Lit Fest Kickoff

featured the folk vocal stylings of our own literary goddess Jessica Slater and her husband Andy Miller, AKA The Alltunators. Everyone loved them so much that they'll reprise their act on Friday, 6/22, for our Lit Fest finale. Going along with our "class it up" theme this year, we demanded that attendees wear nametags (designed by Donna Karan) and nosh on the fine and tasty vittles from Parisi. And of course, the keg, compliments of Rock Bottom Brewery, was in the back yard. (Anyone else thinking back to college right now?) We were advised by people who seem to know such things, that the amber brew (Red Rock Ale) would be much more popular among beer aficionados, whereas something lighter or wheatier would be appreciated by the social (read: ignorant) drinkers. Misidentifying our people, we went Red Rock. Next keg will be Pale Ale for sure. Above the Rim Fine Wine steered us in the right direction with a Pinot Grigio that came in a designer bottle. We all felt we should be taking a bath in the stuff, but it was fruity, crisp, and delicious.

Featured moment: When separated-at-birth writers with shaved heads (Mike Henry, Bill Henderson, Joel Albin, and Jake Adam York), spotted each other, froze, pinched themselves, and retired to the perimeter of the keg, shaking their heads. Moment to forget: When novelist Janis Hallowell, having been led by the steeltrap organizational Lighthouse machine, learned that her class on Sunday, instead of being 6 hours long, was going to be a mere 3. (Sorry, Janis!) Note to selves: Uhm, ridiculous.

We'll be looking for you all at the reading Sunday night, 910 Arts, 7-9 PM, featuring Lighthouse Lit Fest faculty Chris Ransick, Janis Hallowell, Shari Caudron, Aaron Anstett, Rebecca Berg, Jenny Vacchiano, Mike Henry, Jenny Wortman, and Brian Kiteley. I'll bring some of that Pinot Grigio. The next faculty reading, same place, Tuesday night (6/12): Robert Root, Christina Mengert, William Haywood Henderson, Tyrone Jaeger, Jake Adam York, David J. Rothman, and Kathryn Winograd from 8-9:30 PM. In both cases, we'll have wine and cheese for everyone's enjoyment.

See you all there!

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Should we be pros, all of us?

If you've ever wondered whether reading too long at an awards dinner can cost you a National Book Critics Circle Award, or how glossy a press kit can look when there's real money behind it, or whether it's better to arrive early, fashionably late, or just at the nick of time for that interview with Terry Gross, Bella Stander of BookPromotion 101 is your answer woman. A long-time contributing editor at Publisher's Weekly (and a book reviewer for such obscure dailies as the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, and San Francisco Chronicle), Stander's seen a few things in her time.

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She graciously presented to a nice Writer's Buzz crowd at the Tattered Cover LoDo this weekend about the basic tenets of professionalism in the ever morphing world of book marketing. Some truisms are as old as the printing press--be nice, for example (and she has some examples of the alternative!)--where other things are evolving with the Internet (gotta have a book site--no choice about it).

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If you're meeting with an agent or editor at the Lit Fest, Stander is taking 12 writers in a "Prep to Pitch"workshop on June 22 (the pitches are on June 23). This will be at the Ferril House from 2:00-4:30, and is a recommended prequel to the one-on-one meetings on Saturday. First twelve (with completed manuscripts only, please) to register will gain admission ($65). Call 303.297.1185.

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Fate, Luck and the Rules of Writing

When Amy Tan took spoke at last week as part of the Post-News Pen & Podium series, she was armed with the CliffNotes for her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, and a little dog in an enormous purse. The dog—a marvel of obedience—didn’t emerge from the bag until three-quarters of the way through her talk, when Tan pulled him out and held him for while. The CliffsNotes served as both comic relief and provocation for Tan to tell the story of her life.

