Due to a situation at Cortez Public Library, tonight’s event (May 26) has been cancelled. It may later be rescheduled as a Zoom event, but I am hoping for in-person!

Next up: Bookworks, Albuquerque, with Desert Chrome, Kathryn Wilder (me), and Laura Pritchett (!) via Zoom on Wednesday, June 2, at 6 p.m. MDT.

You can register here: https://www.bkwrks.com/desert-chrome

Set in the West on Colorado’s eastern plains and Front Range, Laura’s novels evoke thought and wonder and some of her characters will stay with you forever as they weave a connecting tapestry from book to book. Laura is currently at work on a new novel and I’m hoping for a sneak peak next Wednesday. If you haven’t yet read her fiction, I recommend starting with Hell’s Bottom, Colorado. You will not be disappointed! https://www.laurapritchett.com

The following evening, Thursday, June 3, 6:30 p.m. MDT, Back of Beyond Books, Moab, is hosting this Zoom event: http://www.backofbeyondbooks.com/events.cfm?mode=detail&id=1620234112107.

Years ago I worked at Back of Beyond Books. In the summer evenings my kids would ride their bikes between the bookstore and our tiny sandstone-block house just four blocks away. That’s the last time I lived in a town, and it was lovely and brief–we soon moved to Castle Valley where we had the necessary room to roam, the river, and great neighbors. The boys, my wolf-dog Hoodoo, and I were much happier there–from our front door we could walk for miles. The commute along the river road to work at the bookstore and for a rafting company never lost its charm. While I wish this event were in person, I am eager to revisit Back of Beyond Books in celebration of Desert Chrome.

On Wednesday, June 16, 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Arizona time, Rebecca Lawton and I will appear via Zoom at Bright Side Bookshop, Flagstaff: https://www.brightsidebookshop.com/event/desert-chrome-kathryn-wilder-author-event

Becca Lawton (https://beccalawton.com) and I have known each other since 1994 when I put out a call for submissions for Walking the Twilight: Women Writers of the Southwest, an anthology I was editing for Northland Publishing. Becca sent me “What I Never Told You” (see this review of Steelies and Other Endangered Species: Stories on Water: https://www.ecolitbooks.com/?s=Rebecca+lawton). As with Laura Pritchett’s characters and novels, that story has never left me, nor has the memory of how Becca and I became fast friends through phone conversations in which we talked about writing, the river, and our kids and custody battles, though I didn’t meet her in person for years. It was in a nondescript parking lot somewhere in Sonoma that I first looked upon Becca Lawton in the flesh. I remember saying, “You’re so beautiful. And tall!”

On Becca’s book tour for The Oasis This Time: Living and Dying with Water in the West (https://beccalawton.com/book/the-oasis-this-time-living-and-dying-with-water-in-the-west/, Torrey House Press, 2019), my sister Terry Tobey, friend TJ Holmes, and I met her in Moab at Back of Beyond Books (!) where she was reading from Oasis and talking of water, her life’s focus and love. Terry and I followed her to Bluff, Utah, where she read at the annual riverside event held in honor of Ellen Meloy. (Becca was the first winner of the Ellen Meloy Fund’s Desert Writing Award, as well as the inaugural winner of the Waterston Desert Writing Prize) I wish Becca and I could be joining you all in person in Flagstaff, where we have both lived at different times, AND I am so grateful that you can join us from afar via Zoom (even from as far away as Alabama!).

See you soon!