For Immediate Release: May 7, 25016
Contact: Art Goodtimes 970.729.0220 (textable) <[email protected]>
Talking Gourds hosts poetry program at Telluride LitFest
TELLURIDE – May 20th is a big day for poetry on the Western Slope. The Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds program will host the awarding of the Mark Fischer prizes, a spotlight reading with Peter Heller, Judyth Hill, and Sarah Pletts, and a late-night Passing of the Gourd, where poets will get a chance to read several of their own poems.
The poetry program is part of a weekend long Literary Arts Festival (May 20-22) featuring many events, including a Literary Burlesque (not free -- tickets are often sold out, so best get a ticket beforehand), talks, panels, workshops, dance party and a Gourd Circle closing ceremony. For more info, visit telluridelitfest.weebly.com
The free poetry event kicks off in Telluride at Arroyo Gallery & Wine Bar Friday evening May 20th at 6 p.m. with the awarding of the $1000 first prize in the Mark Fischer Poetry contest, and three $100 finalist prizes. Judge Judyth Hill will be on hand to make the awards, and the winning poems will be read.
After a short dinner break, the poetry evening will continue at 8:30 pm. at Arroyo with a Spotlight Reading by four outstanding poets -- Peter Heller, the LitFest’s featured writer, as well as a poet. He’s written many books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and has won awards for his poems.
Judyth Hill is one of the Southwest’s best performing poets, wowing audiences, publishing many books, teaching workshops in writing, and being an activist for poetry on the international level. Her poem, “Wage Peace,” was an international sensation and was recently performed with a symphony orchestra back east.
Sarah Pletts has long been involved with poetry, dance, theater and activism in Aspen. She is currently working on a play in London, is in the process of publishing her first poetry collection, but has come home in time to share her powerful performance style with Telluride audiences.
Chris Ransick, a Denver Poet Laureate emeritus, was also planning to come read before his move to Oregon. But he has had to cancel due to family obligations associated with the move.
Following the spotlight performances, we will – as is our custom – pass the talking gourd and give poets and audience members a chance to read a poem or two of their own. Among those sharing will be San Miguel County’s new Poet Laureate, Elissa Dickson, and many local and regional voices.
Even if you’re not a poet, bring a poem of a poet you love to share.
A limited number of inexpensive housing options are available to visiting poets who want to attend. For more info, call Goodtimes at 970-729-0220
All Talking Gourds events at the LitFest this year are free and open to all.
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 and get on the cyber mailing list for regular meetings and special events. And then there is a $10 annual renewal to be a member in good standing and to receive half-price on Mark Fischer Poetry Prize submissions and monthly broadsides of the featured poets free.
Talking Gourds is a three-part program of the Telluride Institute in partnership with the Wilkinson Library, the Montrose Regional Library, Between the Covers Bookstore, Lithic Bookstore & Gallery, Cimarron Books & Coffee, Ah Haa School for the Arts, Telluride Arts, and Arroyo Telluride. It includes monthly Poetry Club readings (including a 4-stop Traveling Gourds poetry tour of the Western Slope), the Mark Fischer poetry contest and the annual Telluride Literary Arts Festival.
Talking Gourds is indebted to generous contributions from Audrey Marnoy, Peter Waldor, Elaine Fischer, Sean Murphy, Daiva Chesonis, Art Goodtimes, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Meg Nagel, Danny Rosen, Kyle Harvey, Sara Doehrman and the Montrose Friends of the Library. Call 970-729-0220 or visit the Gourds website <talkinggourds.weebly.com> for more info.
####
Contact: Art Goodtimes 970.729.0220 (textable) <[email protected]>
Talking Gourds hosts poetry program at Telluride LitFest
TELLURIDE – May 20th is a big day for poetry on the Western Slope. The Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds program will host the awarding of the Mark Fischer prizes, a spotlight reading with Peter Heller, Judyth Hill, and Sarah Pletts, and a late-night Passing of the Gourd, where poets will get a chance to read several of their own poems.