According to the CliffNotes for The Joy Luck Club (which Tan swears she first encountered at our own Tattered Cover) Tan had a relationship with “an older German man who had close contacts with drug dealers and organized crime.” In truth, Tan said, the German was 22 and she was 16, and while he sold a little hashish there was nothing organized about it. Cliff’s version of events was true, but not how Tan would have put it.

She went on to talk about her admiration for her father, and why she rarely writes about him (because perfect characters are less interesting) about her father’s death from a brain tumor and her mother’s subsequent attempts to contact him (Tan was used as a medium, and admitted to fabricating answers on the Ouija board); about her family’s sudden relocation to Holland (her mother concluded from a bottle of Old Dutch Soap that it would be clean there); about the experience of driving around Europe in a Volkswagen, looking for a school that would take her and her little brother; and about her struggle with Lyme Disease, which for four-and-a-half years made it all but impossible for her to walk, write, or remember.

Tan said she turned to writing fiction after seeing a narcoleptic psychiatrist. When he wouldn’t listen to her, she started telling stories to herself. Amazingly, The Joy Luck Club was purchased before she’d even written it, after a bidding war. She wrote the novel in four months.

“I ask myself every day,” Tan said. “How did I get so lucky as to be a writer?” Her answer: a combination of fate, luck, self-will, reincarnation, and having listened to her mother.

Tan’s writing rules (really from the writer Oscar Hijuelos, who gave them to her in an inscription): No TV, No Internet, No Sex Before a Page is Written.

Tan on the experience of whipping Mayor Hickenlooper during a performance of the Rock Bottom Remainders (the band she’s in with Stephen King, Dave Barry, Mitch Albom and others, where she plays the role of Rythym Dominatrix): “He enjoyed being whipped. Not many mayors do, but you have a different kind of mayor.”

-A. R.

My New Favorite Quote

This from Walter Kirn's NY Times Book Review of Robert Stone's new memoir, entitled Prime Green:

Time passes, and what it passes through is people -- though people believe that they are passing through time, and even, at certain euphoric moments, directing time. It's a delusion, but it's where memoirs come from, or at least the very best ones. They tell how destiny presses on desire and how desire pushes back, sometimes heroically, always poignantly, but never quite victoriously. Life is an upstream, not an uphill, battle, and it results in just one story: how, and alongside whom, one used his paddle.

Beautiful. Inspring. And hey, have you seen my paddle?

--MJH

Henderson Takes Philadelphia

In case he hasn't had enough ego fodder lately, William Haywood Henderson's obviously bedazzled the reviewer from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

She says: "Augusta Locke is not a fast book. It is meant to be savored, a book to linger over. In it, Henderson has managed to create one of the most arresting female literary characters in quite some time."

Read the rest here.

Arvin Takes Co Book Award

What's better than seeing a bunch of writers on that rare occasion when they get to bust out their fancy outfits and take in too many beverages? The night ending with a win for best novel by Nick Arvin (Articles of War), of course. Word from Nick's wife, Rachel, is that had he not taken the award, she would have been tempted to run off with DeVotchKa lead Nick Urata, who performed soulfully that night. Maybe everyone in the audience felt the same way. Laura Pritchett, also up for the novel category, got a nod nonetheless as she contributed to the anthology that won that night, Comeback Wolves. Poetry finalist Aaron Anstett was in high spirits despite not taking home the award -- perhaps because his auction basket, which included his own poetry, a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, a pack unfiltered pall malls, some pork and beans, and a ripped Pavement CD, took the highest bid? Those who wagered on the evening may have lost big on memoir, as fave JR Moehringer went home sans award. The guy who wrote The Guiness Book of Me was a perfectly gracious (and surprised?) winner in that category. Thanks for the good times. See you next year when we'll expect more faculty finalists. --AD

Everything's Prose-erific

Now that we've reserved her hotel room, we have to believe that, indeed, Francine Prose is coming to Denver on September 30 to be our next Writer's Studio guest. The author of so many books I can't even order them all, Prose has already dazzled me with her willingness to take on any subject--from the academic PC culture to skinheads--and push beyond the cliché of it to find what's really interesting. When you think Blue Angel, for example, think Humbert Humbert, only he lusts after talented writers instead of pre-pubescent nymphs. And turn it around so that the object of his affection is a writer who's stealing his own life story for her novel... well, it's a helluva lot more interesting than another dirty-old-professor-afraid-of-death yarn.

