2025 Free Events
The Mountain Words Festival features over 10 free community events including panel discussions, receptions, and readings!
To see the full festival schedule, click here!
Thursday, May 22
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Mountain Words honors one the Gunnison Valley’s most influential writers with the debut of a short film and a medley of guests presenters who have intersected with George Sibley.
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Free community event!
Friday, May 23
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Beloved Colorado author Craig Childs (House of Rain, Animal Dialogues, Tracing Time, Secret Knowledge of Water, Atlas of a Lost World) returns to Crested Butte with his newest book, The Wild Dark: Finding the Night Sky in the Age of Light. A reading from Craig is a not-to-miss occasion. Blending sound and visual elements Childs takes the audience with him to desert landscapes and wilderness landscapes seen by few.
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Grizzly Confidential: An Astounding Journey into the Secret Life of North America’s Most Fearsome Predator @Gunnison Library
Saturday, May 24
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Colorado Public Radio host of Colorado Matters, Ryan Warner speaks with Craig Childs about his newest work, The Wild Dark: Finding the Night Sky in the Age of Light.
In a follow-up to Craig's previous evening's presentation, Ryan Warner will lead an audience q+a for broadcast on CPR!
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2024 National Book Award Longlist Finalist Ernest Scheyder (The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives) and Land Desk bard Jonathan Thompson (Sage Brush Rebellion, River of Lost Souls) take on the most pressing question facing public lands no one is talking about, where will the green future come from? The answer is from the ground and likely beneath our own feet.
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Winner of the Rachel Carson Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism, Ben Goldfarb and WildEarth Guardians Executive Director, Hop Hopkins discuss the human impacts of 40 million miles of roads around the planet on wildlife and how conservationists are working to restore habitats.
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In this "unflinching and wildly entertaining" investigation of the modern New Age movement in America, a journalist aims to understand how women like Amy Carlson (the leader of Love Has Won) and others become devoutly invested in their beliefs (Talia Lavin, author of Culture Warlords).
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Where do you start as a writer? Is an MFA right for me? How do you publish a poem? What are the different paths to publication? Three writers are here to answer whatever questions you have about writing life and the many paths one can take. (Dan Manzanares, Suzi Q. Smith, Steven Dunn)
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In an era of escalating crises—from pandemics and climate change to the rapid advancement of AI—many are questioning the resilience of our civilization. Yet history and science reveal a different story: time and again, humans have faced existential threats and found ways to survive and adapt. Drawing on evolutionary psychology, brain science, and game theory, cooperation theorist Athena Aktipis explores how our deep-seated abilities to cooperate, innovate, and even find joy in adversity have sustained us in the past—and can do so again.
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Pulitzer Prize Finalist and MacArthur Fellow Karen Russell joins Colorado State University professor and award winning novelist Ramona Ausubel to discuss Russell’s new novel, The Antidote. Described by Editor and Chief of Knopf as, “a singularly great American novel,” this is a must attend event for Mountain Words 2025.
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It is a rare occurrence to have 5 panelists who have the depth of knowledge and information in the same place at the same time. Listen to the the West's leading thinkers discuss what the future holds for wildlife in our fragile ecosystems impacted by growth and caught between conservation and development.
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National Book Award Finalist, Hugo and Nebula Award winning author Paolo Bacigalupi discusses his newest book, Navola with author Olivia Chadha.
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Tequila Wars with Ted Genoways
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Voters approved Proposition 114 in November 2020, requiring Colorado Parks and Wildlife to make a plan to begin reintroducing wolves to the Western Slope of Colorado by the end of 2023. The wildlife agency first released 10 gray wolves captured in Oregon onto state land in Grand and Summit counties in December 2023. This discussion will check in on current movements in wolf reintroduction in Colorado with High Country News reporter Nick Bowlin and author, Eli Francovich.
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Join moderator Hillary Leftwich and panelists Deborah Jackson Taffa and Chris La Tray, as they discuss the innate ability to create narrative and how it is hewn in the memoir drafting process to carve personal stories from the bark of history.
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Journalist Will Cockrell discusses his book, Everest, Inc. The Renegades and Rouges Who Built and Industry at the Top of the World.
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Join authors Amy Gamerman and Mountain Words alum, Justin Farrell, resident expert on wealth in the West to discuss, The Crazies.
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This is THE premier reading for Mountain Words. These writers come to readers from the edges of a collective history that demands more than rote understanding of what it means to be Indigenous in the US. This is sure to be an evening of powerful storytelling from voices too powerful to be ignored.
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OUR MOON: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are @Gunnison Library
Sunday, May 25
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Join authors Jim O'Donnell and Jonathan Thompson to talk about water and how it shapes community and vice versa.
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Mark Easter is the author of The Blue Plate: A Food Lovers Guide to Climate Chaos, published by Patagonia Books in 2024. In it, he explores the question “Can we eat our way out of the climate crisis?”
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"The Rise of Recreation Exurbs & The Demise of Community" describes a fifty-plus year economic, political and cultural evolution of what until now has been an unrecognized development in American society. This work focuses on four new American recreation exurbs that are representative of others like them: Martha’s Vineyard, MA, (a typical ocean-side resort); Crested Butte, CO, (representing mountain areas); Sedona, AZ, (a desert destination); and Lake Tahoe, CA & NV, (a large lakeside locale). This work discusses the causes and consequences of their evolution. It shows that in these places, over time, there has been a direct relationship between escalating real estate prices and the loss of a feeling of community among local residents. In fact, many long-time locals, because of increased real estate values, were forced out of the communities they had developed. For some of the other adverse effects of this development, such as the lack of affordable housing and a shrinking workforce, it suggests possible remedies.
Virtually all of these places are in beautiful, awe-inspiring environments which formerly were home to small, working and middle-class, tight-knit, communities based on either fishing, mining, logging, farming or ranching. Then, they became single-sport recreation towns (e.g., skiing or boating) that catered to a local and regional clientele. Following that phase, people who came with the recreation industry realized they needed a year-around economy. These areas evolved further into tourist towns and recreation communities with many amenities that served an ever-increasing national tourist base. Finally, during the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first quarter of the twenty-first, they became today’s new American recreation exurbs. -
Michael Englehard will share his outdoor adventures featured in his book, Arctic Traverse: A Thousand-Mile Summer of Trekking the Brooks Range.
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Ben Goldfarb will speak with residents about Beaver habitat. Free and open to the public.
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