COMMunity Conversations Weekend: February 16-17
Friday: Humans, the Humanities and the Written WOrd
Saturday: CHAos theory
Friday night, 7:00 p.m. Canyon Community Center 126 Lion Blvd Springdale
Join Laura Pritchett and Laura Tohe as they Dig into the mysteries of the written word
LAURA PRITCHETT
FICTION
LAURA PRITCHETT's sixth novel, Playing with Wildfire, will be released in February by Torrey House Press. She’s also the author of six other novels, two nonfiction books, and editor of three environmental anthologies, and her work has been the recipient of the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the WILLA, the High Plains Book Award, several Colorado Book Awards, and others. Her best-known novel, Stars Go Blue, has been optioned for TV rights. She’s published over 300 essays and short stories in national venues, most recently in The Sun, Terrain, Camas, Orion, Creative Nonfiction, and others. She directs the MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University and holds a PhD from Purdue University. When not writing or teaching, she can be found sauntering around the West, especially her home state of Colorado.
LAURA TOHE
POETRY
LAURA TOHE is Diné, Sleepy-Rock People clan and born for the Bitter Water People clan. She is the current Navajo Nation Poet Laureate. Her books include No Parole Today, Making Friends with Water, Sister Nations, Tséyi, Deep in the Rock, Code Talker Stories, and poetry that have appeared in the U.S., Canada, Chile, and Europe. Her commissioned librettos are Enemy Slayer, A Navajo Oratorio and Nahasdzáán in the Glittering World made its world premiere in France. Among her awards are the 2020 Academy of American Poetry Fellowship; 2019 American Indian Festival of Writers Award; Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers; the Joy Harjo & Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund Award; Arizona Book Association's Glyph Award for Best Poetry and Best Book; and was twice nominated for the Pushcart Award. Many of her poems have been translated into music for piano, guitar, and trumpet. She is Professor Emerita with Distinction from Arizona State University.CRAIG CHILDS
CHAOS THEORY with Craig Childs and Greg Istock
Saturday February 17th at the Bumbleberry Theater, 897 Zion Park Blvd
CRAIG CHILDS is known for following ancient migration routes on foot throughout the Southwest. He has published more than a dozen books of adventure, wilderness, and science, including the award-winning Tracing Time: Seasons of Rock Art on the Colorado Plateau and Virga and Bone: Essays from Dry Places. He has won the Orion Book Award and the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award, the Galen Rowell Art of Adventure Award, and the Spirit of the West Award for his body of work. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Men's Journal, High Country News, and Outside. The New York Times says "Childs's feats of asceticism are nothing if not awe inspiring: he's a modern-day desert father." He has a BA in Journalism from CU Boulder with a minor in Women's Studies, and an MA in Desert Studies from Prescott College and has taught writing at University of Alaska in Anchorage and the Mountainview MFA at Southern New Hampshire University. He lives outside of Norwood, CO.
GREG ISTOCK, Musician: After decades of working with bands in almost every genre, Istock is finally on his own with his guitar. When he plays live, it’s his guitar and a bass drum. When he is recording, he adds, keyboard, piano, and organ, which he all plays himself. All of the songs on Mr. Jones are original, most are new. “They Wine” predates Istock’s Reggae era. “Virgin Jam” was written in 2011 and is named for the place he has called home for almost 20 years: the desert of Southern Utah, located where the Colorado Plateau begins, where the sun was born……