You can tell the woman's brainy, and so as not to intimidate with her mental faculties, she's funny as sin. And full of interesting advice, such as this (from the Atlantic's Web site, which you can no longer access without a subscription, which seems like a terrible shame--almost as bad as the Atlantic leaving Boston and no longer publishing monthly fiction):

I used to tell my students to write every day, but I no longer say that. It turns out to be destructive advice. You tell people to write every day and they're consumed with guilt when they don't. So forget that. I do tell people to be careful about whom they show their work to in its early stages. It must be someone you trust, who has your best interest at heart. Reading constantly and carefully is also very important. Finally, be observant. Watch what's going on around you. Listen to people. You need to listen to people's voices, to how they tell their stories.

Of her work as an editor at the (sadly) defunct mag Doubletake, which also underscores the poetic justice of her surname: My experience as a writer affects my work as an editor more than the other way around. I'm a maniac about sentences and sentence structure and how things are written -- I'll rewrite something a zillion times until it shows some improvement. I expect that same meticulousness from what I'm reading and what I want to publish. I know how important and difficult careful writing is, so I think, Look, if I'm going to work that hard, everybody else ought to as well.

And one more little ditty. Living with a poet, I can appreciate the distinction she’s making:

I think poets are much more dramatic, more theatrical than fiction writers. Poets and fiction writers cannot have the same habits. If you're working on a novel you work every day. As Flaubert said, it's a life that requires bourgeois habits. I can't imagine -- although the minute I say I can't imagine something, I usually find out that it happened -- a memorial service for a fiction writer in which people are throwing themselves on the coffin.

She's coming, everyone, so get ready now. Start reading all the Prose you can get your hands on! (Pun intended.) Oh, and save Saturday and Sunday, September 30 & October 1, for the woman herself.

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The real milagro

was that any of us could talk intelligently about The Milagro Beanfield War at all, given that only one or two folks who attended our lecture on "Fiction Lessons from the Milagro Beanfield War" had read it in the last 20 years. Sadly, the instructor (moi) was in the same boat, but I did a very close read of the first 70 (of 470+) pages (some of the pages re-read upwards of 20 times as I continually forgot where I was). We were still able to come up with some things to steal and think about, including: (1) the up-and-down-the-scale tone and diction shifts that accommodate a novel about a multifaceted, multilayered community; (2) the use of an omniscient narrator as a ballsy way to capture community as character; and (3) something about character? The hit of the day may have been the woman who wrote from a child's perspective about how many pills Auntie took to get some rest (you know who you are) as well as a guy writing about a bearded man nicknamed the Captain who takes too much to heart. Oh, and the uncomfortable lunch scene featuring a woman looked down upon by her father-in-law; or any of the myriad others that came out of that writing jam. Thanks, all, for a memorable afternoon. --ad

