Festival Schedule
2024 Festival Schedule
The majority of events will take place at the Crested Butte Center for the Arts
Thursday, May 23
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Rebecca Boyle will read and sign her national bestselling book, Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are.
"Boyle walks the reader through a history of both Earth and humanity, from the formation of our planet and the evolution of life to the development of civilization, religion, philosophy and, eventually, science." -The New York Times Book Review
Location: Townie Books
Price: Free
Friday, May 24
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The Gunnison Valley is world-renowned by geologists for its large variety of geological features from a broad range of periods throughout the earth’s history. Join JJ’s Jeeps and our resident geologist, Dr. Amy Ellwein aka “Dr. Rock” co-author of the book Geology Underfoot on Colorado’s Western Slope as we travel back in time 1.7 billion years. We’ll go where few can in lifted Jeeps on this very special Geology Jeep Tour.
Learn about the fascinating geologic history of the Gunnison Valley, and how geology influences the distribution and lives of our high-altitude plants. The tour includes optional short walks over uneven terrain during multiple stops throughout the tour to fully take in the unique landscape.
Mobility is required to get in and out of lifted Jeeps.
Festival add-on excursion, not included in Festival Pass. Tour pick-up at Center for the Arts Upper Lobby.
Location: Meet in Center upper lobby for pickup to remote geological wonders in the Gunnison Valley
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Yes, you can write a complete, short play...in two hours! Acclaimed playwright, actor, and Western Colorado University Theater Director, Steven Cole Hughes guides you in the basics of playwriting, dialogue, history, and writing exercises.
Location: Hawk Studio
Ticket: $40 | Purchase Here
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Each poem, those personal gestures of honesty, compassion, healing, and joy, are our attempts to enter a temporal and sacred space – where the universal and the personal meet at the confluence of our lives shared with those of our readers. It was W.H. Auden who said that there were only a handful of poems for which he was truly grateful.
What is the stuff – the magical, technique, the myths, the scars, the many homes of our hearts – that occupies the page in a poem that we can point to as being truly grateful for?
This session will examine the techniques, the leaps, and the consistent work of what makes a poem, not just a keeper but timeless and therefore human in a way that only a poem can be. What are the elements of a poem for which we are truly grateful – that work which creates its own mythology while simultaneously examining the daily work of living – bold, accessible and brave for having been written?
Each of us is carrying that poem within us. We have contemplated it for years, decades, some of us since before we can remember. We will seek that poem. Our workshop will explore the multiple and complex emotions, those which seem disparate and difficult to tether to one another in a meaningful way, and we will write, write again, navigate the dangerous and safe places that poem will take us. Together, we will craft the poem we have always wanted to write, surrendering ourselves to the places, people and the voice the poem dictates, not us…the poem will guide us into its existence (that’s the hope).
Location: King Community Room
Ticket: $50 | Purchase Tickets
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Join award-winning author and documentary filmmaker Julian Rubinstein for a master class on how to use your narrative skills to turn a compelling print-based story into a gripping visual story. You will learn what you need to get started in documentary film, the pitfalls that can sink your attempts to do so, and how to re-think your assumptions of what makes a story work. (Suggested reading and/or viewing: The Holly book and documentary).
Location: Hawk Studio
Price: $50 | Purchase Here
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Join us in kicking off the festival with complimentary bites, a cash bar, and the release of the Summer 2024 issue of the beloved local publication, the Crested Butte Magazine.
Location: Grace Atrium
Price: Free
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Join us for a stunning, literary gallery opening in tandem with the festival kick-off!
Recommended by the Mexican consulate, Alvaro Alejandro comes to the KPG to promote different cultural libraries of the world through an exhibition of novels and texts in a beautiful exhibition paring with the Mountain Words Festival.
Alejandro’s Project is completed by texts of various such as: Salman Rushdie, Anne Carson, Orhan Pamuk, Naomi Shihab Nye, Billy Collins, Forrest Gander, Yann Martel, Alberto Manguel, Joan Leedom Ackerman, Sven Birkerts, Ana Blandiana, Roger Chartier, Jacqueline Woodson, Paul Auster, Georgi Gospodinov, Joanna Kavenna, Damon Galgut, Lidia Jorge, Enrique Vila Matas, Yan Lianke, among others.
Location: Kinder Padon Gallery
Price: FREE
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Join us for a riveting discussion and multi-media presentation with explorer, journalist, and author Kevin Fedarko on his brand new work, A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon. The session will close with a discussion and audience Q&A with American Rivers Communications Director and Executive Producer, Sinjin Eberle.
