Spoken Words

The Big Heartless tackles the intersection of humans and wolves, family and freedom, in a remote corner of the Mountain West. The play premiered in Laramie, Wyoming in April 2018 with an upcoming production in the author’s home state of New Mexico in February 2019.

Uncharted: A Journey Along the Edge of Time and Survival traces the evolution of Cate Cabot’s life in the aftermath of a hitchhike that nearly cost the author and her friends their lives.

Feminist, queer, fun, The Best Bad Things is an historical crime novel whose main character, Alma, is an ex-detective who goes undercover to infiltrate a Port Townsend, WA smuggling ring. But what she’s really up to becomes one of the central mysteries of the book.

This new hybrid-memoir explores the lives and stories of American women prophets and mystics, outliers and outcasts of the American religious story. Through this personal journey, Adrian Shirk discovers new alternatives for spiritual truth seekers.

Alyson Hagy’s new novel Scribe is about the power—and dangers—of storytelling. Amid a population decimated by civil war and disease that relies on a barter system, a woman known as Scribe exchanges her skill in letter-writing to get what she needs. One day, a strange man shows up in need of a letter, setting off a series of terrible events that bring Scribe to a crossroads she can escape.

In Wildness, John Hausdoerffer and his co-editor Gavin Van Horn bring together authors from a variety of landscapes, cultures, and backgrounds to share their stories of what “wildness” looks like when people take an active role in becoming co-creators of well-being with the places they live, work, and play. In re-imagining the possibilities for wildness, Hausdoerffer discusses his hopes for creating communities attuned to the wild in their midst and able to work together across differences to care for these places.

In his new novel A Short in the Ruins, Kevin Powers explores the dark history of slavery in this country, using one plantation near his home in Virginia as the fictionalized setting and following characters generationally from the Civil War to the 20th century in order to examine the ways we live with history and legacy of suffering and violence.

Sara Dant grew up in the American West and deeply loves its culture, history, and landscape. In Losing Eden, she traces the environmental history and development of this region in order to help readers understand how the land has shaped and been shaped by the people who here, while also offering some positive models for shaping the future well-being of the West.

Jeffrey Lockwood continues his “Riley the Exterminator” mystery series, this time as Riley tries to solve a missing person case at the same time California’s agricultural industry is threatened by a Mediterranean fruit fly invasion. Lockwood discusses his love for weaving great storytelling, science, philosophy and crime in these mysteries.

In times of trauma and sorrow, Diane Les Becquets turned to the wilderness for solace. Now, as an award-winning author, she sets her books back in those most hidden places as a challenge to return on her own terms.