Francine Brings Class Wherever She Goes

After an eventful, heartening, laugh-packed weekend with Francine Prose, we're all on Prose withdrawal. She came in with a huge brain and generous spirit, and left with her indispensable book, Reading Like a Writer, hiking up the local bestseller list. (I'd be surprised if it wasn't number one by next week, although some of the sales venues don't report to the list, so maybe not.) This was helped by the lovely fact that the Rocky came through! Have I mentioned that Lighthouse now LOVES the Rocky? Book lovers everywhere should subscribe ASAP, or at least pick up that Friday paper. They've even tapped Chris Ransick to pick up a blog on their books site. More to come on that. Talking to Francine before her event on Sunday at a local coffee shop, she expressed bafflement at a review she'd seen in another Denver paper about a new book. The review talked about how it's all about the language and how beautiful it is. At the end of the review, there were four or five quotations that were supposed to support this thesis. Not so, says Prose. "They're awful! They're some chest-thumping cliches." On another front, it was generally decided that all the truisms and rules trotted out in writing classes (not Lighthouse workshops, though, as we trot only opinions--ha) should be forgotten post haste, as Cheever doesn't abide them, nor does Mansfield, and we would all be best to be like Cheever and Mansfield in that way if not others. (I'm trying others as well, except the writing in my skivvies thing.) Francine said something to me over coffee that morning that stayed with me: "The idea is to be revolutionary. You really want to do something that no one’s done before. " Easy when you've got her brain and talent. It was great seeing you all this weekend. This will be tough to top. --ad

More Evidence of a Prosey Universe

Her argument for growing up: NPR'syou've got to read this.

See you all at her Writer's Studio and Reading to Write Seminar.

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Word to the Wise

I don't know about anyone else, but my brain isn't big enough to fully grasp all of what Jake Adam York said at the April 22 Writer's Buzz, but what I did get reassured me. In the course of his talk on Originality and the Writer, York was able to make the audience laugh, cry, and take copious notes. What else can you ask for on a beautiful Saturday morning? (The tears came not from any tough love on his part, but from the content of his gorgeously tragic poetry depicting an ugly time in our collective history. Check out "Elegy for James Knox," which stunned all of us with its last line.)

Also, York kindly pointed out, through a rhetorical question he'd asked his class, the anxiety of the original writer is misplaced. ("Who can think of something no one's ever thought before?" he asked his undergrads. One kid raised his hand and said he'd thought of something. York responded, "How will you ever communicate to us what it is?")

A handful of us took York out to lunch after--a budding Buzz tradition--from which our guest had to rush in order to pick up a special order of mint julep sorbet at a local sorbet factory (there was one?). A man with many hats, York left us wondering: What great delicacy, its sorbet come round at last, slouches toward Denver to be eaten?Check out Murder Ballads today! You won't regret it.

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Summer Lit Fest Getting Festier

Now that 5280, The Jet Hotel, and the good folks at Unbridled Books, Ghost Road Press, Fulcrum Publishing, Writers House, and Frederick Hill/Bonnie Nadell are all signed on for our urban lit fest, we're thinking it's the real deal. Visiting agent Elise Proulx gets props for her client Gary Amdahl in the current Poets & Writers. Her agency, if you don't know, is completely unafraid of things literary or commercial, boasting clients like David Foster Wallace and Richard North Patterson in the same breath. Another visiting agent, Daniel Lazar of Writers House, gives this nice interview on a romance web site (don't worry non-romance writers: He takes on everything from literary fiction to humorous nonfiction). He'll be leading 10-12 lucky souls through a critique of their query letter and first ten pages, which constitute the writer's only chance to bewitch an agent (or editor, or finicky reader, which yours truly tends to be on a bad day). Leading up to the agent and editor extravaganza will be the important (read: less attended) workshops on craft. Some of Denver's heavy hitting authors, like Nick Arvin, Shari Caudron, Kathryn Winograd, and William Haywood Henderson (whose book, Augusta Locke, just hit the local bestseller list!), will be coaching writers of all levels through starting new novels or screenplays, new nonfiction projects, and finishing stories or poems.Throughout the week we'll feature entertaining and thought-inducing (watch out!) craft talks and salons, such as "Art and Violence" (Or, "Is That a Gun in Your Pocket or Just Your Bic?" ©) with Denver Poet Laureate Chris Ransick and renegade filmmaker Alexandre Philippe, each of whom have differing perspectives on, for example, Quentin Tarrantino. Just for example. Also, we partner with the people in the know, such as the vaunted DPL librarian Joe Cahn, who will lead writers through the vortex of the old-school library system (as well as new online resources) and challenge everyone to "Stump the librarian," followed up with a workshop by Henderson, who will help writers discover their uncharted finesse in slipping said research into beautifully crafted creative works.So block out July 14-29 on your blackberry, and collect all doctor's notes in advance so that you can fully immerse yourself in the urban literary cyclone that is our first annual lit fest. --AD

Why Not Become One?