Location: Steddy Theater
Price: Free
About the book -
A few years after quitting his job to pursue the ill-advised ambition of becoming a whitewater guide on the Colorado River, Kevin Fedarko was approached by his best friend, the National Geographic photographer Pete McBride, with a vision as bold as it was harebrained. Together, they would embark on an end-to-end traverse of the Grand Canyon—a 750-mile journey, on foot, that McBride promised would be “a walk in the park.”Against his better judgment, Fedarko agreed to the scheme, unaware that the tiny cluster of experts who had actually completed the crossing billed it as “the toughest hike in the world.” The ensuing ordeal revealed a place that was deeper, richer, and far more complex than anything the two men had imagined—and came within a hair’s breadth of killing them both. They spent more than a year struggling to make their way through the all-but-impenetrable reaches of the canyon’s deepest wilderness, a vertical labyrinth of thousand-foot cliffs and crumbling ledges where water is measured out by the teaspoon and every step is fraught with peril—and where there is still no trail spanning the length of the country’s best-known and most iconic landmark.
From the author of the beloved bestseller The Emerald Mile comes the rollicking and poignant account of an epic misadventure, a singular portrait of a sublime place, and a deeply moving plea for the preservation of America’s most magnificent national park and the grandest wilderness on earth.
Saturday, May 25
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Join us for a discussion of Scott Graham's latest thriller, Death Valley Duel (2024 Torrey House Press), and Zak Podmore's Life After Dead Pool: Lake Powell's Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River (Torrey House Press, Aug 2024). Pairing Zak's investigative reporting on water in the West with Scott's ecology-focused fiction series, don’t miss this absorbing and educational discussion. Chaired by Torrey House Press Co-Executive Director, Will Neville-Rehbehn
Location: Steddy Theater
Price: Free
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Presented by Manuel Aragon. Applying filmmaking techniques to writing is a proven way to inject life into your prose. Participants will talk about how camera work and shot composition are used to create mood, scene, character details, and more, as well as how they can apply these cinematic tools to their writing process.
Location: King Community Room
Price: $40 | Purchase Here
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Wild power with words: Experimenting in Nature Writing today with Laura Pritchett
Check out all the episodic, listical, epistolary, and hermit-crab works out there today. Don’t know what those terms mean? Never fear! That’s what this crash course is about. We’ll take a look at several innovative and experimental forms of writing – and you’ll leave having generated ideas of your own. Whether you write fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, long form or short, some playful innovation and experimentation is sure to inspire.
Location: Hawk Studio
Price: $50 | Purchase Here
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Inspired by the wisdom of late teacher Dolores LaChapelle, we form a peer-to-peer sharing circle. The person holding the gourd speaks and everyone else listens. We ask people to bring a poem or story or song to share (their own or someone else's).
Location: Outdoors, Town Park Pavilion
Price: Free
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Long-time friends Michelle Nijhuis and Paolo Bacigalupi discuss their artistic paths, from their early attempts and struggles to their eventual award-winning careers in fiction and narrative journalism.
Location: Grace Atrium + Courtyard
Price: Free
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David Quammen has written 18 books, the latest being The Heartbeat of the Wild which is drawn from his 20 years writing about wild creatures and wild places on assignments for National Geographic Magazine. In this talk with Hampton Sides, Quammen will discuss his career and physical journeys, amid some of the most spectacular wild creatures and wild places on planet Earth.
Location: Steddy Theater
Price: Free
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Join Trailhead Children’s Museum for a very special bookmaking workshop for kids ages 6 - 8.
Create an ever-expanding book! These unique literary creations unfold, open, and unfold some more to reveal your own stories, illustrations, and more! All young artists will take home their very own handmade ever-expanding book.
Not included in festival pass. $25 per child, per session. Register Here
Location: Trailhead Children’s Museum
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In the words of Douglas Adams, author of A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.” Among the billions of light-years across space, humans have only traveled a very small fraction. In this panel discussion, science writers Rebecca Boyle, Laura Krantz, and Sarah Scoles discuss their research into the vastness of space — astronomy, the cosmos, anomalous phenomena, and more. Chaired by aerospace engineer Heather Swenson.
