Writing the West

Writers and Wyoming natives Mark Spragg and Laura Bell have been friends for years. “We feel like our work has a lot in common, and because we’re such good friends, we really can support each other and each other’s work,” Bell says. The two will appear together tonight for the...

By Amber Taufen

March 11, 2010

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Writers and Wyoming natives Mark Spragg and Laura Bell have been friends for years. “We feel like our work has a lot in common, and because we’re such good friends, we really can support each other and each other’s work,” Bell says. The two will appear together tonight for the Reading the West book signing at the Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl Street in Boulder.

The landscape is a similar theme for both. “I feel that our characters could be neighbors,” Bell notes, even though her book, Claiming Ground, is a memoir of her life, while Spragg’s, Bone Fire, is his third novel and contains several characters from The Fruit of Stone and An Unfinished Life, his first two books.

“The isolation here, for people who live in the rural parts of Wyoming, is more poignant,” Spragg adds. “And I think that affects worldview and decisions — filial, social and otherwise.”

Listen to their takes on the Western mythos tonight at 7:30 p.m. Visit www.boulderbookstore.com or call 303-477-2074 for info.
Tue., March 16, 7:30 p.m., 2010

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Amber Taufen has been writing about people, places and things in Denver since 2005. She works as an editor, writer, and production and process guru out of her home office in the foothills.

Contact: Amber Taufen

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