For those of you who don’t know, the alternatives to being a sensuist are pretty bleak, especially if you take Jake Adam York and Chris Ransick’s word for it. They both made their case for stripping off the “calluses over the senses” and walking through the world like a giant receptor. The two didn't see eye to eye on everything, though. Thoroughly debated were issues like: Is it possible for the writer be replicated, through his or her work, in 100 years? Does pizza making rate with transubstantiation? Can a person have a “relationship” with a literary ghost? (Things got kind of racy, there.)

Following in Rothman’s martini-sipping footsteps, Ransick tantalized the audience by opening a nice bottle of red and tasting it throughout the talk, all in keeping with his Epicurean thesis. For his part, York made the comment that, upon being asked to speak on the topic of "Becoming a Sensuist," he felt like a “jackass” for not knowing what a sensuist was. (“And I really wanted to wait until I was up here to be a jackass,” he confessed, to an appreciative, well-oiled crew.)

In the end, Ransick wants us all to become a sensuist not only to improve our writing, but also to improve ourselves. York says, Become a sensuist. Go to the next level with your writing, and burn the bridge behind you. Or something like that. (The bartender had a heavy pour.) Thanks to the Jet Hotel for hosting.

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Jet (Not in a McCartneyesque Way)

The Jet Hotel, Sunday night, our first faculty reading for our first annual literary festival. People crowded onto couches, stools, the floor. I noticed everyone trying to massage their jaws after the whole thing was done, many risking injury due to overlaughing. Five reasons: Eric Olson, Chris Ransick, Shari Caudron, William Haywood Henderson, and a dramatic David J. Rothman, who spent the first few minutes of his reading watching us while he drank his martini on the stool, reciting Frost's "Fire and Ice" from memory. Later, he must have felt gratified to watch the martinis shoot out noses as he embarked on a stunning mock epic with a thread of invectives that were breathless in their hilarity. (I'll see if I can get him to e-mail them to be posted, but a lot of the fun was in the delivery.)

Here's what Shari had to say: "Readings about oyster vulvas, sexual harassment videos, frontier women losing their virginity, and the epic I’m-gonna-kill-you-and-watch-the-bullet-race-through-the-milk-carton-and-around-the-neighborhood poem. Safe to say there was probably something for everyone in that room."

And one only has to add Shari's own tale about stripping in a Jordanian Turkish bath with a stranger to get a full picture of what really went down. So far, so fun. The next one's a participant reading at FR5, then instructors, part II, Sunday at the Jet. See you all at the rest of the lit fest. --AD

The Art of Literary Friendships

Tuesday night’s salon, entitled “Literary Friendships” was the kind of event that made you want to lean to the nearest person and whisper, “Will you be my friend?” And not just any old friend. A literary friend. A friend who will read your work and respond with chafing honesty, who will send you postcards with microscopic handwriting from some sand-blown Arab country, who will argue with you about lyricism and ambition, maintain correspondence, promote your books, and follow you, accidentally or otherwise, all over the country. There is really no summarizing the friendship between Brian Kiteley and Eli Gottlieb, but watching them interact gives one a sense of it. As different as they are, both personally and artistically, they have provided each other with years of support, criticism and feedback during what can otherwise be a very lonely pursuit. And not only did these novelists find a critic in each other, they found the friendship of poets to be particularly helpful. For both writer’s, the poet’s concern with “local intensity” served to counterbalance their own obligatory awareness of narrative structure. And when they aren't writing, these poets and novelists help to promote each other’s work—yet another benefit of the literary friendship. All of this good feeling was not overshadowed by the raucous Pat Benatar (or was it Joan Jett?) fans upstairs.

