Books and Literature

Westword Book Club: Ryan Demers on filmmaking, furries and Gone Girl

Ryan Demers, a Denver-based filmmaker, is the co-founder of Gaylord St. Productions, and has managed the impressive feat of helming two independent films without going completely bankrupt and abandoning the dream. The Honey Cooler, a farcical detective story set in the milieu of an economic ... More >>

Benjamin Percy's Red Moon elevates werewolves to literature

With Red Moon, noted author Benjamin Percy dives into genre fiction with a story about werewolves that live among us, feared and reviled and relegated to the fringes of society. The book fuses literary muscle to a skeleton of horror to create a rare breed of werewolf novel that offers a lot more to ... More >>

Westword Book Club: Brandi Shigley focuses on the essential and eliminates the rest

This week, Westword asked fashionista Brandi Shigley about her favorite books. The interview was fittingly conducted in front of an adorable lofted book shelf, which Shigley refers to as her treehouse, at Fashion Denver, her combination boutique, studio, consulting office, and mini roller-s ... More >>

The five best jail-inspired musician memoirs

Pop culture incrementally improved the chances that books would outlive CDs when news spread that Lil Wayne had inked a deal to write a memoir about the eight months he spent locked up on gun charges. Titled Gone 'Til November, the book is scheduled to be released in May. While the hip-hop blogosphe ... More >>

Graham Elliot, author of A Pact for Life, on why he drinks and writes in Denver

Not long ago, Graham Elliot moved to Colorado to chase a girl. Unfortunately, his quest for love didn't conclude with a picturesque Hollywood ending. So Elliot did what most spurned lovers do: He wrote a novel, of course. In 2012 Elliot released A Pact for Life, a story about a hot-and-cold Denver c ... More >>

The ten best books about America's prisons

This week's cover story, "The Lifers Book Club," reports on the Words Beyond Bars Project, a pilot progam at the Limon Correctional Facility that puts high-security prisoners, many of them serving life sentences, in a room with volunteers to discuss great books. It's a modest effort that could trans ... More >>

The ten best music books of 2012

This year, ambitious new books tackled the lives of music legends from Neil Young to Pete Townshend -- and many of these 2012 releases managed to burst through genres to offer significantly more than the average biography. We at Backbeat explored memoirs, historical surveys, ruminations on philosoph ... More >>

The Flip Side of Mr. Lincoln

Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

Novelist Paolo Bacigalupi brings The Drowned Cities to Tattered Cover and Boulder Bookstore

After racking up awards for his debut novel The Windup Girl in 2009 -- Nebula and Hugo honors for Best Novel -- Paulo Bacigalupi followed up with Ship Breaker, set in an equally dismal, dystopian future, and won another round of awards, including a National Book Award nomination and a Printz Award f ... More >>

Q&A: William "Gatz" Hjortsberg speaks volumes about Richard Brautigan in Jubilee Hitchhiker

Richard Brautigan spent a few years basking in the celebrity sun as the author of such counterculture classics as Trout Fishing in America and In Watermelon Sugar. But it was a short honeymoon, and the writer, who came up from poverty, fell into a trough of depression and alcoholism later in life. H ... More >>

Comic artist Stan Yan explains why Garfield got him drawing

Stan Yan always had a fascination with comics. Even before he understood what they really were, he would draw stick figures in frames. And since then, he's been a bit obsessed. "All of the stories I think up in my head are in comic form," he says. Yan recently took a break from dreaming up graphic ... More >>

Barry Fey signing his new book at Rockbar and Twist & Shout

​During his three decades as a promoter, Barry Fey brought in legendary acts like the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and U2. In his new book, Backstage Past, released yesterday on Lone Wolfe Press, Fey chronicles behind-the-scenes stories, some of which have nev ... More >>

Princess Diana survives the crash and starts a new chapter in The Lost Queen of England

​Boulder author H. Elizabeth Owen just published a book about Princess Diana surviving her paparazzi-induced car wreck and escaping to Egypt, where she became intertwined with another long-lost queen. So let's get this out of the way right now: Does Owen actually believe Princess Diana is aliv ... More >>

Adam Bradley, co-writer of Common's memoir, says book addresses White House controversy

​Common's memoir, One Day It'll All Make Sense, begins rather dramatically. The prologue reads: "When I was eighteen months old, my mother and I were kidnapped at gunpoint. My father held the gun. At least that's one side of the story." Common, with help from co-author Adam Bradley, a Univers ... More >>