Location: King Community Room
Price: Free
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Silence and observation are essential to the creative process, particularly writing. This workshop will discuss the dedicated practice of keen attention and transferring it to the journal ... even if only one sentence a day. With Montana Poet Laureate, Chris La Tray
Location: Hawk Studio
Price: $40 | Purchase Here
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Grab lunch and unwind while being read to by the 2024 Writers-in-Residence, Okwudili Nebeolisa, Amanda Rizkalla, Charlie Sorrenson, Phil Coleman, and Anna Fenerty.
Location: Grace Atrium + Feldberg East Courtyard
Price: Free
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The late great Montana writer William Kittredge once wrote: "Listings are attempts to make existence whole and holy in the naming." What does he mean? How do lists function in literature? Might they jump-start our own attempts at creative writing? In this workshop, we will look at various lists -- drawn from poems, novels, essays, advertisements, religious texts, etc. -- and also put pencil to paper and play around with our own lists - outdoors with Leath Tonino.
Location: Off-Campus Walking Talk - Meet in Miller Upper Lobby at the Center
Price: $50 | Purchase Here
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Join us for a conversation with Hampton Sides, best known for his gripping non-fiction adventure stories set in war or depicting epic expeditions of discovery and exploration. Sides is an acclaimed journalist and the author of best-selling histories, including most recently, The Wide Wide Sea. With Kevin Fedarko.
"Here is an adventure so strange and epic it rivals the greatest tales of myth. The cast of characters includes a restless Captain Cook, an anxious King George III on the verge of losing his American colonies, a London high society newly infatuated with the romance of the "noble savage," and a good-natured young Polynesian man heartily bent on an inter-island massacre. Sides turns this riveting narrative into a cautionary tale about the heedless cruelty of colonialism and the collateral damage that can result from even the best-intentioned first contact." — Peter Heller, New York Times bestselling author of The Dog Stars, The River, and The Guide
Location: Steddy Theater
Price: Free
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Where does memory end and imagination begin? Autobiographical writing has occupied many of the most eloquent minds of our time. A panel of brilliant, envelope-pushing memoirists examines what happens when the most intimate details of a writer’s life become the subject of his or her professional work. With Suzi Q. Smith and Karen Auvinen. Chaired by Steven Dunn.
Location: King Community Room
Price: Free
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Learn the process of beginning a research project and learning how to take the steps that follow with Buzzy Jackson, from note-taking to productive reading, to visiting archives and doing interviews. We’ll also discuss the subject of historical fiction more broadly, looking at the many different approaches to the genre, and the highs, lows, and ethical considerations involved in turning true stories into art.
Location: Hawk Studio
Price: $40 | Purchase Here
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Join Trailhead Children’s Museum for a very special magazine workshop for kids ages 9 - 11. Upper elementary artists are invited to come create their own ZINE! A zine is a mini magazine that is very specific to the artist and their passions and interests, created through collage, painting, and other multi-media art forms. Emerging artists in this session will pick a theme - whether it be about yourself, or something you love! We will then create a zine around this theme for artists to take home and share with the world.
Not included in festival pass. $25 per child, per session. Register Here
Location: Trailhead Children’s Museum
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Purchase books by festival presenters and get them signed while mingling and enjoying the drinks from the Black Dragon Bar. Book sales with festival bookseller, Townie Books
Location: Grace Atrium, Black Dragon Bar
Price: Free
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The ski-bum dream is changing. The elements that make ski towns and mountain communities unique and alluring are the same ingredients that are accelerating disproportionate growth and economic inequities.
Join Professor of Sociology at Yale University and author of Billionaire Wilderness, Justin Farrell, in conversation with investigative reporter for High Country News and Harpers, Nick Bowlin as they discuss the current realities ski towns face, and where they’re headed.
Location: Steddy Theater
Price: Free
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From strivey hustle to making and maintaining success, award-winning writers discuss their paths and the many twists their authorial arcs have taken. With Shelley Read, Claire Boyles, Olivia Chadha, and Anne Hillerman. Chaired by Manuel Aragon.
Location: King Community Room
Price: Free
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This nuts and bolts seminar provides essential tools for new and experienced memoir writers that take your personal story and make it something shareable and universal. With Karen Auvinen
Location: Hawk Studio
Price: $40 | Purchase Here
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The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the most successful interconnected film series to ever exist, but at the turn of the century, they were crawling their way back from bankruptcy. Dave Gonzales, co-author of MCU The Reign of Marvel Studios, outlines how Marvel Studios cracked the formula for turning seemingly lackluster intellectual property into profitable blockbuster movies, and speculates on whether Marvel can ever recapture the cultural influence they had from 2012 - 2019.