Jody Rein and Patty Moosbrugger join lit fest panels

Two of Colorado's biggest agents have signed on for our summer literary festival in July: Jody Rein of Jody Rein Books and Patty Moosbrugger of the Patty Moosbrugger Literary Agency.

One of Patty's recent sales, to Viking, is Without A Net, by Michelle Kennedy. It's a memoir about a middle-class mother who ends up living in her station wagon with her three kids. Of the work, Dorothy Allison said, "A beautiful, heartfelt, and wonderful book."

Jody Rein has presented at Lighthouse in the past, and is known to be the six-figure book deal queen of the Rockies. She represents everything from literary fiction to high-concept nonfiction, and will be on board to discuss the business.

See you all there! Sign up for the panel talks and agent/editor reception here: www.lighthousewriters.org/order.htm.

LitFestival Parties and Salons

Insanity rules these last few days gearing up for our first summer literary festival: Writing the City. If you've not yet jumped in, please do. The more the merrier, as they say, so if you've been sitting around dreaming about writing that novel, screenplay, or poetry collection, now's the time to just get up and do it.

Plus, look at all the fun:

Parties ($10/person): Opening Reception on Friday, July 14, 6-9 PM, at the Thomas Hornsby Ferril House, 2123 Downing Street (a block north of Children's Hospital). There's a free parking lot directly across the street from the house (it says "reserved," but it's for us), and there's on-street free parking as well. Wine tasting provided by Above the Rims Fine Wine, and Catering by Marcyzk's Fine Food.Agent and Editor Reception on Friday, July 28, 6-9 PM, at the Thomas Hornsby Ferril House, 2123 Downing Street (a block north of Children's Hospital). There's a free parking lot directly across the street from the house (it says "reserved," but it's for us), and there's on-street free parking as well. Wine tasting provided by Above the Rims Fine Wine, and Catering to be determined.

Readings (free and open to whoever wants to come--no registration necessary): Faculty reading, including William Haywood Henderson, Shari Caudron, Chris Ransick, David Rothman, and many more, on Sunday, July 16, 6-8 PM, at the Jet Hotel, the Jet Hotel: 1612 Wazee Street, 303.572.3300. Sunday nights meter parking is free downtown. There are plenty of $5 parking lots in the area, as well as great access to public transport (the hotel's just steps off the 16th Street Mall, so there's a free shuttle from the bus and light rail along the mall). Please arrive 10 minutes early to order drinks and food and get situated. FREE.

Participant reading, Saturday, July 22, 6-8 PM, at Forest Room 5: 2532 15th Street, (303) 433-7001, a block and a half northwest of My Brother's Bar and Shakespeare's on Platte. There's parking along 15th Street, as well as pay lots nearby (on Platte, for example). Please arrive 10 minutes early to order drinks and food and get situated. FREE.

Faculty reading, including Kathy Winograd, Aaron Anstett, Nick Arvin, Eli Gottlieb, Jenny Vacchiano, and many more, on Sunday, July 23, 6-8 PM, at the Jet Hotel, the Jet Hotel: 1612 Wazee Street, 303.572.3300. Sunday nights meter parking is free downtown. There are plenty of $5 parking lots in the area, as well as great access to public transport (the hotel's just steps off the 16th Street Mall, so there's a free shuttle from the bus and light rail along the mall). Please arrive 10 minutes early to order drinks and food and get situated. FREE.

Salons ($10/person) "On Becoming a Sensuist” (Tuesday, July 18, 7:00-9:00 PM at the Jet Hotel, 1612 Wazee Street, 303.572.3300) The world is abundant with writing material, but we don’t always take time to notice it. Denver Poet Laureate Chris Ransick and Westword’s Best Prose Pro Jake Adam York will give a tour of the senses, encouraging writers and literary types to “see” differently. Next time you see a wheel barrow and some chickens in the rain, you’ll do something about it! (And we don’t mean take the chickens for a ride).