The poetry program is part of a weekend long Literary Arts Festival (May 20-22) featuring many events, including a Literary Burlesque (not free -- tickets are often sold out, so best get a ticket beforehand), talks, panels, workshops, dance party and a Gourd Circle closing ceremony. For more info, visit telluridelitfest.weebly.com
The free poetry event kicks off in Telluride at Arroyo Gallery & Wine Bar Friday evening May 20th at 6 p.m. with the awarding of the $1000 first prize in the Mark Fischer Poetry contest, and three $100 finalist prizes. Judge Judyth Hill will be on hand to make the awards, and the winning poems will be read.
After a short dinner break, the poetry evening will continue at 8:30 pm. at Arroyo with a Spotlight Reading by four outstanding poets -- Peter Heller, the LitFest’s featured writer, as well as a poet. He’s written many books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and has won awards for his poems.
Judyth Hill is one of the Southwest’s best performing poets, wowing audiences, publishing many books, teaching workshops in writing, and being an activist for poetry on the international level. Her poem, “Wage Peace,” was an international sensation and was recently performed with a symphony orchestra back east.
Sarah Pletts has long been involved with poetry, dance, theater and activism in Aspen. She is currently working on a play in London, is in the process of publishing her first poetry collection, but has come home in time to share her powerful performance style with Telluride audiences.
Chris Ransick, a Denver Poet Laureate emeritus, was also planning to come read before his move to Oregon. But he has had to cancel due to family obligations associated with the move.
Following the spotlight performances, we will – as is our custom – pass the talking gourd and give poets and audience members a chance to read a poem or two of their own. Among those sharing will be San Miguel County’s new Poet Laureate, Elissa Dickson, and many local and regional voices.
Even if you’re not a poet, bring a poem of a poet you love to share.
A limited number of inexpensive housing options are available to visiting poets who want to attend. For more info, call Goodtimes at 970-729-0220
All Talking Gourds events at the LitFest this year are free and open to all.
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 and get on the cyber mailing list for regular meetings and special events. And then there is a $10 annual renewal to be a member in good standing and to receive half-price on Mark Fischer Poetry Prize submissions and monthly broadsides of the featured poets free.
Talking Gourds is a three-part program of the Telluride Institute in partnership with the Wilkinson Library, the Montrose Regional Library, Between the Covers Bookstore, Lithic Bookstore & Gallery, Cimarron Books & Coffee, Ah Haa School for the Arts, Telluride Arts, and Arroyo Telluride. It includes monthly Poetry Club readings (including a 4-stop Traveling Gourds poetry tour of the Western Slope), the Mark Fischer poetry contest and the annual Telluride Literary Arts Festival.
Talking Gourds is indebted to generous contributions from Audrey Marnoy, Peter Waldor, Elaine Fischer, Sean Murphy, Daiva Chesonis, Art Goodtimes, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Meg Nagel, Danny Rosen, Kyle Harvey, Sara Doehrman and the Montrose Friends of the Library. Call 970-729-0220 or visit the Gourds website <talkinggourds.weebly.com> for more info.
####
4/22/16
TELLURIDE LITERARY ARTS FESTIVAL
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACTS:
Daiva Chesonis: [email protected] 970/729-2210
Jessica Newens: [email protected] 970/728-3886
Art Goodtimes: [email protected] 970/729-0220
Amy Irvine: [email protected]
Elissa Dickson: [email protected]
Get ‘Lit’ in Telluride,
May 20-22, 2016!
3rd Telluride Literary Arts Festival Features Eclectic Events for Lovers of Books and Poetry
TELLURIDE – In his book, A History of Reading, Manguel Alberto writes: “At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers— shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.” This is the spirit in which the Telluride Literary Arts Festival, now in its third year, was founded. Reading is something to cherish individually but also herald amongst friends and community.
“LitFest is an opportunity to get together and celebrate the joy of reading and writing and to affirm a good ole fashioned past-time,” says Between the Covers Bookstore co-owner Daiva Chesonis, one of the original conspirators behind Telluride’s shoulder-season event, slated in 2016 for May 20-22. A longtime follower of book festivals, Chesonis decided in 2014 it was time for Telluride to put on its own event for readers, writers and poets. The result? A power- packed weekend featuring everything from performance poetry, author talks, and literary burlesque, to moderated panel discussions, birding forays, and fun, hands-on bookish events for kiddos.
