Yesterday, we received the list of authors confirmed for the second annual Equality State Book Festival Sept. 18-20 in Casper. It’s an impressive line-up, one that will lure book-lovers to Casper for a variety of panels and presentations and readings.Here’s the news thus far:
Featured speaker is Wilson author Alexandra Fuller, who will speak about her books on Thursday, Sept. 18, in Durham Hall at Casper College. Her first book, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (Random House, 2001), was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002, the 2002 Booksense Best Non-fiction book, a finalist for the Guardian’s First Book Award and the winner of the 2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. Her 2004 Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier (Penguin Press) won the Ulysses Prize for Art of Reportage. Her latest book is The Legend of Colton H Bryant (Penguin Press, May, 2008), about the life of a young man from southwestern Wyoming who was killed on the gas rigs. Kirkus Reviews calls it “a latter-day Silkwood [story], quiet and understated, beautifully written, speaking volumes about the priorities of the age. Fuller has also written for The New Yorker and National Geographic.
Keynote speaker for the bookfest banquet on Friday evening will be Gary Ferguson of Red Lodge, Mont. He’s author of The Great Divide: A Biography of the Rocky Mountains, Countryman Books, 2006; Hawks Rest: A Season in the Remote Heart of Yellowstone, National Geographic, 2003; Shouting at the Sky: Troubled Teens and the Promise of the Wild, Thomas Dunne Books, 1999; The Sylvan Path, a Journey through America’s Forests, St. Martin’s Press, 1997, and many more. Ferguson is also an excellent speaker and lectures frequently on wilderness and conservation issues.
Special children’s author will be Jack Gantos, formerly of New Mexico and now living in Boston. He’s the author of the Rotten Ralph series of picture books, the Joey Pizgah series of chapter books, the Jack Henry series of chapter books, many novels for young adults, and Hole in My Life, a memoir of his youth, 18 months in prison, and emergence as a writer. Gantos will spend two days in the Casper schools, give a workshop for teachers, and speak at the festival.
Featured poet is former Casperite Laurie Kutchins. She has published poetry in the New Yorker magazine and is on the English faculty at George Mason University in Virginia. She is author of Between Towns (Texas Tech University Press, 1993) The Night Path, and Slope of the Child Everlasting (Boa Editions, 1997 and 2007).
Laura Pritchett, of Fort Collins, Colo., has agreed to be the judge of the 2009 Wyoming Arts Council creative writing fellowships. She’s the author of the novel Sky Bridge (2007) and the 2001 collection of short stories, Hell’s Bottom, Colorado, both from Milkweed Editions. She will read from her work together with the fellowship winners Thursday afternoon, Sept. 18, at Casper College. She also will serve on Saturday’s fiction panel. We’ll have more details about Laura and the fellowships in upcoming posts.
Four members of the University of Wyoming MFA faculty in creative writing will teach two-day writing workshops at the festival. These include:
- Alyson Hagy, author of the novels Snow, Ashes, (Graywolf, 2007) and Keeneland (Simon and Schuster, 2000) and a book of short stories, Graveyard of the Atlantic (Graywolf, 2000)
- Harvey Hix, poet and critic, author of many collections of poetry including Surely as Birds Fly, (Truman State University, 2002), and Perfect Hell (Gibbs Smith, 1996),), several unusual critical works, including God Bless: A Political/Poetic Discourse (Etruscan Press, 2007) and Wild and Whirling Words, a Poetic Conversation, (Etruscan Press, 2004), and more traditional studies of other writers, including studies of William Gass and W.S. Merwin for the Understanding Contemporary American Literature series from the University of South Carolina Press. Hix currently directs the MFA program at UW
- Beth Loffreda, author of Losing Matt Shepard (University of Columbia Press, 2000), a study of how Laramie came to grips with itself in the wake of the brutal 1998 murder of gay UW student Matthew Shepard
- David Romtvedt, poet, fiction writer, essayist, accordion player, folklorist, and Wyoming poet laureate. His books include: Moon; Free and Compulsory for All; How Many Horses; Windmill: Essays from Four Mile Ranch; A Flower Whose Name I Do Not Know; Crossing Wyoming; and Some Church.
Here are the subjects of the bookfest’s panels: Local history, Wyoming history, Trout Fishing, Nature/Outdoor writing, fiction writing, and book publishing. Panelists (thus far) include: John D. McDermott, Rapid City, S.D.; Mike McClure, Lander; Mark Junge, Cheyenne; Charlotte Babcock, Casper, Susanne George Bloomfield, Kearney, Neb.; John Clayton, Red Lodge, Mont.; John Davis, Worland; Lawrence M. Woods, Worland; Tina Welling, Jackson; Robert Roripaugh, Laramie; Ted Leeson, Eugene, Ore.; Chad Hanson, Casper; Mallory Burton, Vancouver, B.C.; Nancy Curtis, Glendo; RoseMarie London, Laramie; Katie Dublinski, Minneapolis; Sarah Crichton, New York, N.Y.
Bios for confirmed presenters are available at the bookfest web site at http://www.equalitystatebookfest.org.
CORRECTION (4/15/08): Just heard from Equality State Bookfest organizers that the Jack Gantos series is Joey "Pigza" not "Pizgah." Sorry about the error...
