Arts & Entertainment

Last summer, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science announced that it had found a dinosaur fossil … 763 feet below the surface of its own parking lot. The partial bone fossil researchers unearthed is similar to the vertebrae of a Thescelosaurus, a plant-eating dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous Period 67 million years ago. The fossil is the deepest and oldest dinosaur fossil ever found within Denver city limits, according to the DMNS. Why was the museum digging that deep? It was for a geothermal test drilling project to assess the viability of transitioning from natural gas to geothermal energy.

While the Winter Games have ended, Olympic City, USA, keeps the flame alive. Colorado Springs recently took on the flashy title, though the country’s Olympic committee and several sports’ National Governing Bodies have been headquartered there for decades. It’s a fitting location for the nation’s only U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum, which spotlights many of the greatest athletes in American history. Race Jesse Owens and other gold medalists on a digital running track, compare your leap to Bob Beamon’s record-breaking long jump, and marvel at many fascinating displays, including rare complete collections of Olympic medals and torches.

The Clyfford Still Museum is known for preserving the legacy of one of abstract expressionism’s most influential painters. With “Tell Clyfford, I Said ‘Hi,’” the museum expanded that mission by inviting youth from the Colville Confederated Tribes, ages three to fourteen, to co-curate an exhibition featuring artworks by their ancestors. Working with students from Nespelem School, Colville Head Start and Gathered Hearts Montessori, the exhibition links Still’s paintings of Colville ancestors and landscapes with contemporary perspectives from the same community. Some young curators even recognized relatives in the portraits, transforming a historic collection into a living family archive.

Expand your knowledge of our state’s history with a day tour or an overnight trek offered by History Colorado. You can hop on a bus to check out the world foods of Aurora, or visit Denver breweries with Sam Bock, co-author of Brewed at Altitude: A Beer Lover’s History of Colorado. The 2026 roster also includes “Night Skies of the Ancients: Mesa Verde,” a four-day trip to discover how the night sky influenced the architecture of the Ancient Puebloans.

Built on land that once held two homesteads, the castle commissioned by Tweet Kimball is an event and an educational center. It was built in the style of a 15th-century castle, and holds a collection of rare books, antiques and world-class art. The historic ranch grounds focus on wildlife preservation and environmental research. Both the indoor and outdoor spaces host cultural and scientific events as well as teas, weddings, wine tastings and brunches — we’ll never be royals, but we can at least drive Cadillacs in our dreams for a day.

Fifty-five-year-old Denver dance institution Cleo Parker Robinson Dance has operated out of the Historic Shorter AME Church in Five Points since 1987, sharing the space with other local arts organizations that needed it. In recent years, space was starting to get tight, so CPRD underwent a state-of-the-art expansion of its facility that preserves the historic church, adding on another building with additional dance classrooms, offices and a new theater. The icing on the cake: the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Center for the Healing Arts has a special focus on therapeutic offerings.

The Dairy Arts Center finally reclaimed the building that artists transformed more than three decades ago. The former Watts-Hardy Dairy processing plant, converted into a multidisciplinary arts hub in the early 1990s, was sold to the City of Boulder in 2000 after the nonprofit struggled with mortgage payments. For 25 years, the city owned the property while the Dairy continued running its theaters, galleries, studios and the Boedecker Cinema. In August 2025, Boulder City Council approved an $11.69 million deal returning ownership to the organization, which paid $1.5 million at closing. For the 100-plus arts groups and 200,000 annual visitors who rely on the Dairy, the buyback secures one of Boulder’s most vital creative spaces for the long haul.

When it was announced that Dom Garcia and Ashlee Cassity would be the new owners of the cultural landmark formerly known as the Mercury Cafe, and that it would now be called The Pearl due to previous owners shutting down the Mercury Cafe not only in business but in name, people were worried the establishment would lose what made it special. But Garcia and Cassity have not only upheld the aesthetic and events that Merc regulars loved, but they’ve also transformed it back into a welcoming community space for people of all walks of life, especially lesbians — who were definitely in need of a fresh space to gather for sapphic celebration.