Telluride’s LitFest is cobbled together by a coalition of regional writers and literature-loving organizations and businesses, supporting (and sustaining) the literary arts. Its organizing entities include the Ah Haa School for the Arts, Between the Covers Bookstore, Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds poetry program, Telluride Arts, and the Wilkinson Public Library. Falling the weekend before Mountainfilm, the event is a collective nod not only to the craft of books but also to the West’s ongoing literary history. In Telluride, a prime example of that is Tomboy Bride: A Woman’s Personal Account of Life in Mining Camps of the West by Harriet Fish Backus. For almost two decades, it’s been the top annual bestseller at the Between the Covers, offering a wonderful glimpse into the region’s past through words. With an award-winning library, a thriving poetry scene that includes several resident Poet Laureates, an art school that hosts writing workshops and a nationally recognized bookbinding academy, and an indie bookshop that’s been serving the literary needs of the area since 1974, Telluride is a town that sincerely embraces the literary arts.
For 2016, LitFest’s featured guest will be Peter Heller (presented by the Wilkinson Public Library), author of several books, including The Dog Stars; The Painter, Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsangpo River; The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet’s Largest Mammals; and Kook: What Surfing Taught Me about Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave. Heller is a longtime contributor to National Public Radio and a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and Men’s Journal. At the Iowa Writers’ Workshop— where he received an MFA in fiction and poetry—Heller won a Michener fellowship for his epic poem “The Psalms of Malvine.”
According to Chesonis, bookstore customers have long recommended Heller as a featured author. Thanks to sponsorship from Telluride’s award-winning library, the festival is able to bring the author to Telluride for LitFest 2016, where he will speak in some capacity on each day of the festival.
LitFest kicks off Friday, May 20, with the weekend’s official “opening of the book” and the awarding of the annual Mark Fischer Poetry Prize at Arroyo Wine Bar at 6 p.m. Named in memory of Telluride’s much-loved poet, lawyer, skier and raconteur, Fischer was a daring experimenter who combined a polyglot’s command of languages with a quirky sense of humor and a passion for obtuse words. In that spirit, prizes are awarded to entries that best exhibit the qualities of originality, novelty, complex meaning, linguistic skill and wit. The wilder the better. The prize comes with a cash award of $1,000, with three finalist awards of $100 each. The final judge in 2016 will be Southwest poet extraordinaire Judyth Hill, whose poem “Wage Peace” received international recognition after 9/11. Following a post-awards dinner break, poetry ramps up again at Arroyo at 8:30 p.m. with the Gourds Spotlight Poetry Performance by Peter Heller, Judyth Hill and Sarah Pletts. A Passing of the Gourd will follow where local and regional poets will share several of their poems.
Saturday morning brings an exciting new LitFest offering: Word Up!, a tandem of moderated panels with authors and journalists at the library. First up at 10 a.m. will be “Environmental Journalism: The State of the Art” featuring panelists Judy Muller (USC Annenberg professor of journalism, NPR contributor, and author of Emus Loose in Egnar: Big Stories from Small Towns), Amy Irvine (MFA Faculty Fellow at Southern New Hampshire University and winner of both the Orion Book Award and Colorado Book Award for Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land), Alec Jacobsen (Executive Director of the San Juan Independent and former Editor in Chief of ArtsRiot.com), and Heller. This panel will be moderated by writer Craig Childs (MFA Faculty Fellow at both University of Alaska Anchorage and Southern New Hampshire University and author of House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest and The Secret Knowledge of Water: Discovering the Essence of the American Desert).
A second panel takes place at 12:30 p.m., titled “Guidebook Authoring: The Ethics and a How-to of an Ever-Expiring Genre.” Panelists will include Telluride Mountain Club Board President Tor Anderson (author/designer of several popular Telluride-area "guide maps") and Ted Floyd (editor of Birding, the flagship publication of the American Birding Association, and author of The ABA Field Guide to Birds of Colorado and Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America), plus an unconfirmed third. This panel will be moderated by Chesonis (co-owner of
Between the Covers Bookstore, former Art Director at Telluride Magazine and co-designer of Telluride Rocks 3rd Edition).
