
Author Announcements
Mountain Words Festival brings together a diverse lineup of nationally and internationally acclaimed authors and presenters for a three-day celebration at nine thousand feet.
Stay tuned—exciting author announcements are coming your way! We’re thrilled to reveal a lineup of incredible voices you won’t want to miss at the Mountain Words Festival. Keep an eye out as we share new names and exclusive details in the months ahead!
Tickets and passes on sale January 2026!
-
David Baron
The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America
2026 Mountain Words Featured Presenter
David Baron is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and author of The Beast in the Garden and American Eclipse. A former science correspondent for NPR, he has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, and other publications. David recently served as the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
-
Nina McConigley
How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder
2026 Mountain Words Featured Presenter
Nina McConigley is an award-winning writer whose work explores identity, belonging, and cultural intersections in the American West. She is the author of Cowboys and East Indians, which won the PEN Open Book Award and the High Plains Book Award, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Orion, Ploughshares, Salon, and American Short Fiction. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard, she teaches at Colorado State University and in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her play Cowboys and East Indians was presented at the 2024 Colorado New Play Summit, and her debut novel will be released in 2026.
-
Terry Tempest Williams
Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
Big news! Terry Tempest Williams, author of over 20 books, will be joining the 2026 Mountain Words Festival as a key speaker!
Terry Tempest Williams is a writer, naturalist, and activist known for her impassioned prose and fierce advocacy for environmental and social justice. She is the author of Refuge, When Women Were Birds, Erosion, and The Hour of Land, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Orion. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Sierra Club’s John Muir Award, and the Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a 2025–26 Emerson Collective Fellow, she is currently writer-in-residence at Harvard Divinity School. She divides her time between Castle Valley, Utah, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Get Mountain Words Updates
Be the first to hear about exciting author announcements, special events, and insider perks for the Mountain Words Festival! Sign up for updates and we’ll deliver the latest news straight to your inbox—so you never miss a moment of the magic.
We can’t wait to meet you in the mountains.
-
Donate to the Center
Donating to the Center for the Arts means that we can continue to support this amazing literary festival. Each year we see new and returning literary enthusiasts. We couldn’t do this work without you.
-
Become a Sponsor
As a non-profit organization, contributions from supporters are essential to our ability to continue the important work of uniting communities through the power of storytelling while keeping the Festival open and accessible to all communities.
-
Volunteer at Mountain Words
Looking to get involved with the festival? Sign up through our volunteer form, and a member of our team will be in touch with you soon!