First, apologies for several failed attempts at posting this! I hope this one works….

Soon the winners of the Colorado Book Awards will be announced: (https://coloradohumanities.org/programs/colorado-book-awards/#).

Desert Chrome: Water, a Woman, and Wild Horses in the West is a finalist in the Creative Nonfiction category, alongside Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying, by Susan Tweit, and The Next Everest: Surviving the Mountain’s Deadliest Day and Finding the Resilience to Climb Again, by Jim Davidson. I confess I have only read Bless the Birds, a book I love for its honesty, tenderness, love story, craft, and guidance along one of life’s toughest journeys.

In support of the Colorado Book Awards finalists, over the last several weeks Colorado Humanities & Center for the Book has hosted finalist readings in Denver (thank you Terry Tobey for joining me at the BookBar for mine!), and has worked with The Colorado Sun to highlight Colorado’s authors.

Yesterday The Colorado Sun was shining on Desert Chrome. You can read an excerpt here: https://coloradosun.com/2022/06/12/sunlit-desert-chrome-kathryn-wilder/, and an interview with the author (me) here: https://coloradosun.com/2022/06/12/sunlit-kathryn-wilder-desert-chrome/.

You may know the results of the awards before I do—I will be at a writing workshop with David James Duncan (!) on the Main Salmon River that week, far from cell service. We take out on the 28th; it’s then I will learn the news. Meanwhile, I feel as if I’ve already won, because being a finalist is a huge and thrilling honor. If Susan’s book is the actual winner, I will also feel I’ve won, as Bless the Birds is an outstanding example of our genre, creative nonfiction. (But between you and me, I’m rooting for Desert Chrome.)