off the Boat, Shameless, iZombie, Modern Family, Sex and the City, among many commercial films; and acclaimed actors and Western Colorado University theatre director, Steven Cole Hughes.

Take a break from all of the festival intellectualism and try your hand at crafting some of the most (in)famous literary cocktails at the Literary Spirits workshop where you can perfect and twist classic cocktails in a delightful introduction to mixology — and you get to drink them!

Directly following the mixology workshop, pop upstairs to the Center’s Kinder Padon Gallery where book and art lovers can exalt over drinks and discussion of “Flourish” an exhibition of fine book art curated especially for the festival by Alicia Bailey, Director of Abecedarian Artists’ Books, Thursday evening, 5 – 6 pm. The installation features ten artists from Colorado, Texas, and Arizona.

And back by popular demand, festival-goers and trivia lovers alike can come together for a very special bookish Trivia with Quiz Quiz Bang Bang. From the dynamic duo behind the hugely popular Quiz Quiz Bang Bang podcast, test your smarts from everything from geography to art to television to history — plus a special literary round! Winners will bag some killer festival prizes.

The festival also has plenty for kids to enjoy, including Farcical Fairytales, an engaging, silly, interactive performance happening Saturday, May 28 in the Center’s Jones Performance Hall and starring CB’s talented improv troupe, Kirsten Hausman, Tricia Seeberg, Eliot Paulsen, Jimmy Utley, Gregory Jackson Haley, and Annie Flora. The show is suitable for kids ages three and up and costumes are encouraged. Parents are welcome to join in the fun or drop off the kids and head into the Steddy Theater for Adult Storytime where they can sip coffee and/or mimosas while being read to by renowned authors.

Trailhead Children’s Museum will also present “Stories, Art, and Play” sessions that bring various books to life through art and play. Kids will have the chance to create their own scenes for “The Book With No Pictures” by B.J. Novak, and dive into the detailed pages of the graphic novel “Extincts: Quest for the Unicorn’s Horns” by Scott Magoon, and express their interpretation of these literary works through art, and explore books through play!

Fun for the whole family, Ben Goldfarb, author of the award-winning book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, will lead an informal all-about-beavers conversation by the beaver ponds at Gunsight Bridge, Sunday, May 29 at 10 a.m. Learn how beavers engineer landscapes, and help to fight drought, pollution, and climate change in Colorado and beyond.

“Anyone who visits the Valley becomes resolute to either come again every year or find a way to live here. Crested Butte is full of charm and a little wildness, and presenting a festival in such an extraordinary place is a very special thing to be able to give people,” said Ram. “You need to experience it to believe it.”

The 2022 Mountain Words Literary Festival will take place on May 25-29 at the state-of-the-art Center for the Arts, located in downtown Crested Butte. For a full schedule, passes, scholarship and student pricing, lodging info, and more, please visit www.gvlf.org

 

Panel: “Writing the Intersection and Divisions Between Rural and Urban America”

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Panel Discussion: “Writing the Intersection and Divisions Between Rural and Urban America” with Rachel Monroe, Chris La Tray, Nick Bowlin, Chelsey Johnson in discussion with Brian Calvert.

Rachel Monroe’s writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Wired, and the Atlantic, where she is a contributing writer. Her first book, Savage Appetites: True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession (Scribner) was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and named a best book of the year by Esquire, the Chicago Tribune, and Jezebel. More on Rachel.

Chris La Tray is a Métis writer and storyteller. His first book, One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays From the World At Large (2018, Riverfeet Press) won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award. His next book, Becoming Little Shell, will be published by Milkweed Editions in Spring 2022. Chris is an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians and lives near Missoula, Montana.

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.

Nick Bowlin is a correspondent for High Country News and a freelance writer. His stories have been published in The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The Nation and elsewhere. Before HCN, Nick worked for E&E News in Washington D.C., and at a local newspaper in the Philadelphia suburbs. He was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Brian Calvert is a writer and editor based in Southern California. He holds an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from Western Colorado University and a BA in English from the University of Northern Colorado. He is a former Ted Scripps Fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism and the former editor-in-chief of High Country News. He hosts workshops, panels and events for environmental ethics in non-fiction and poetry and for equity and inclusion in journalism.

Friday Night Festival Readings + Karen Chamberlain Award

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Friday Festival Readings + Karen Chamberlain Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry.  Readings from Colorado Poet Laureate, Bobby Lefebre; author of the memoir, Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country, winner of the Colorado Book Award, Pam Houston; Latinx writer, director, and filmmaker Manuel Aragon; and author of Potted Meat and water & power, Steven Dunn. Award ceremony with Art Goodtimes presenting Colorado poet, Kate Kingston. In the Steddy Theater.

Bobby LeFebre is an award-winning writer, performer, and cultural worker fusing a non-traditional multi-hyphenated professional identity to imagine new realities, empower communities, advance arts and culture, and serve as an agent of provocation, transformation, equity and social change. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Huffington Post, The Guardian, American Theater Magazine, NPR, and Poets.Org. More on Bobby.

Pam Houston is the author of the memoir, Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country, which won the 2019 Colorado Book Award, the High Plains Book Award and the Reading The West Advocacy Award and even more recently, Air Mail: Letters of Politics Pandemics and Place coauthored with Amy Irvine.  She is also the author of Cowboys Are My Weakness as well as five other books of fiction and nonfiction, all published by W.W. Norton.

Steven Dunn is the author of the novels Potted Meat (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2016) and water & power (Tarpaulin Sky 2018) He 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. He teaches Creative Writing at Regis University’s Mile High MFA. Some of his work can be found in Columbia Journal, Granta Magazine, and Best Small Fictions 2018. http://www.stevencdunn.com/

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.

Art Goodtimes is an American poet, farmer and politician in Colorado. Goodtimes was first elected to the San Miguel County Board of Commissioners in 1996 as a Democrat. Retired in 2016 after five terms as Colorado’s only Green Party county commissioner, Art Goodtimes has won numerous awards for his political activism including from the Dept. of Interior, the Forest Service, conservative Club 20 of Grand Junction, as well as serving on dozens of boards and commissions on the local, regional, state and national levels. He co-founded the Sheep Mountain Alliance, Telluride’s local environmental group, in 1988.

Mountain Words Literary Festival

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Mountain Words Literary Festival passes + tickets are on sale now! Join us for a three-day literary celebration at nine-thousand feet. Featuring 25 authors and presenters for readings, workshops, kids events, parties, panel discussions, live theater, and more. In-person and safely distanced in Crested Butte and Gunnison.

Authors include Nate Marshall, Rachel Monroe, Scott Carney, Pam Houston, Bobby Lefebre, Laura Pritchett, Adam Valen Levinson, Steven Dunn, Chelsey Johnson, Nick Arvin and others.

VISIT GVLF.ORG FOR FULL LINEUP AND PASSES