Along with the panel discussion, Floyd will offer a free Birding Foray on Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m. originating from Between the Covers. The professional birder says, "we'll be birding at the peak of spring migration, so we expect to see a kaleidoscope of coloørful birds: tanagers, grosbeaks, warblers, finches, flycatchers, and more. And this is the best of time for a rarity." He returns for a third year courtesy of The Colorado Nature Conservancy.
For kids, LitFest brings back its popular Kids Book Bash at the Wilkinson Library on Saturday, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. The hands on event will include traditional Japanese Book Binding, Black Out Poetry (write a poem by blacking out the text in an old book and using the remaining words to convey a personal expression), and Guess the Book, a contest to see who can decipher the title of a shredded book in a jar for a prize.
Saturday night features the 3rd Annual Literary Burlesque performance, featuring a troupe of regional female poets and writers who will drop layers, both literal and literary, starting at 8 p.m. at the Ah Haa School. This year’s theme, “Oh Sister, Where Art Thou?” plays off the Cohen Brothers’ famous film by a similar name—both of which derive substance from Homer’s Odyssey. Think of white tent revivals, jailbirds freed, and siren songs. On the latter subject, however, the original quartet of “Burl Gurrls”—Amy Irvine, Kierstin Bridger, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Ellen Metrick—warn us not to expect being lulled to sleep. Rather, one can expect a wake-up call, an invitation, to step into ourselves, the intimacy with others, more viscerally.
“This will be our tightest show yet, in terms of both structure and thematic material,” says founding Literary Burlesque director Irvine. “It will also be our most revealing—in terms of having built the muscles needed to dig more deeply, to dare more vulnerability with one another, as well as with the audience.”
Childs will step in as emcee-turned-southern preacher. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. with a cash bar. Tickets are $15 dollars in advance (through the Ah Haa or Between the Covers) or at the door, if not sold out ahead of time. Immediately following Literary Burlesque will be “The Rapture,” a dance party with cash bar, featuring KOTO DJ Radio Addiction spinning tunes. “This could get primal, bring your inner beat beast,” recommends Chesonis.
LitFest wraps up on Sunday, May 22, with a Featured Author Brunch at 11 a.m. at the Wilkinson Library. Heller will read from his myriad books and regale the crowd with stories from behind the scenes of his many adventures from around the world. (Think small aircraft and big bears.) To gear up for the Heller’s visit, the library has designated his novel The Dog Stars as their 2016 Spring Read. They have ordered a nice stack of the books for checking out and the bookstore has them in stock as well (please note BTC will be closed April 3-21). Whether you borrow or buy, get your hands on a copy of what The New Yorker called “a brilliant success,” and chosen as best Book of the Year by The San Francisco Chronicle and Atlantic Monthly.
Immediately following Heller’s presentation, the closing Gourds Circle will officially “close the book” on LitFest 2016, allowing all in attendance to share their poetry and musings. Of the Gourds Circle ceremony, Talking Gourds Director Art Goodtimes says, “It’s a ritual thing, really, a chance to listen to others and speak one’s heartsong. And a great way to welcome the summer season of festivals and community gatherings -- with words.”
Other than Literary Burlesque, all LitFest events are free. Keep an eye out for the Telluride Literary Arts Festival banner across Main Street in the days leading up to May 20th, a reminder to partake in the events but also to set aside some time for the written word and to thank those who write for our enjoyment and escape. In the words of the late Oliver Sacks, it is “the special intercourse of writers and readers” that LitFest is all about. Until then, get caught reading!
For the complete 2016 LitFest schedule and presenter bios, visit www.telluridelitfest.weebly.com. LitFest’s Facebook handle is Telluride Literary Arts Festival.
###
TELLURIDE LITERARY ARTS FESTIVAL
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACTS:
Daiva Chesonis: [email protected] 970/729-2210
Jessica Newens: [email protected] 970/728-3886
Art Goodtimes: [email protected] 970/729-0220
Amy Irvine: [email protected]
Elissa Dickson: [email protected]
Get ‘Lit’ in Telluride,
May 20-22, 2016!
3rd Telluride Literary Arts Festival Features Eclectic Events for Lovers of Books and Poetry
TELLURIDE – In his book, A History of Reading, Manguel Alberto writes: “At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers— shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.” This is the spirit in which the Telluride Literary Arts Festival, now in its third year, was founded. Reading is something to cherish individually but also herald amongst friends and community.
