Daiva Chesonis & Craig Childs
For Immediate Release: Feb. 1, 13018 (2018 CE)
Contact: Art Goodtimes <[email protected]>
or 970-729-0220 (text or voice, no voicemail)
Naturita Creek Duo showcased at Talking Gourds
TELLURIDE – Newly ensconced in a hillside retreat in Naturita Canyon near Norwood, poet/bookseller Daiva Chesonis and author/explorer Craig Childs will headline at the Tuesday Feb. 20th as part of the Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Club series.
“Daiva did a fabulous job as community bard with a dynamite poem at the Valley Floor show last spring,” explained Poetry Club co-director Art Goodtimes. “And Craig has impressed locals not just with his award-winning writing, but with performances at the Livery in Norwood and for the Literary Burlesque show at the annual Telluride LitFest. I think they are teaming up for a Telluride dazzler.”
Chesonis is a former Baltimoron, transplanted to Colorado half her life ago to build Telluride’s gondola transportation system. Although birthing chairlifts was not part of her initial goal after a Cold War-era B.A. in Russian Studies, she quickly decided to bed down in the box canyon to see what unfolded. A quarter century later, she is the co-owner of Between the Covers Bookstore with stints in between as snowboard instructor, owner/operator of Vision Design, Art Director at Telluride Magazine, and a traveling minstrel for Mountainfilm on Tour.
In 2005, she earned an M.A. in Diplomacy and International Conflict Resolution, mostly for fun. In her spare time, this fiercely proud Lithuanian and “mother of Olivija” can be found writing poems (and that darn book on walls), putting on the Literary Arts Festival, playing tennis, and hunting mushrooms. She’s also a pro at finding herself lost in neighboring deserts.
Childs lives in Norwood and has been writing like a madman. He has published more than a dozen critically acclaimed books, including House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest and The Secret Knowledge of Water: Discovering the Essence of the American Desert. Apocalyptic Planet, won the Orion Book Award and he has twice won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. His most recent book, Flying Home: The Colorado Plateau from Above and Below, is an essayed homage to the place that lives deep in his heart.
His work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Adventure Journal, and Outside. The New York Times says "Childs's feats of asceticism are nothing if not awe inspiring: he's a modern-day desert father."
He has been called a born storyteller by the New York Sun, and the Los Angeles Times says his writing is like pure oxygen, and "stings like a slap in the face." An occasional commentator for NPR’s Morning Edition, he is an adjunct professor of writing at both University of Alaska in Anchorage and Southern New Hampshire University. A forthcoming book -- Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America -- hits shelves nationwide on May Day this year.
Craig and the book will be featured at the 2018 Telluride Literary Arts Festival, specifically on Sunday, May 20, at the library. Do note ... there will be mammoths!
The reading begins at 6 p.m. on Tuesday Feb. 20 at the Telluride Arts Gallery Office, 135 West Pacific, across the street from the Wilkinson Library entrance.
Poetry Club announcements are followed by the featured performance. Then, following a short break, the gourd is passed and everyone has a chance to read a poem or two (their own, or one from a favorite poet) that speaks to the theme, Feb. “Birth.”
Jennifer Rane Hancock of Grand Junction winds up our Poetry Club series on March 27th. Then, after taking our usual summer break, we will continue our regular Poetry Club readings in Telluride starting in September, hopefully with Trish Hopkinson of Utah.
Simultaneously, we will be exploring special guest readings throughout the year, with planning underway for a Western Slope visit from California’s Claire Blotter in April. In May we will host the winners of the Fischer Prize poetry competition at the Telluride Literary Arts Festival, including a new $500 Cantor Award for the best submission in the Fischer Prize by a Colorado Poet.
Submissions for the 2018 Fischer Prize are now being accepted at talkinggourds.weebly.com/fischer-prize.html
ADDITIONAL INFO
Talking Gourds programming survives through the generous support of private donors and Club members.
There is a one-time fee of $25 to join the Talking Gourds Poetry Club. That makes you a full member for a year and gets you on our cyber mailchimp list for readings, festivals and contests. And it means that you are one of those generous supporters who believes in the importance of the arts on the Western Slope.
A $10 annual renewal fee keeps you up to date as a full member, renews your subscription to our private email newsletter, and gives you half-price for Fischer Prize submissions and free Poetry Club broadsides.
Talking Gourds Poetry Club, Gourd Guests, the Telluride Literary Arts Festival, the Western Slope Poet Laureate and the MycoLicious MycoLuscious MycoLogical Poetry Show are collaborative projects of the Telluride Institute -- in partnership with the Wilkinson Public Library, Between the Covers Bookstore, Ah Haa School for the Arts, Lithic Bookstore & Gallery, Telluride Arts, the Telluride Mushroom Festival, and our club members.
Talking Gourds is indebted to generous contributions past and present from Audrey Marnoy, Peter Waldor, the Cantor Family of North Carolina, the late Elaine Cantor Fischer and her many friends, Eduardo Brummel, Daiva Chesonis, Elissa Dickson, Laura Colbert, Jess Newens, Judy Kohin, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Danny Rosen, Kyle Harvey, Craig Jackman, Kate Jones, Pepper Raper, Molly Perault, Alexander Ging, Amy Brosch, Tara Miller, Sam Brown, Art Wiseheart, Elle Metrick, Paige Blankenbuehler, Brian Calvert, Meg Nagel, Kyra Kopestonsky, Lee & Billi Taylor, Allyson Snyder, Amy Levek, David Oyster, Michael Olschewsky & Ruth Duffy, and our many friends.
Call 970-729-0220 (voice or text, but no voicemail please) or visit the Gourds website <talkinggourds.weebly.com> for more info.