Mutiny Comics and Coffee (formerly Mutiny Information Cafe) is becoming the center of a cultural renaissance in Englewood after its move south down Broadway from Denver at the end of 2024. Although Denver residents miss the store’s presence in Baker, it’s still a popular gathering place for music, comics, books, coffee, pastries, burritos, and more underground culture awareness (and awesomeness) than a Gen Xer could pretend not to care about. Keep an eye on Mutiny’s website for events — there’s almost always something going on.

Westword staff writer Hannah Metzger brought her six-year-old niece to virtually every age-appropriate attraction in the Denver metro area last summer. After spending weeks of time and hundreds of dollars exploring, her favorite place was … 16th Street. The mini play structures recently added along the street kept her captivated for hours, including the Aspen tree bird nest, beehive, metal drum platforms and cowboy fish. Plus, the touchscreens on every block offered fun video games and selfie photo ops. The revitalized corridor is once again an ideal place for free family fun — without even mentioning the numerous shops and restaurants at your disposal.

The Denver Pavilions is hopeful for a renaissance under its new ownership, but it wouldn’t be the same if it ever lost the Regal United Artists cinema. Sure, the escalators inside don’t work, and people don’t go to the movies like they did. But Denver would notice if the gray cylinder anchoring the Pavilions no longer said “United Artists,” even though the sign is already broken. The people with childhood memories of checking the movies showing and the times on the plastic columns outside the Pavilions might even cry with such a loss. The United Artist has hung tough for the last two decades, and of all the mall’s stalwarts, the cinema has stood the tallest in its corner atop the Pavilions.

There isn’t really a fat man in a red suit amicably invading people’s homes via chimney in December. Likewise, Christmas in July isn’t a thing. But if you ride your bike along the north side of the Platte River in Glendale, you’d swear otherwise rolling past Four Mile Historic Park from mid-July through the first week of October. With new, elaborate lighting displays every year, Bright Nights at Four Mile is like the best holiday pre-game in the city. If gawking slack-jawed at bright bulbs tickles your fancy, no need to wait until the end of the year to feed your fixation.

When the experimental art space Prismajic lost its lease earlier this year, it was a blow to the local creative scene. Having inspired Denverites in two different locations since its visionary inception in 2018, this wouldn’t be the first move that Prismajic has successfully made. Here’s hoping that it lands on its furry Yeti-feet (you’ll understand that reference if you were one of the lucky hundreds of thousands of people who wandered through its dreamlike landscape), and soon, in a new and larger location. And don’t forget to include the Night Owl speakeasy bar, too — it’s a place about which a lot of patrons gave a tipsy hoot.

After closing its Aurora shop, The Archive, in 2024, Vinegar Syndrome spent nearly a year searching for a new home, which left manager Theresa Mercado worried that Denver’s cult-film faithful might drift away. Instead, they showed up early and lined up outside when the boutique Blu-ray label reopened last summer at Lamar Station Plaza near Casa Bonita. The Lakewood shop keeps the same obsessive spirit that made The Archive beloved: shelves packed with boutique labels, obscure horror and exploitation titles, rare VHS and laserdiscs, plus Vinegar Syndrome’s own meticulously restored releases. With filmmaker signings and collector events, Denver’s weird-movie clubhouse has not only survived but thrived since its move across town.

Shaved ice, Spam musubi, live performances and a streetful of artisan vendors — what more could you need? Marking 52 years this year, the Denver Cherry Blossom Festival, or Sakura Matsuri, is a tradition every summer at Sakura Square, which serves as both a commercial development and a cultural hub for the Mile High City’s Japanese-American community. The festival is the Tri-State Denver Buddhist Temple’s main fundraiser, and is typically attended by an estimated 25-30,000 people. “It’s just a way for us to appreciate and cherish the culture we have, but also to share it with other people,” says Sakura Foundation executive director Stacey Shigaya.

