Amy Irvine is a nationally ranked competitive rock climber and for five years was the development director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Her book, Trespass, is the story of one woman's struggle to gain footing in inhospitable territory. A wilderness activist and apostate Mormon, Amy Irvine sought respite in the desert outback of southern Utah's red-rock country after her father's suicide, only to find out just how much of an interloper she was among her own people.

Spend an engaging evening with noted Western author Tom McGuane, as The Center of the American West presents him with our prestigious 2009 Wallace Stegner Award. Each year, the Center celebrates the life and achievements of an individual that has made a sustained contribution to the cultural identity of the West through Literature, art, history, lore, or an understanding of the West. Tom McGuane, long considered on of the West's most important literary figures, exemplifies the spirit of this award through his many works including the books Panama, The Cadence of Grass, Gallatin Canyon, and the National Book Award nominee Ninety-two in the Shade.

On the heels of one of the longest presidential campaigns in history, one that has turned up the heat on this topic, the Center shifted the focus back from positions to people. This special evening celebrated the literature of immigration, rather than the policies of immigration. Listen as community members, politicians, public servants, professors, and a host of others read selections from a literature that has played a crucial role in the formation of the narrative of the West.

One of the leading historians of the American West and a MacArthur Fellow, Limerick has written stirringly and passionately about the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and its consequences. As a pioneer of the so-called New Western History and chair of University of Colorado's Center of the American West, she will have much to say about the way the West was not merely settled, but conquered. In a later (and lighter) vein, Art Institute of Chicago public affairs director Hogan recently stared down her urban fear of solitude by launching forth, via the titular Volkswagen, on a road tour of the land art monuments of such macho cowboy visionaries of recent American art as Walter DeMaria, Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, and James Turrell.

This lecture was a joint program between Patty and Erin Hogan. Patty provided an understanding of the American West, the idea of Manifest Destiny, and the legacy of westward expansion, followed by Erin's segment, based on her book Spiral Jetta. Chicago Humanities Festival Artistic Director Ren Weschler then moderated audience questions.

Patty Limerick speaks at a Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation event entitled Surface Use for Mineral Development in the New West. The conference was held in Westminster, Colorado February 7 and 8, 2008.

Patty Limerick moderates a discussion about the changes in consumption and demand of fossil fuels in the American west.

The Center presents Dr. Eva Maria Garroutte in this fall's Modern Indian Identity Lecture. Professor Garroutte is the author of Real Indians: Identity, Community, and the Survival of Native America. In this talk, Professor Garroutte blends her father's stories of growing up in the Cherokee Nation of the 1930's with her own recent experiences as a tribal citizen working in the field of American Indian health. Reception to follow. This event is made possible by the generosity of Nancy and Gary Carlston.

KTNU interviews Patty Limerick and Ivan Doig. Ivan Doig received the Wallace Stegner award from The Center of the American West for his western-American writing, and most recent book House of Sky.

Patty Limerick is the featured interview on the show and she speaks about her earlier prediction about the west. Years earlier she had predicted that the West's reliance on mining, logging and ranching would change, and the new west would be dominated by people who would both recreate in and preserve the western environment.

Patty Limerick was the keynote speaker for a conference at the University of Oregon on September, 13, 2007.