Rivers & Mountains Forever: A Walking Discussion
Peter Anderson's books include Heading Home: Field Notes (Conundrum Press, 2017), a collection of prose and prose poems exploring rural life and the modern day eccentricities of the American West,Going Down Grand: Poems from the Canyon (Lithic Press, 2015), and First Church of the Higher Elevations (Conundrum Press, 2015), a collection of essays on wildness, mountain places, and the life of the spirit. Peter lives with his family on the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains where he helped launch the Crestone Poetry Festival. Visit his website at petehowardanderson.com. Email: pilgrimage@fairpoint.net
What's in the Blood: A Writing Workshop
Kierstin Bridger is the author of Demimonde (Lithic Press), the 2017 Women Writing the West's Willa Award, and All Ember (Urban Farmhouse Press). Winner of the Mark Fischer Prize, the ACC Writer’s Studio award, and short-listed for the Manchester Poetry Prize, Bridger also served as editor of Ridgway Alley Poems, co-directed the Open Bard series, and co-hosted Poetry Voice with Uche Ogbuji. Kierstin’s work has appeared in December, Sugar House Review, Prairie Schooner and Painted Bride Quarterly. She earned her MFA at Pacific U. To see more of her work, visit kierstinbridger.com. Email: kbbridger@me.com
Navajo Nation Discussion/Featured Reader
Jesse grew up on the Leeward side of O’ahu. His work appears in Turtle Island Quarterly, Peach Velvet, About Place, Cutthroat and other venues. His full length work, Health Carefully was released through Cyberwit press 2019. Jesse co-hosts Midnight Transmission with Orlando White and is currently producing a spoken word/instrumental album with Pamela Uschuk and William Pitt Root. Jesse teaches at Dine’ College and lives with his wife and cats on the Navajo Nation. Email: jtmaloney@dinecollege.edu
Workshop: The Anatomy of Poetry/Featured Reader
With a 1025-hour CMT from Rocky Mountain Institute of Healing Arts and thirteen years of diverse experiences as a massage therapist, Erica Waters celebrates bodies and embodiment. Words woven by Waters appear in Weber: The Contemporary West, The Sun, Camas, CALYX, and The Fiddlehead International Literary Journal, among others. Erica owns and operates Held Space Healing and teaches poetry and other literature courses at CSU (under her maiden name, Airica Parker). Learn more: https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/people/airicap/ Email: wings.air.poet@gmail.com
Workshop: Dance Party/Featured Reader
Boulder's Uche Ogbuji was born in Calabar, Nigeria. and is a computer engineer and entrepreneur whose abiding passion is poetry. His poems, fusing Igbo culture, European Classicism, U.S. Mountain West setting, and Hip-Hop influences, have appeared widely. He's had a short collection of poems published, Ndewo, Colorado (Aldrich Press, 2013). Email: uche@ogbuji.net
Workshop: Escaping into the Moment/Featured Reader
Due to a family tragedy, our beloved Rosemerry Wahtolla Trommer won't be able to join us. We are fortunate that Spirit of the West Award winner Craig Childs has agreed to teach a workshop at the time she was allocated. Please check back to this website for information on a Healing Circle for Rosemerry.
Night Sky Observations/Emcee
Danny Rosen founded and runs the Lithic Press. His second chapbook, Ghosts of Giant Kudu, was published by Kattywompus Press. His poems have appeared most recently in Pilgrimage, San Pedro River Review, Comstock Review, Fruita Pulp, Malpais Reveiw and elsewhere. He lives among dogs, the rocks, and the stars in the desert of western Colorado. Email: danny@lithicpress.com
Workshop: Memoir
Rebecca Mullen is a Master Certified Life Coach, a TEDx Speaker, an author, a blogger and a teacher. Currently, she’s teaching “Habits for Your Happily Ever After”, a course designed to anchor our marriages in simple, mindful habits that foster a lifetime of intimacy. To see more of Rebecca’s work visit her website at https://altaredspaces.com/ Email: rbcamullen@gmail.com
Musical Guest
Orlando is from Tółikan, Arizona. He is Diné of the Naaneesht’ézhi Tábaahí and born for the Naakai Diné’e. Orlando is the author of two books of poetry, Bone Light (Red Hen Press), which Kazim Ali described as a “careful excavation on language and letters and the physical body” and LETTERRS (Nightboat Books) which received the Poetry Center Book Award. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, the Kenyon Review, Salt Hill Journal, and other venues. Orlando teaches at Diné College and lives in Tsaile, Arizona. Email:
Renga Party
Jimi Bernath is a poet, essayist, artist and singer living in Englewood. His work has appeared in newshole, frogpond, Heiwa: Peace Poetry Across the Pacific, Brussels Sprout, point judith light, Soliloquy, Modern Haiku, tangents, Alura, the Small Pond Magazine of Literature, the Mercury Reader, Stick, Sight Unseen, and Life Scribes. Email: jimi99@msn.com
Words for the Wild: A Walking Discussion
Poet and essayist Rick Kempa’s books include the anthology ON FOOT: Grand Canyon Backpacking Stories, from Vishnu Temple Press in Flagstaff, and the poetry collection Ten Thousand Voices, published by Littoral Press in Richmond. Rick lives in Grand Junction, and is also the editor of Deep Wild. To learn more about Rick, please, visit rickkempa.com. Email: rickkempa.deepwildjournal@gmail.com
Round Table DIscussion
Wendy Videlock lives on the edge of a canyon on the western slope of the Colorado Rockies. Her works appear in Poetry, Best American Poetry, Ted Kooser’s ALP, Hudson Review, The New York Times, Rattle, Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. Her books are available from Able Muse and EXOT Books. Wendy is also a visual artist, whose paintings feature in galleries throughout western Colorado. Email: coloradawendy@gmail.com