“LitFest is an opportunity to get together and celebrate the joy of reading and writing and to affirm a good ole fashioned past-time,” says Between the Covers Bookstore co-owner Daiva Chesonis, one of the original conspirators behind Telluride’s shoulder-season event, slated in 2016 for May 20-22. A longtime follower of book festivals, Chesonis decided in 2014 it was time for Telluride to put on its own event for readers, writers and poets. The result? A power- packed weekend featuring everything from performance poetry, author talks, and literary burlesque, to moderated panel discussions, birding forays, and fun, hands-on bookish events for kiddos.
Telluride’s LitFest is cobbled together by a coalition of regional writers and literature-loving organizations and businesses, supporting (and sustaining) the literary arts. Its organizing entities include the Ah Haa School for the Arts, Between the Covers Bookstore, Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds poetry program, Telluride Arts, and the Wilkinson Public Library. Falling the weekend before Mountainfilm, the event is a collective nod not only to the craft of books but also to the West’s ongoing literary history. In Telluride, a prime example of that is Tomboy Bride: A Woman’s Personal Account of Life in Mining Camps of the West by Harriet Fish Backus. For almost two decades, it’s been the top annual bestseller at the Between the Covers, offering a wonderful glimpse into the region’s past through words. With an award-winning library, a thriving poetry scene that includes several resident Poet Laureates, an art school that hosts writing workshops and a nationally recognized bookbinding academy, and an indie bookshop that’s been serving the literary needs of the area since 1974, Telluride is a town that sincerely embraces the literary arts.
For 2016, LitFest’s featured guest will be Peter Heller (presented by the Wilkinson Public Library), author of several books, including The Dog Stars; The Painter, Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsangpo River; The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet’s Largest Mammals; and Kook: What Surfing Taught Me about Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave. Heller is a longtime contributor to National Public Radio and a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and Men’s Journal. At the Iowa Writers’ Workshop— where he received an MFA in fiction and poetry—Heller won a Michener fellowship for his epic poem “The Psalms of Malvine.”
According to Chesonis, bookstore customers have long recommended Heller as a featured author. Thanks to sponsorship from Telluride’s award-winning library, the festival is able to bring the author to Telluride for LitFest 2016, where he will speak in some capacity on each day of the festival.
LitFest kicks off Friday, May 20, with the weekend’s official “opening of the book” and the awarding of the annual Mark Fischer Poetry Prize at Arroyo Wine Bar at 6 p.m. Named in memory of Telluride’s much-loved poet, lawyer, skier and raconteur, Fischer was a daring experimenter who combined a polyglot’s command of languages with a quirky sense of humor and a passion for obtuse words. In that spirit, prizes are awarded to entries that best exhibit the qualities of originality, novelty, complex meaning, linguistic skill and wit. The wilder the better. The prize comes with a cash award of $1,000, with three finalist awards of $100 each. The final judge in 2016 will be Southwest poet extraordinaire Judyth Hill, whose poem “Wage Peace” received international recognition after 9/11. Following a post-awards dinner break, poetry ramps up again at Arroyo at 8:30 p.m. with the Gourds Spotlight Poetry Performance by Peter Heller, Judyth Hill and Sarah Pletts. A Passing of the Gourd will follow where local and regional poets will share several of their poems.
Saturday morning brings an exciting new LitFest offering: Word Up!, a tandem of moderated panels with authors and journalists at the library. First up at 10 a.m. will be “Environmental Journalism: The State of the Art” featuring panelists Judy Muller (USC Annenberg professor of journalism, NPR contributor, and author of Emus Loose in Egnar: Big Stories from Small Towns), Amy Irvine (MFA Faculty Fellow at Southern New Hampshire University and winner of both the Orion Book Award and Colorado Book Award for Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land), Alec Jacobsen (Executive Director of the San Juan Independent and former Editor in Chief of ArtsRiot.com), and Heller. This panel will be moderated by writer Craig Childs (MFA Faculty Fellow at both University of Alaska Anchorage and Southern New Hampshire University and author of House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest and The Secret Knowledge of Water: Discovering the Essence of the American Desert).
