Helena, Moab, and Denver Host Literary Festivals

By Jenny Shank, 10-08-08

It’s literary award and festival season across the region.  Colorado Humanities and Colorado Center for the Book will announce the winners of the 17th annual Colorado Book Awards tonight at the Tivoli Turnhalle on the Auraria Campus in Denver (6-10 p.m.), and tickets are available for $75.  As I mentioned before, several of the books we’ve reviewed over the past year are finalists for awards.

Meanwhile in Utah, Confluence: A Celebration of Reading and Writing in Moab will be held from October 14 through 19.  This year’s focus is “Environmental Writing and Ed Abbey.” The festival offers an intensive writing workshop with Craig Childs, Amy Irvine McHarg, and Jack Loeffler, and a number of readings and events that are free to the public, including a John DePuy Art Exhibit, a panel discussion about “Lessons from Desert Solitaire” (October 18, 9 a.m.) as well as an outdoor reading of Desert Solitaire in its entirety.  There will also be several screenings of the films “Brave New West,” “Peacock’s War,” and “A Voice in the Wilderness,” Eric Temple’s Edward Abbey documentary (the complete schedule is available here).

Farther north, the Helena Festival of the Book kicks off today.  Authors scheduled to participate include Hipólito Rafael Chacón, whose book Brian D’Ambrosio recently reviewed for New West, Russell Rowland, a writing teacher at MSU-Billings and the editor of The Smoking Poet and Stone’s Throw magazine (which is accepting submissions now), and Missoula essayist Susanna Sonnenberg.

On the horizon this month is the ”Women Writing the West” symposium in Denver from October 15 through 17, and the ever-popular Montana Festival of the Book will be held in Missoula from October 23 through 25.  I’ll share some more specifics about these two events in the weeks to come. 

If that isn’t enough to keep you busy, you can always participate in One Book-One Bozeman or One Book, One Denver this month.  David Milofsky, novelist and columnist for the Denver Post, questioned Mayor Hickenlooper’s selection of Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man in his article Sunday. 

Amid all these festivals, a Boulder institution, the Boulder Book Store, is celebrating its 35th anniversary with readings and events.  Vince Darcangelo recently wrote about the history of the bookstore for the Daily Camera.  Several events remain in the store’s two-week celebration, including a reading by local children’s author T.A. Barron (October 9, 7:30 p.m.), an appearance by Phillippa Gregory (at the Unity Church, October 13, 7:30 p.m., $10), and a 20 percent off sale for all Readers Guild members from October 10 through 12.

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