Location: Off-campus at the Majestic Theatre
Price: Free
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Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Timothy Egan is the author of ten books, including his most recent, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them. His book on the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, won a National Book Award for nonfiction.
Location: Steddy Theater
Price: Free
About the book -
The Roaring Twenties--the Jazz Age--has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows – their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman – Madge Oberholtzer – who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.
About the author -
Timothy Egan is a Pulitzer Prize—winning reporter and the author of nine other books, most recently the highly acclaimed A Pilgrimage to Eternity and The Immortal Irishman, a New York Times bestseller. His book on the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, won a National Book Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. His account of photographer Edward Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, won the Carnegie Medal for nonfiction. -
Celebrate Steven Dunn and Katie Jean Shinkle’s highly acclaimed new book Tannery Bay.
Join Steven Dunn for drinks and book giveaways.
Location: Montanyas Rum Distillery
Price: Free
About the book -
Enter a world where time stands still and summer never ends. In the enchanted town of Tannery Bay, it’s July 37, and then July 2 again, but the year is a mystery. Trapped in an eternal loop, the residents embark on an extraordinary journey of self-discovery, unity, and defiance against the forces that seek to divide them.Otis and Joy, intrepid siblings, work with their family and friends to oppose a formidable adversary: The Owners. These cunning and ruthless old men, driven by insatiable greed, hold the town hostage, exploiting its resources and dividing its people. In this powerful #OwnVoices narrative, Tannery Bay is a captivating tale of Black Joy and Queer Joy and the ways in which family is both biological and chosen, where love transcends boundaries, and where art is a vehicle for change.
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Meet Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Timothy Egan over drinks + bites. attendance by suggested donation with all funds supporting the 2025 Mountain Words Festival. Be sure to arrive early as spots are limited.
Location: King Community Room
Price: Suggested Donation
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The festival tradition of presenting incredible live theatre returns with the debut of Singletrack! the musical one night only, Saturday, May 25. Join an all-star cast who will perform Act I of the play written by acclaimed playwright, actor, and Western Colorado University theater Director, Steven Cole Hughes. The hysterically funny production is a deconstruction of 1980s sports and action films like Footloose, Flashdance, Karate Kid, Rad, Rocky, Top Gun, but mostly Rad, which, if you are unfamiliar, is the 1986 cult classic about teenage BMX racers. Starring Cole Hughes along with award-winning actor Heather Hughes, and professional actors from around the country for a read through of Act I of the play.
Location: Steddy Theater
Price: $10-$20 | Purchase Here
Sunday, May 26
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A look at the future of public lands with a panel of thought leaders on the topic, including Betsy Gaines Quammen, Kevin Fedarko, Justin Farrell, and Scott Graham.
Chaired by High Country Conservation Advocates Director Jon Hare.
Location: Steddy Theater
Price: Free
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Worldbuilding is crucial to science fiction and fantasy writing, setting these genres apart from others. By constructing a well-developed and believable world, writers create a rich and engaging setting that enables readers to fully immerse themselves in the story, characters, and plot. Join science fiction and fantasy writer and winner of the Hugo, and Nebula awards, Paolo Bacigalupi, in conversation with Colorado Book Award-winning science fiction, fantasy, and comic book writer, Olivia Chadha as they discuss the wonders of worldbuilding in science fiction and fantasy.
Location: King Community Room
Price: Free
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Think about your favorite novels, or even bedtime stories. What’s the first line? Odds are it is a scene, maybe a bit of dialogue, and not a statement of facts. As writers, we should keep this in mind, especially as we try to explain complicated and sometimes controversial subjects like science.
In an age of misinformation, disinformation, mistrust in authority, and distrust in expertise, writers have a responsibility to tell true stories and to tell them compellingly. We want people to understand what we’re trying to tell them, but we also want them to engage with our material, whether it’s an essay about wildlife corridors, a news article about new COVID-19 research, or a nonfiction book.
This workshop with Rebecca Boyle will introduce attendees with strategies for effective nonfiction storytelling. We’ll learn about story mapping techniques, borrow some tricks about pacing and structure from fiction, and learn how narrative writing can bring readers along with us.
Location: Hawk Studio
Price: $40 | Purchase Here
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Join writers Michelle Nijhuis, Claire Boyles, David Inouye, Paige Vega, and others as they discuss writing about climate change within their genres. In partnership with High Country News.