“Art and Violence” (Thursday, July 20, 7:30-9:00 PM at Forest Room 5, 2532 15th Street, (303) 433-7001) Some people can watch American Psycho and eat popcorn at the same time; others cringe at the sight of Teletubbies. How much violence is too much? What is the responsibility of the artist? At what point does it become gratuitous? Filmmaker Alexandre Philippe and Denver Poet Laureate Chris Ransick will lead a discussion of the merits (and demerits) of violence in writing, art, and film.

“Literary Friendships” (Tuesday, July 25, 7:00-9:00 PM at the Jet Hotel, 1612 Wazee Street, 303.572.3300) Authors Brian Kiteley and Eli Gottlieb will discuss their friendship, and how literary friendships (prickly and otherwise) have enlivened what might otherwise be a solitary pursuit. You’ll have the opportunity to ask those burning questions: Did you guys ever get into a fist fight? Do writers really deserve friends?Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the door. Tickets can be purchased by calling 303-297-1185, e-mailing info@lighthousewriters.org or visiting http://www.lighthousewriters.org/litfest.htm.

FOR MORE INFO CONTACT: 303-297-1185, info@lighthousewriters.org.

More Food For Thought From Our Man Arvin

...who's now a dad!!

Welcome to the world, Cade Robert Arvin.

Oh, and do check out Nick's interview on Bookthink.

Report From Hendersonville

Sipping from his hot water (with a twist of lemon and a dash of honey), not letting anything stop him, not even the fact that his fever spanned so many days that his thermometer got bored with him, William Haywood Henderson faced his crowd of over 100 at the Tattered Cover Cherry Creek Tuesday night, and I didn't notice a single person leaving without a book.

After reading two passages from his critically acclaimed novel Augusta Locke, Henderson fielded such questions as, "Are you a landscape novelist, in the tradition of Cormac McCarthy?" Henderson took the second part first, and made sure that we, the hundred plus in the audience, knew who Cormac McCarthy is (not everyone did), and then went on to talk about Cormac's use of landscape, and then stopped and looked at us. "Yes," he said. "I am." At bottom, what interests him, he said, is the idea of a small figure in front of a gigantic background, such as one might find in, say, Wyoming.

Lots of laughter as Hendy delivered one quip after another. "Do you inject any of the sense of humor we're seeing tonight into your writing?" Henderson didn't miss a beat. "My books aren't very funny," and then went on to posit that his sense of humor comprised of "making stupid quips," and that that doesn't translate well to paper. Of course, this reader disagrees -- Augusta has many lighter moments, including some laughers. Maybe it was his fever talking.

Check out Henderson on May 13, reading and booksigning at Book Buffs, Ltd., Cameron Church, 1600 South Pearl Street, Denver, CO at 4:00 p.m. Also sponsored by Lighthouse Writers and the Colorado Center for the Book (a program of the Colorado Humanities).

See ya there.

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Pritchett on the Brain

Just when you thought you'd read everything under the sun set on a Colorado ranch, someone writes about it in a way that makes it new again. Introduces you, for example, to a world where a stillborn calf converges subtly (as in, with great literary restraint) with memories of a murdered daughter, or examines an unlikely acquaintance between a teenaged girl and an ex-convict who's employed on her grandparents' ranch. I guess she won the Pen USA and Milkweed Editions prizes for good reason.

Just because she was in her twenties when she wrote the collection Hell's Bottom, Colorado, and just because she's got the most striking blue eyes you've ever seen, doesn't mean you should resent Laura Pritchett. My gift to myself for May is to read her novel, Sky Bridge, and do so with the knowledge that at least she was in her thirties when she wrote that one. Goodbye to retrospective embarrassment for my own scribblings in my twenties. We can't all be prodigies, can we? How boring would that be?

To learn from the woman herself, check out her course on Landscape (Interior and Exterior) on Saturday, May 6, from 1-4. Register: www.lighthousewriters.org/order.htm or by calling 303-297-1185.