Western Book Roundup

Denver Librarian Finalist for Amazon Award & Jess Walter’s ‘Poets’ Becomes a Film

By Jenny Shank, 6-01-11

	Gregory Hill, author of East of Denver, photo courtesy of Kelly Kievit.

Gregory Hill, who works as a book buyer at the University of Denver’s Penrose Library, is one of three finalists in the general fiction category for this year’s Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. According to the contest website, Hill’s novel, East of Denver, “tells the story of Shakespeare Williams, who returns to his family’s farm in eastern Colorado to find his widowed, senile father living in squalor. Facing the loss of the farm, Shakespeare hatches a plot with his father and a motley crew of his former high school classmates to rob the local bank.”

Greg Glasgow recently interviewed Hill for the University of Denver blog. Glasgow writes:

“The story is based on Hill’s own past growing up in Joes, Colo. (called Dorsey, Colo., in the book), and his more recent experiences watching his father’s battle against Alzheimer’s disease.

‘It was supposed to be a book about zombies, but then my dad got Alzheimer’s, so I wanted to write something about that,’ says Hill, who has a degree in English literature from the University of Colorado. ‘There’s all these Alzheimer’s memoirs that are really sensitive and thoughtful, and I wanted to write something that wasn’t as sensitive or thoughtful about that disease. So I said ‘what can you do to make Alzheimer’s fun?’ I was like well, I’ll have the kid try to rob a bank with the old man.’”

Today is the last day to read the three excerpts and vote for the winner, who will receive a publishing contract with the Penguin Group and a $15,000 advance. The winner will be announced June 13.

• Congratulations to the winners of the 2011 Reading The West Book Awards, sponsored by the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association: The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart in the adult category, and Starfish by James Crowley in the children’s category. They will be honored at the MPIBA trade show in September.

• I learned from Northwest Book Lovers recently that actor Jack Black and director Michael Winterbottom are collaborating on a film adaptation of Jess Walter’s hilarious novel The Financial Lives of the Poets, about a former newspaper journalist who attempts to work himself out of crippling debt by selling pot to other stressed-out professionals. The movie will be called “Bailout.” According to Variety, Walter wrote the script for the movie and filming will begin in August.

• Karl Marlantes of Woodinville, Wash., whose debut novel Matterhorn won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, the Indie Booksellers Choice award, and the 2011 William E. Colby Award for military writing, will visit the Boulder Book Store on June 8 (7:30 p.m., $5) and The King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City on June 9 (7 p.m.). Matterhorn is out in paperback now.

• Emma Donoghue, whose novel Room was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, is in the region promoting the paperback edition of Room. She’ll read at the Tattered Cover on June 3 (7:30 p.m.) and at the Boulder Book Store on June 4 (2 p.m., $5).

• Justin Cronin, whose novel The Passage (which takes place in part in Colorado) was a big hit last year, will be passing through the region on his paperback tour. He’ll visit the Salt Lake City Public Library on June 2 (7 p.m.), the Boulder Book Store on June 6 (7:30 p.m., $5), and Changing Hands in Tempe on June 7 (7 p.m.).

• Montana writer Janet Fox will be doing several readings in the region for her new young adult novel, Forgiven, the follow-up to her 2010 novel, Faithful, which was set in Yellowstone. Fox will launch Forgiven at the Country Bookshelf in Bozeman (4:30 p.m.). She’ll read and sign copies at the Book Peddler in West Yellowstone on August 5 (7 p.m.), at Yellowstone National Park in Yellowstone General Stores on August 6 (11 a.m.) and at Fact and Fiction in Missoula on August 13.

• The Denver County Fair announced a call for entries to its first poetry contest, Bounty, for “poems inspired by agriculture, food, gardens and farms.” The contest is open to adults and young people (age 10 to 17), and entries are due July 17.  Winners and finalists will read their poems at the Denver County Fair on July 31.

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