Annette Chaudet established Pronghorn Press in 1998 after producing several books for private clients. She then started a writing contest to produce Hard Ground, Writing the Rockies, the first in a series intended to capture contemporary life in the West in poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction. The book was a success and followed by four more Hard Ground collections as well as Dry Ground, Writing the Desert Southwest; Dense Growth, Writing the Pacific Northwest; and Foreign Ground, Travelers’ Tales.
Pronghorn Press has since expanded into other genres. It publishes a new poetry title in the Women & Words series each year, have a sci-fi/fantasy imprint, Antelios, as well as Higher Shelf, a metaphysical/self improvement imprint. Pronghorn has recently added PrairieWinkle for children’s picture books.
Although Pronghorn is a small press, Annette is gratified that there are 54 titles on her list and some of them have garnered national reviews. Montana Spring by Richard Magniet is an award-winning novel of life in the early days in Montana and Never Summer (Pronghorn’s first poetry collection in 2002) by Chris Ransick, won the Colorado Book Award and saw the author become the Poet Laureate of Colorado.
The list at Pronghorn Press is an eclectic mix and Annette likes it that way, enjoying working with a variety of material. The High Country Gardens series by Cheryl Anderson Wright has also been a success with three titles in that series. Pronghorn’s current best selling title is Men to Match Our Mountains by Wyoming’s Chief Game Warden, Jay Lawson.
Chaudet is an editor AND writer. She's found a variety of outlets for her work over the years in anthologies, books, magazines and newspapers. In the 1980s and 1990s she published two small cookbooks, two small gift books and a collection of Christmas poetry. She also created a self awareness set called Take The Power. She has five titles currently in print including Beyond the World, a Novel of 18th Century France, a collection of short stories and two nonsense verse children’s books, A Jungle Book and The Nose Book. She is currently at work on the "autobiography" of Mary Magdalene.
Annette will appear on the Equality State Book Festival panel, "Publishing from the Ground Up" at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 20, at the Nicolaysen Art Museum and will be available to sign her books following the panel.
http://www.pronghornpress.org/
