2026 Schedule
See all that Mountain Words has to offer! We have a variety of panel discussions, receptions, and readings!
Friday, May 22
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King Room
Join short fiction writer and novelist Claire Boyles in a workshop to stimulate your creative process.
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Kinder Padon Gallery
Mapping the Inner Landscape of Your Work
We often talk about what we write, but rarely where it comes from. How do our identities, histories, and personal values come together to form the lens or prism through which our words appear? In this session, Mashuq Mushtaq Deen shares a cartographic approach to understanding our own creative ecosystems. Participants will be guided through a reflective inquiry before creating their own visual process maps, charting the unseen forces that shape not just our artistic voices, but our lives as creators.
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Hawk Studio
In this generative workshop we will discover a variety of techniques to hush our inner critics and rediscover poetry as fundamentally fun — as well as illuminating. We will uncover how language herself is key to tapping into the subconscious and cultivating our own unique voices. We will find new ways to render language arresting, musical and memorable. We will write poems from prompts that wake up our relationship to the landscape of the imagination. No writing experience necessary. Come be surprised!
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Hawk Studio
This generative session with poet Rajiv Mohabir (Whale Aria, Antiman, I Will Not Go) is a must-do for nature writers.
Poet, memoirist, and translator, Rajiv Mohabir is the author of five books of poetry that have been awarded gold in Forward Indies and Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur. His other honors include being finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/America Open Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, and both second place and finalist for the Guyana Prize for Literature. His translations have won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the American Academy of Poets. Currently he teaches poetry at the University of Colorado Boulder.
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Kinder Padon Gallery
Intro to Screenwriting with Script Accelerator instructor, Oscar-nominated filmmaker, Academy member, and alum of USC's Graduate School of Cinematic Art Gregg Helvey OR Learn innovative approaches to fiction and writing with award winning author and teacher, Steven Dunn.
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King Room
Story May is a comprehensive and systematic way of structuring your novel or memoir. Broken down into 2 parts, instructors will give attendees a no-nonsense approach to tackling your larger than life project.
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Steddy Theater | Free
Two authors dive deep on the creative process.
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King Room
Story May is a comprehensive and systematic way of structuring your novel or memoir. Broken down into 2 parts, instructors will give attendees a no-nonsense approach to tackling your larger-than-life project.
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King Room
John Hausdoerffer, author of the collection, How to Be a Good Ancestor, leads this session giving storytellers the depth and perspective to tell better stories.
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King Room
Join writer River Selby for a session on writing memoir. Selby is the author of Hotshot: A Life on Fire. Selby was a wildland firefighter whose given name was Anastasia. This is a memoir of that time in their life—of Ana, the struggles she encountered, and the constraints of what it means to be female-bodied in a male-dominated industry. An illuminating debut from a fierce new voice, Hotshot is a timely reckoning with both the personal and environmental dangers of wildland firefighting.
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Hawk Studio
Poet Michael Hettich with decades of experience with writing and reading poetry leads this generative workshop for poets of all levels.
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King Room
Join acclaimed author Benjamin Percy to learn how contemporary writers engage plot, character, dialogue, and suspense. Percy's book, "Thrill Me is an urgent and entertaining book on craft that brims with Percy's distinctive blend of anecdotes and advice, all in the service of one dictum: thrill the reader."
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Kinder Padon Gallery
Memoir workshop, instructor TBA
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Hawk Studio
Details coming soon!
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Steddy Theater | Free
Former Colorado Poet Laurete, Andrea Gibson is the focus of this powerful documentary about a life in words, at its end.
Saturday, May 23
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Steddy Theater | Free
Megan Kate-Nelson discusses her newest book Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier with Ryan Warner.
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Hawk Studio
Erica Reid dives into the life and work of poet and writer, Micahel Hettich.
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Kind Room
Author and editor Rakesh Satyal discusses the author-editor relationship and process.