Talking Gourds
Retired Green Party county commissioner, Art Goodtimes has won numerous awards for his political activism. His poetry books include As If the World Really Mattered (La Alameda Press, Albuquerque, 2007) and Looking South to Lone Cone (Western Eye Press, Sedona, 2013). He was co-editor of the anthology MycoEpithalamia: Mushroom Wedding Poems (Fungi Press, CA, 2016). Turn Star Press of Telluride brought out a limited edition chapbook in 2019 that he co-authored called Telluride Valley Floor. Art’s latest book is Dancing on Edge: The McRedeye Poems, Lithic Press. Email: shroompa@gmail.com
Key Note Speaker/Invocation
Our key-note speaker, Daiva Chesonis is the co-owner of Between the Covers Bookstore in Telluride. Daiva is the fiercely proud Baltimore-born daughter of Lithuanian immigrants, transplanted to Colorado in 1992 to build Telluride’s gondola transportation system. Daiva has been a snowboard instructor, owner/operator of Vision Design, Art Director at Telluride Magazine, founder and director of the Telluride AIDS Benefit Fashion Show, co-founder of the Telluride Literary Arts Festival, and a traveling minstrel for Mountainfilm on Tour. In 2005. She earned an M.A. in Diplomacy and International Conflict Resolution.. This mom of one amazing adult can be found writing and performing poetry, serving as the current San Miguel County Poet Laureate, and wandering local forests on the hunt for mushrooms. Email: daiva@between-the-covers.com
Featured Reader/Round Table Discussion
Alexander Pepple is an electrical and software engineer. He founded and edits Able Muse and its related presses, and directs its related Eratosphere online literary workshop. He edited the Able Muse Anthology (Able Muse Press, 2010). He has been published widely and most recently his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Light, Autumn Sky Daily, Rosebud, and the Hopkins Review. Email: alex@ablemuse.com
Featured Reader
Rachel Kellum lives with her family at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains and teaches art to valley children and writing at Adams State University. As a community college English and art instructor for eleven years, she served as director of the MCC CACE Gallery of Fine Art and host of Open Mic Poetry Nights, and is one of the founding coordinators of the Crestone Poetry Festival. Kellum's poems have been featured in several online journals and print collections, and she leads writing workshops, performs her poetry around Colorado and blogs at wordweeds.com. Her first book, ah, published by Liquid Light Press, was released in 2012. Email: rachel.kellum@gmail.com
Gongs on the Palisades, Painting with Sound: Vibrational Landscapes
Mary has been "vibrational painting" for over two years in collaboration with her planetary gong, Nibiru, a Babylonian name that stands for the passage of time as in the equinox or solstice times. Nibiru represents the crossroads of decision-making as in taking or changing direction. Adding to the vibrational mix is the Sun and Uranus. Mary takes great delight in playing outdoors alongside rivers, in canyons and out in the wind and elements. She believe the gong gathers these sounds into itself to share with any of you who wish to stop, be still and mix your own internal paintings with the gong’s sounds. Email: colorcreek49@gmail.com
Round Table Discussion
Brian Palmer enjoys travelling, faraway, down the road, or out the door. He appreciates all poetry and himself writes mainly formal verse. But free, too. He’s the editor of the literary journal, THINK. He earned an English degree at Colorado State University long ago, and an MFA in Creative Writing at Western Colorado University more recently. In between, he happily taught high school Lit and Comp and Drama. He has spent much of his life in the various regions of the Pacific Northwest and Colorado. Email: brijamespalmer@gmail.com
Writing Like a River
Explorer and storyteller Craig Childs has published more than a dozen critically acclaimed books, including his most recent, Virga and Bone: Essays from Dry Places, the current One-Read for the state of Utah. His work has appeared in the The Atlantic, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Men's Journal, and The Sun. He is a contributing editor for Adventure Journal Quarterly. Childs lives with his wife, the poet Daiva Chesonis, in southwest Colorado.
The Voice of Poetry
David J Rothman The Voice of Poetry David has published six volumes of poetry. His work appears in Appalachia, The Atlantic, The Formalist, The Gettysburg Review, The Hudson Review, The Journal, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, The Threepenny Review and others. In 2013 he published Living the Life: Tales from America’s Mountains & Ski Towns, based on his experience in the ski and ski-mountaineering world. His most recent full-length critical book (co-edited with Jeffrey Villines) is Belle Turnbull: On the Life and Work of an American Master, ( Pleiades Press, 2017). Email: rothmandavidj@msn.com
Gongs on the Palisades
Jere Friedman is an Employee of the Universe – with full benefits! Jere is a Gongmaster, a Soul Centered Coach, Certified Meditation and Mindfulness Instructor, Certified Breathwork Facilitator, and a practicing attorney. Playing gongs allows Jere’s “Inner Child” to come out to play and teaches him to be present and focused in the moment. To learn more about Jere visit www.jerefriedman.com and www.gong2heaven.com. Email: jere.friedman@gmail.com