Poster for the event, photo of the poets, short exemplary poems and other information available by emailing Art Goodtimes at [email protected]
####
Contact: Art Goodtimes <[email protected]>
or 970-729-0220 (text or voice, no voicemail)
Naturita Creek Duo showcased at Talking Gourds
TELLURIDE – Newly ensconced in a hillside retreat in Naturita Canyon near Norwood, poet/bookseller Daiva Chesonis and author/explorer Craig Childs will headline at the Tuesday Feb. 20th as part of the Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Club series.
“Daiva did a fabulous job as community bard with a dynamite poem at the Valley Floor show last spring,” explained Poetry Club co-director Art Goodtimes. “And Craig has impressed locals not just with his award-winning writing, but with performances at the Livery in Norwood and for the Literary Burlesque show at the annual Telluride LitFest. I think they are teaming up for a Telluride dazzler.”
Chesonis is a former Baltimoron, transplanted to Colorado half her life ago to build Telluride’s gondola transportation system. Although birthing chairlifts was not part of her initial goal after a Cold War-era B.A. in Russian Studies, she quickly decided to bed down in the box canyon to see what unfolded. A quarter century later, she is the co-owner of Between the Covers Bookstore with stints in between as snowboard instructor, owner/operator of Vision Design, Art Director at Telluride Magazine, and a traveling minstrel for Mountainfilm on Tour.
In 2005, she earned an M.A. in Diplomacy and International Conflict Resolution, mostly for fun. In her spare time, this fiercely proud Lithuanian and “mother of Olivija” can be found writing poems (and that darn book on walls), putting on the Literary Arts Festival, playing tennis, and hunting mushrooms. She’s also a pro at finding herself lost in neighboring deserts.
Childs lives in Norwood and has been writing like a madman. He has published more than a dozen critically acclaimed books, including House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest and The Secret Knowledge of Water: Discovering the Essence of the American Desert. Apocalyptic Planet, won the Orion Book Award and he has twice won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. His most recent book, Flying Home: The Colorado Plateau from Above and Below, is an essayed homage to the place that lives deep in his heart.
His work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Adventure Journal, and Outside. The New York Times says "Childs's feats of asceticism are nothing if not awe inspiring: he's a modern-day desert father."
He has been called a born storyteller by the New York Sun, and the Los Angeles Times says his writing is like pure oxygen, and "stings like a slap in the face." An occasional commentator for NPR’s Morning Edition, he is an adjunct professor of writing at both University of Alaska in Anchorage and Southern New Hampshire University. A forthcoming book -- Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America -- hits shelves nationwide on May Day this year.
Craig and the book will be featured at the 2018 Telluride Literary Arts Festival, specifically on Sunday, May 20, at the library. Do note ... there will be mammoths!
The reading begins at 6 p.m. on Tuesday Feb. 20 at the Telluride Arts Gallery Office, 135 West Pacific, across the street from the Wilkinson Library entrance.
Poetry Club announcements are followed by the featured performance. Then, following a short break, the gourd is passed and everyone has a chance to read a poem or two (their own, or one from a favorite poet) that speaks to the theme, Feb. “Birth.”
Jennifer Rane Hancock of Grand Junction winds up our Poetry Club series on March 27th. Then, after taking our usual summer break, we will continue our regular Poetry Club readings in Telluride starting in September, hopefully with Trish Hopkinson of Utah.
Simultaneously, we will be exploring special guest readings throughout the year, with planning underway for a Western Slope visit from California’s Claire Blotter in April. In May we will host the winners of the Fischer Prize poetry competition at the Telluride Literary Arts Festival, including a new $500 Cantor Award for the best submission in the Fischer Prize by a Colorado Poet.
Submissions for the 2018 Fischer Prize are now being accepted at talkinggourds.weebly.com/fischer-prize.html
ADDITIONAL INFO
Talking Gourds programming survives through the generous support of private donors and Club members.
There is a one-time fee of $25 to join the Talking Gourds Poetry Club. That makes you a full member for a year and gets you on our cyber mailchimp list for readings, festivals and contests. And it means that you are one of those generous supporters who believes in the importance of the arts on the Western Slope.
A $10 annual renewal fee keeps you up to date as a full member, renews your subscription to our private email newsletter, and gives you half-price for Fischer Prize submissions and free Poetry Club broadsides.
Talking Gourds Poetry Club, Gourd Guests, the Telluride Literary Arts Festival, the Western Slope Poet Laureate and the MycoLicious MycoLuscious MycoLogical Poetry Show are collaborative projects of the Telluride Institute -- in partnership with the Wilkinson Public Library, Between the Covers Bookstore, Ah Haa School for the Arts, Lithic Bookstore & Gallery, Telluride Arts, the Telluride Mushroom Festival, and our club members.
Talking Gourds is indebted to generous contributions past and present from Audrey Marnoy, Peter Waldor, the Cantor Family of North Carolina, the late Elaine Cantor Fischer and her many friends, Eduardo Brummel, Daiva Chesonis, Elissa Dickson, Laura Colbert, Jess Newens, Judy Kohin, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Danny Rosen, Kyle Harvey, Craig Jackman, Kate Jones, Pepper Raper, Molly Perault, Alexander Ging, Amy Brosch, Tara Miller, Sam Brown, Art Wiseheart, Elle Metrick, Paige Blankenbuehler, Brian Calvert, Meg Nagel, Kyra Kopestonsky, Lee & Billi Taylor, Allyson Snyder, Amy Levek, David Oyster, Michael Olschewsky & Ruth Duffy, and our many friends.
Call 970-729-0220 (voice or text, but no voicemail please) or visit the Gourds website <talkinggourds.weebly.com> for more info.
Poster for the event, photo of the poets, short exemplary poems and other information available by emailing Art Goodtimes at [email protected]
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