Western Book Roundup

Wyoming Poet Craig Arnold Believed Dead

By Jenny Shank, 5-13-09

	Craig Arnold, photo courtesy of the Poetry Foundation.

Ben Fulton of the Salt Lake Tribune reported Friday that the search team looking for poet Craig Arnold on a Japanese volcano where he had been hiking discovered Arnold’s trail, which “showed signs that Arnold, 41, suffered a leg injury, then fell from a steep cliff to his death soon afterward… Arnold was exploring the island for a book he planned to write on the world’s active volcanoes, and had been missing since April 27.”

Arnold earned his Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Utah in 2001, and began teaching poetry at the University of Wyoming in 2004.  According to Fulton, “Arnold garnered one of his first major literary prizes, the Yale Younger Poets award, for his 1999 poetry collection, Shells, while living in Salt Lake City.”

The Rumpus, my new favorite literary website, tipped readers off to former New Yorker writer Dan Baum’s Twitter feed.  I didn’t know this, but Baum lives in Boulder.  (What other writers are lurking out there, down the street from me?  I never run into Jon Krakauer at play group.) In the past few days, Baum has twittered about why he lost his job as a staff reporter at The New Yorker.  There is so much interesting stuff in his series of tweets, such as his description of the atmosphere at The New Yorker--he says everyone whispers.  And the fact that one of the reasons he lost his job was that he proposed writing an article on Montana’s governor Brian Schweitzer, which wasn’t approved, but David Remnick later asked him to write a profile of Schweitzer, and Baum reminded him that he’d rejected the idea before.  It’s kind of difficult to read this story in Twitter’s reverse chronological order, but Baum has now posted it as an essay on his website.  Baum has a new book out, Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans.

I am on Twitter these days, too, writing mostly about books, though I can’t say my tweets are as interesting as Baum’s.

Reif Larsen will discuss his debut novel, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet at Fact & Fiction in Missoula on Friday, May 15 at 3:30 and 7 p.m.  I first heard of Larsen when one of my writing buddies mentioned that someone in her class in Columbia’s MFA program had signed a book deal worth nearly a million dollars ($900,000, according to the Boston Globe).  What’s so distinctive about this novel?  I haven’t seen it yet, but apparently the book’s margins are filled with drawings that are central to the story, which is the tale of a young cartographer named T.S. Spivet who sets out on an adventure from his home in Montana.  According to the Boston Globe, “It is a novel with graphics, not a graphic novel.”

Shelf Awareness noted that the first Sedona Book Festival will be held this October, and that it will “spotlight Southwest authors,” according to organizer Joe Neri, owner of the Well Red Coyote Bookstore in West Sedona.  The festival will feature local authors James Bishop, Jr. and Kris Neri, as well many more writers to be named later.

Clay Morgan recently wrote in to let me know about a project at Boise State that he directs called The Story Initiative, whose goal is “to explore the phenomenon of Story and how Story works in our lives and our minds; to enhance the experiences of BSU students; and to engage the public with our explorations of Story.” To that end, they are sponsoring a Boise visit by director Donald Petrie, who will screen his new comedy ”My Life in Ruins,” starring Nia Vardalos and Richard Dreyfuss, and answer audience questions (Thursday, May 21, The Egyptian Theater, 5:30 p.m., $10-$20).  The Story Initiative has lots of other events planned, including a “Great Adaptations” film and story conference for the fall, and they are developing a public radio program called “Storylines.”

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