Proulx News, Fuller on Wyoming Oil, and Cather Archive Goes Online

By Jenny Shank, 4-30-08

	Caption: Alexandra Fuller, photo courtesy of the Alexandra Fuller Home Page.

Annie Proulx fans can begin the countdown to the release of her next book: Buzz Girl reports that Proulx’s “new collection of 9 ‘stunning’ short stories about the people who now inhabit pioneer country” is due out in September 2008.  The book, to be published by Scribner, is titled Fine Just The Way It Is.

Another Wyoming writer, Alexandra Fuller, recently wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times, about the recent, massive expansion of the oil and gas industry in Wyoming, and the harm it’s caused the environment and Wyomingites’ physical and mental health—she writes that because of all the dangerous energy-related employment, “We top the national death toll on the job with 16.8 deaths per 100,000 workers.” (Via Wyoming Arts Blog.) Check back here next week for my review of Fuller’s new book about the life of an oil field worker, The Legend of Colton H. Bryant.

One of my favorite Western writers, Willa Cather, has a cool new website thanks to the University of Nebraska.  According the University of Nebraska Press, the The Willa Cather Archive was “over ten years in the making.” It’s packed with photos, letters, copies of texts, and news and information for Cather groupies…or “Cather scholars” if you prefer.

Clara Villarosa, the former owner of Denver’s late great African-American bookstore, Hue-Man Experience Book Store, was featured in a recent New York Times article about elderly who choose to retire in urban areas.  Dan Fost writes, “Clara Villarosa, 77, retired in 2000, leaving her home in Denver to move to Harlem, where she could be closer to her two grown daughters in Brooklyn. She wound up being a founder of Hue-Man Bookstore and Cafe, and retired from there in 2004.” (Via Shelf Awareness.)

Have some regional literary news or events to share?  If so,