A second panel takes place at 12:30 p.m., titled “Guidebook Authoring: The Ethics and a How-to of an Ever-Expiring Genre.” Panelists will include Telluride Mountain Club Board President Tor Anderson (author/designer of several popular Telluride-area "guide maps") and Ted Floyd (editor of Birding, the flagship publication of the American Birding Association, and author of The ABA Field Guide to Birds of Colorado and Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America), plus an unconfirmed third. This panel will be moderated by Chesonis (co-owner of
Between the Covers Bookstore, former Art Director at Telluride Magazine and co-designer of Telluride Rocks 3rd Edition).
Along with the panel discussion, Floyd will offer a free Birding Foray on Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m. originating from Between the Covers. The professional birder says, "we'll be birding at the peak of spring migration, so we expect to see a kaleidoscope of coloørful birds: tanagers, grosbeaks, warblers, finches, flycatchers, and more. And this is the best of time for a rarity." He returns for a third year courtesy of The Colorado Nature Conservancy.
For kids, LitFest brings back its popular Kids Book Bash at the Wilkinson Library on Saturday, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. The hands on event will include traditional Japanese Book Binding, Black Out Poetry (write a poem by blacking out the text in an old book and using the remaining words to convey a personal expression), and Guess the Book, a contest to see who can decipher the title of a shredded book in a jar for a prize.
Saturday night features the 3rd Annual Literary Burlesque performance, featuring a troupe of regional female poets and writers who will drop layers, both literal and literary, starting at 8 p.m. at the Ah Haa School. This year’s theme, “Oh Sister, Where Art Thou?” plays off the Cohen Brothers’ famous film by a similar name—both of which derive substance from Homer’s Odyssey. Think of white tent revivals, jailbirds freed, and siren songs. On the latter subject, however, the original quartet of “Burl Gurrls”—Amy Irvine, Kierstin Bridger, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Ellen Metrick—warn us not to expect being lulled to sleep. Rather, one can expect a wake-up call, an invitation, to step into ourselves, the intimacy with others, more viscerally.
“This will be our tightest show yet, in terms of both structure and thematic material,” says founding Literary Burlesque director Irvine. “It will also be our most revealing—in terms of having built the muscles needed to dig more deeply, to dare more vulnerability with one another, as well as with the audience.”
Childs will step in as emcee-turned-southern preacher. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. with a cash bar. Tickets are $15 dollars in advance (through the Ah Haa or Between the Covers) or at the door, if not sold out ahead of time. Immediately following Literary Burlesque will be “The Rapture,” a dance party with cash bar, featuring KOTO DJ Radio Addiction spinning tunes. “This could get primal, bring your inner beat beast,” recommends Chesonis.
LitFest wraps up on Sunday, May 22, with a Featured Author Brunch at 11 a.m. at the Wilkinson Library. Heller will read from his myriad books and regale the crowd with stories from behind the scenes of his many adventures from around the world. (Think small aircraft and big bears.) To gear up for the Heller’s visit, the library has designated his novel The Dog Stars as their 2016 Spring Read. They have ordered a nice stack of the books for checking out and the bookstore has them in stock as well (please note BTC will be closed April 3-21). Whether you borrow or buy, get your hands on a copy of what The New Yorker called “a brilliant success,” and chosen as best Book of the Year by The San Francisco Chronicle and Atlantic Monthly.
Immediately following Heller’s presentation, the closing Gourds Circle will officially “close the book” on LitFest 2016, allowing all in attendance to share their poetry and musings. Of the Gourds Circle ceremony, Talking Gourds Director Art Goodtimes says, “It’s a ritual thing, really, a chance to listen to others and speak one’s heartsong. And a great way to welcome the summer season of festivals and community gatherings -- with words.”
Other than Literary Burlesque, all LitFest events are free. Keep an eye out for the Telluride Literary Arts Festival banner across Main Street in the days leading up to May 20th, a reminder to partake in the events but also to set aside some time for the written word and to thank those who write for our enjoyment and escape. In the words of the late Oliver Sacks, it is “the special intercourse of writers and readers” that LitFest is all about. Until then, get caught reading!
For the complete 2016 LitFest schedule and presenter bios, visit www.telluridelitfest.weebly.com. LitFest’s Facebook handle is Telluride Literary Arts Festival.
###