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King Room
Alia Hanna Habib, regaled by New York Magazine as "One of the most powerful New Yorkers you've never heard of," dispenses invaluable advice about writing and pitching your book for nonfiction writers.
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Steddy Theater | Free
David Baron discusses his new book, Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America with Laura Krantz.
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Kinder Padon Gallery
Authors Dan McClellan and Benjamin Percy discuss their lifelong love of comics, how it shaped them and Percy's work on iconic characters for Marvel and DC.
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Steddy Theater
Megha Majumdar discusses her newest praiseworthy novel, A Guardian and a Theif with debut novelist Nina McConigley
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Steddy Theater | Free
Details coming soon!
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King Room
Megan Kate-Nelson discusses her newest book Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier with Ryan Warner.
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Hawk Room
Poet Erica Reid returns to Mountain Words with another excellent generative poetry workshop.
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Steddy Theater | Free
Acclaimed writer, Terry Tempest Williams discusses her new book, Glorians with Mountain Words author, Ben Goldfarb.
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Hawk Studio
Poets in conversation.
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Steddy Theater
Science journalist and editor Hillary Rosner discusses her new book, ROAM with Mountain Words regular Ben Goldfarb.
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Grace Atrium | Free
Join a festive and lively gathering of book signing with this year's authors!
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King Room
For passholders, this is a very intimate conversation between Terry Tempest Williams and Nina McConigley about her life in art and words in the natural world.
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Hawk Studio
Authors Cosmo Langsfeld and Dane Bahr talk about their newest books Salvation and Dead Ringer. New conceptualizations of the American West in fiction.
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King Room
Mountain Words author Ramona Ausubel returns with her newest book, Unstuck! 101 Doorways Leading from the Blank Page to the Last Page, about staying in love with your writing: feeling excited, mischievous, productive, and hopeful—the opposite of being stuck.
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Steddy Theater | Free
MacArthur Award recipient Dwayne Betts and Colorado poet Suzi Q Smith discuss Betts' poetry collection Doggrell and his work with Freedom Reads.
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Grace Atrium | Free
Join a festive and lively gathering of book signing with this year's authors!
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King Room
Ramona Ausubel anchors this talk with debut novelists Nina McConigley (How to Commit a Post Colonial Murder) and Claire Boyles (Appraisals)
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Hawk Studio
Writing and Publishing is a world in constant flux. Join this panel of authors for a discussion about publishing alternatives and what a writing career looks like in 2026.
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Hawk Studio
Poets in conversation.
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Steddy Theater | Free
Megan Kate-Nelson discusses her newest book Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier with Laura Krantz.
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Steddy Theater | Free
Indigenous Writers read from their works in this premier reading event
Sunday, May 24
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Steddy Theater | Free
Authors in conversation TBD
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King Room
Story May is a comprehensive and systematic way of structuring your novel or memoir. Broken down into 2 parts, instructors will give attendees a no-nonsense approach to tackling your larger than life project.
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Hawk Studio
Join Denver based poet, writer, storyteller, organizer, and activist, Suzi Q. Smith for a poetry workshop to remember.
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King Room
Story May is a comprehensive and systematic way of structuring your novel or memoir. Broken down into 2 parts, instructors will give attendees a no-nonsense approach to tackling your larger than life project.
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Hawk Studio
Poetry Workshop with Suzi Q Smith.
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Hawk Studio
Join author Steven Dunn for an innovative and exciting approach to writing and thinking about story.
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Steddy Theater | Free
Authors in conversation TBA
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Hawk Studio
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King Room
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Hawk Studio
Author of Hotshots: A Life on Fire, River Selby will talk about the art of the essay.
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King Room
Thursday, May 21
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Kinder Padon Gallery | Free
Join the writers of the Crested Butte Magazine to kick off the summer issue and Mountain Words Festival.
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Steddy Theater | Free
This year will feature a literary flick to start off the weekend of talks and workshops.
One hour movie discussion prior to film.