Tayari Jones talks about Silver Sparrow

​In Silver Sparrow, the latest book by novelist Tayari Jones, the story follows two girls growing up in Atlanta -- but there's a twist: Dana, who narrates the first half of the book, is the secret half-sister of Chaurisse, who narrates the second half of the book. The two girls share a father, ... More >>

A Leap of Faith

Four coming-of-age comic books that would make great films

​Films based on comic books can really suck. But every once in a while, the stars align and the movies manage to translate a graphic novel into a film that actually works on its own. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is one of those successes, an adaptation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's graphic novel seri ... More >>

OMG, Guys: Lauren Conrad has a book club

​It is true. Thanks to Lauren Conrad's tweet about her new fave dessert recipe "Blueberry Boy Bait," we were intrigued enough to take a jaunt over to Laurenconrad.com, where we discovered that she's starting a book club. And what's even better about this whole books n' LC thing? She's taking o ... More >>

Behind the controversial Anthology of Rap, co-edited by CU hip-hop professor Adam Bradley

David Foster Wallace's unfinished novel tops our new-release picks for April 12, 2011

​If most authors leave an unfinished novel lying around, it doesn't really mean anything. It's usually unfinished because at best it's crap and at worst, unreadable. There have been exceptions: Kafka left behind The Castle, Chaucer left The Canterbury Tales unfinished, and Mark Twain's Mysteri ... More >>

Author Benjamin Percy talks about genre, big box stores and more

​Author Benjamin Percy has his feet in pretty much every pair of shoes on the writing track: he's a novelist, a short story writer and an essayist, he's worked on graphic novels and short films and he teaches on top of all that. Since he's in town tonight at St. Cajetan's Center, we took the o ... More >>

Author Benjamin Hale on Braveheart, chimp sex and Kafka

​We generally don't think much about who is narrating our stories, but in the case of Benjamin Hale's new novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, we have to. Mostly because the narrator is an ape. Hale, who grew up in and around Boulder but who currently lives in New York, will be in town to ... More >>

Local author Brenna Yovanoff goths it up for Young Adult readers

​Penguin Books, eager to eclipse Twilight with a new moon of its own, sharpened its stakes and rounded up five authors of hot new fantasy titles for Young Adult readers from its various imprints, unleashing them on the world for the Breathless Reads National Book Tour, which haunts the Tattere ... More >>

Graphic.ly: Boulder-based start-up aims to become the iTunes of comic books

​So present-unwrapping is over and you're freshly stocked up on new socks, kitchen utensils and copies of the soundtrack to Glee, but is there a tiny, immature part of you that's still hungering for something that's just pure fun? If so, Graphic.ly is your answer. The Boulder-based start-up is ... More >>

Roosevelt and DC Comics top our new release picks for November 23, 2010

​It seems like each holiday season is accented by a new, heavily researched American history novel. We'd venture a guess that it's because they sell well as Christmas presents, usually given to the mom or dad that simply "likes history." What else are you going to buy these folks, a time trave ... More >>

Anarchy Revolution

Time Bandit

Steve Katz on mythology, memory and mining

​Recently, there have been a slew of ill-advised memoirs from people far too young and inexperienced to share their stories with the world. Steve Katz doesn't have that problem. The 75-year-old Denver author started writing his memoir five years ago, and it has since become a collection of ove ... More >>

Sixteen years after his death, not-so-famous novelist John Williams is finding his audience

Morning of Mourning

PICTURING THE HERMAPHRODITE

Sci-fi phenom Paolo Bacigalupi has seen the future -- and it's scary as hell

He Loves Rock and Roll

Ask The Critic: What's on your bookshelf?

​ I tore through Jonathan Safran Foer's book, Eating Animals, and then sat back and watched the weak-willed and easily influenced suddenly declare their vegetarian sovereignty with a blood-streaked smile on my face and a bloody rare cheeseburger in my hand. Novella Carpenter's Farm City was ... More >>

Fantasy Camp

Lev Grossman conjures up a spellbinding book in The Magicians.

Not-So-Secret Lives of Animals

Guilty Pleasures

Comics for a Cause

Marc Hughes has the heart of a super hero.

Mozart and Evolution

Shtetl on the Range

Ghoul Trouble

Bound feet, ghosts and opera meet in a new novel.

Best Thing to Come Out of the JOA

Denver Post Sunday comics

Best Children's Tea

Harry Potter Meet & Greet
Oak & Berries Tearoom

Best Used Books All the Time

Koelbel Public Library

Best Amenity in a Hospice

Hospice of St. John

Best Collection Dedicated to a Best-Selling Author

James A. Michener Special Collection

Off Limits

His word is born.

Best community-theater production

Of Mice and Men

Best PR campaign

John and Patsy Ramsey