Location: Steddy Theater
Price: Free
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Learn the many ways that intimate knowledge of place can meaningfully enhance your narrative and, yes, your life. In this interactive discussion, best-selling novelist Shelley Read will share her thoughts on the joys of authentic, intentional place-based writing, how to achieve it, and what she has discovered about why readers so broadly and genuinely crave it.
Location: King Community Room
Price: $40 | Purchase Here
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In the spirit of Derek Walcott’s “love after love”: In this generative workshop, we will read poems that encourage a new or renewed sense of devotion to self-love and care. We will discuss and consider our rituals of care, our self-language, and our most immediate intimate relationship. Participants will write from prompts and then, depending on time, share some of their writing. Appropriate for all levels of experience. With Suzi Q. Smith.
Location: Hawk Studio
Price: $40 | Purchase Here
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Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner invites you to a live discussion and Q&A with the author Sarah Scoles on her new book Countdown; The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons.
Location: Steddy Theater
Price: Free
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Betsy & David reflect on man, nature, and the modern world.
David Quammen is an author and journalist whose books include The Heartbeat of the Wild, Breathless, The Tangled Tree, Spillover, and The Song of the Dodo. His writing focuses on science, history of science, and the relationships of humans to landscape and biological diversity. He has also published short nonfiction in magazines such as The New Yorker, National Geographic, Harper’s, Outside, Esquire, The Atlantic, Powder, and Rolling Stone. Quammen has been honored with an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and is a three-time recipient of the National Magazine Award. His books have received various awards, and Breathless in 2022 was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Betsy Gaines Quammen is a historian and writer. She received a PhD from Montana State University where she studied religion, history and the philosophy of science. Her dissertation focused on Mormon history and the roots of armed public land conflicts occurring in the United States. She is fascinated at how religious views shape relationships to landscape. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Daily News, and the History News Network. She is the author of American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God, and Public Lands in the West and True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America.
The Quammens live in Bozeman, Montana, with their family of three giant dogs, a sturdy cat, and a lanky rescue python.
Location: King Community Room
Price: Free
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Grab lunch and unwind while being read to by festival poets including Chris La Tray, Suzi Q. Smith + Wendy Videlock. David Rothman accepting the Karen Chamberlain Poetry Award with Art Goodtimes
Location: Steddy Theater
Price: Free
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The worldbuilding master J.R.R. Tolkien took nearly 17 years to create the world of the Lord of the Rings and write the novel. Most writers, thankfully, spend a lot less time on pre-writing.
But worldbuilding can be endless unless you manage your process. How do you create a world that avoids common info-dumps and over explanation? How do you avoid cliché and stereotypes regarding identity and culture of the world? Borrowing from N.K. Jemisin’s “Growing Your Iceberg” and Writing the Other by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward, this session will explore techniques that will allow you to make your world and write your book.
We’ll talk about pitfalls of unconscious bias and how to flesh out the world with awareness. We will identify worldbuilding methods that will feel intuitive and effective without taking forever. This course would be craft talk with reading assignments, writing exercises, and hands on work on your current manuscript.
Suitable for ages 12+ to adults
Location: Hawk Studio
Price: $40 | Purchase Here
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What do the mountains mean to you? In this outdoor workshop with science journalist and author Michelle Nijhuis and Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory director Ian Billick, we’ll share new and old writings about the high country by scientists, poets, and other mountain dwellers, reflecting on the evolution of human perceptions over time. With an epic view of the Elk Mountains as inspiration, you’ll have the chance to contemplate your own attitude(s) toward the mountains and, if you wish, contribute to a collective poem.
Location: Pirate Park Pavillion, meet at the Center
Price: $50 | Purchase Here
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Playing with (Wild)Fire discussion with Laura Pritchett celebrating the power of wildfire, community, and experimental form. Gunnison County Libraries Community Read Book and in collaboration with Western Colorado University.
Location: Steddy Theater
Price: Free
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In this generative workshop, Steven Dunn and Manuel Aragon will guide participants through a series of individual and group prompts that will uncover new possibilities, stories, and storytelling strategies.
Join them for a fun workshop that will give you new ideas, new connections, and re-invigorate your existing work.
Location: King Communtiy Room
Price: $50 | Purchase Here
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From the dynamic duo behind the hugely popular Quiz Quiz Bang Bang podcast, get ready to test your bookish chops! As part of the Mountain Words Festival.
$20 team entry, $5 individual entry.
Tables limited to teams of 6 per table per team. Your team must have a reserved table to participate as a team.
Location: Steddy TheaterPrice: $5-$20 | Purchase Here
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