There are so many literary highlights this week that we can't count them on a single hand. From a whale of a book sale to a sci-fi confab to a Fort Collins foodfest, here are your seven best bookish bets for the week, Denver. Enjoy.

Saturnalia

Catherine Pierce, The Tornado Is the World
Thursday, October 17, 6:30 p.m.
Tivoli 640 (Zenith Room)
900 Auraria Parkway
Free
Award-winning poet Catherine Pierce is the special guest of the University of Colorado Denver’s Creative Writing program as she brings her latest collection of poems, The Tornado Is the World, to the Auraria campus. Pierce is the author of three books of poems so far, has another debuting in 2020, and has had work published in such venues as Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse and the 2019 Pushcart Anthology, to name only a few. All that, and tornadoes, too? Yes, it’s true. All of it.

JeffCo Library Foundation

Whale of a Used Book Sale
Thursday, October 17, through Sunday, October 20
Jefferson County Fairgrounds
15200 West Sixth Avenue Frontage Road, Golden
Free
Jefferson County Library Foundation brings back its super-popular, semi-annual Whale of a Used Book Sale, where over 80,000 books, DVDs, vinyl records and more will be available. Thursday is Friends of JCPL Preview Night; you can pay $10 for early-bird access on Friday (the rest of the day admission is free, as it is on Saturday); and Sunday is bag day, when bags of books start at only $6. For more information on the event, check out the Jeffco website.

EXPAND

Gaming was only one of the highlights of MileHiCon 50.

Danielle Lirette

MileHiCon 51
Friday, October 18, through Sunday, October 20
Hyatt Regency Denver Tech Center, 7800 East Tufts Avenue
Three-day passes at the door $50/Single-day passes $20-22
Last year saw the golden anniversary for this Denver sci-fi/fantasy lit celebration; come out to see how it celebrates the first year of its second half-century! And while you’re there, don’t forget to get some of your favorite books signed, shake hands with the authors, and rub elbows with some of the biggest writers (and fans!) in the genre. It’s three days of pure geek-lit love. Remember that thrill when you’d find a great book you’d heard of, wanted to read but had never seen on the shelf before? Live it again. Pre-registration is closed, but tickets are still available at the door.

Civil Coping Mechanisms

Hillary Leftwich, Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock
Friday, October 18, 7 p.m.
BookBar
4280 Tennyson Street
Free
Local literary dynamo Hillary Leftwich launches her new collection, Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock, at BookBar with a reading and signing. She’s joined at the event by friends and fellow writers Nancy Stohlman, Charly “City Mouse” Fasano and Jane Keir, all of whom come ready to read, drink and eat cake — not necessarily in that order.

EXPAND

Little, Brown, & Co.

Food for Thought: 2019 Fort Collins Book Fest
Saturday, October 19, and Sunday, October 20
Assorted Fort Collins venues
Free
Every year, Fort Collins plays host to a citywide set of bookish events. This year, it’s a movable feast for the literary “foodie in all of us.” The event brings together James Beard Award-winning chefs (Sean Sherman), acclaimed authors (Rick Bass), and a who’s-who of writers, poets and culinary visionaries like Toni Tipton-Martin, Octavio Quintanilla, Jeff Gordinier, Adam Dickinson, Stephanie Anderson, Ken Albala and dozens of Colorado-based voices. Consult the FCBF website for a complete rundown of where to go, what to see, and how best to make a weekend of it.

Iowa Short Fiction Award

Emily Wortman-Wunder, Not a Thing to Comfort You
Sunday, October 20, 5 p.m.
BookBar
4280 Tennyson Street
Free
Emily Wortman-Wunder, who teaches at the University of Colorado Denver, comes to BookBar to launch her debut collection, Not a Thing to Comfort You, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award for 2019. The stories in the book focus on nature and the environment and how it reveals itself to be essentially unknowable, even to those who come to know it — through both labor and study. These are stories that glimmer like fireflies, that rumble like thunder, that reveal the depths of both the natural world and the human heart.

EXPAND

Grand Central Publishing

Adam Rippon, Beautiful on the Outside
Monday, October 21, 7:30 p.m.
Unity Church
2855 Folsom Street, Boulder
$30
Out Boulder County teams up with the Boulder Book Store to host Olympic medalist Adam Rippon as he talks about his memoir Beautiful on the Outside. Even when Rippon was making everything beautiful for the figure-skating judges, things were sometimes a mess on the inside. Now Rippon talks about his life and struggles, from being home-schooled in Scranton, Pennsylvania to becoming a self-professed America’s sweetheart. Tickets to the event are $30 and include a pre-signed copy of the book.

Have a literary event you think should be included on this list? Send details to editorial@westword.com.

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