Every year, gamers in Denver and the Rocky Mountain West gather at GhengisCon to play, play, play. Dozens upon dozens of dice-throwing opportunities, all organized for a long weekend of nothing but interactive games: role-playing, war simulations, superheroes, sci-fi, and a lot more. But that’s not all. Organizer Andre’a Arnold is also putting together an increasingly awesome slate of special guests, headlined in February by YouTube gamer sensation Ginny Di, who was joined by D&D royalty Luke Gygax, Dwarvenforge Stefan Pokorny, designer and author Michael Stackpole, and too many others to list. Can’t wait for 2027 to check it out? You’ve made your luck check: Their other convention, Tacticon, is coming up later this year.

In a country that feels increasingly devoid of free community-building opportunities, Warm Cookies of the Revolution continues to make civics fun and informative at its public events. From live dancing at an event focused on the privatization of Denver schools to creating culturally familiar civic spaces out of suburban homes for immigrant communities, Warm Cookies is unfaltering in its creativity and enthusiasm for cultivating civic health in fresh and fun ways. The projects and events that the club hosts can be unpredictable due to their originality, but one thing’s for sure: There will be cookies.

Held in the heat of midsummer, the Cherry Creek Arts Festival is one of the most competitive arts festivals in the United States, last year receiving more than 2,000 applicants for its 200 spots. Around 150,000 visitors attend the free festival every year to look at and buy the art from local and national artists, who work in a variety of mediums — from oil paintings to robot statues made from found objects. And at the end of last year, the festival was again named one of the best festivals in the world by the International Festivals and Events Association. Hopefully, a Westword Best Of is just as high an honor.

Last year, Denver-based nonprofit Athena Project put on a virtual exhibition, Body // Power. The show featured the work of more than thirty women and nonbinary artists from across the U.S., commenting on the disappearing rights of women’s and marginalized people’s bodies and asserting their agency and power through art. Athena Project utilized technology to make the show more accessible and held the show virtually. Viewers could move through a digital gallery — three rooms connected by a hallway — and view works hanging on the walls one by one. Clicking on the art piece gave viewers more information about the art and artist.

Founded in 2025 by artist Bala Thiagarajan, the Colorado South Asian Artists Group (C-SAAG) brings together creatives whose roots span India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and beyond. What started as a small gathering of six artists quickly grew into a statewide network connected through regular meetups and an active WhatsApp group. The collective’s first public exhibition, Roots & Routes: Where Cultural Roots Meet Creative Journeys, debuted in Englewood with work from 22 artists across painting, photography, ceramics and sculpture. By embracing the full diversity of the South Asian diaspora, C-SAAG is carving out long-overdue visibility for these voices in Colorado’s art scene.

The Breckenridge International Festival of Arts has celebrated nature through music, dance, theater and visual art since the summer of 2015. Its most recent ten-day event attracted talent from around the world, including Swiss-Italian artist Joe Scolari. He famously crafts whimsical outdoor marble runs using the landscape’s natural contours and organic materials, such as rocks and hollowed-out branches. Pack a golf ball-sized globe when visiting the two interactive courses, titled Ciügaboc, that are now permanently installed near downtown Breckenridge. One is set a quarter-mile west of the Illinois Creek trailhead (which also leads to Isak Heartstone, the iconic wooden troll sculpture), while another lies at the Littleton Mountain summit.

Southern Colorado artists Emilie Odeile and Ken Chapin spent six months re-creating the Great Green Room from Goodnight Moon entirely in yarn. The room-sized installation uses roughly 152 miles of yarn and nearly six million stitches to replicate Clement Hurd’s iconic illustrations down to the smallest details, from the furniture to the mischievous little mouse hidden throughout the scene. The work, which was first unveiled in 2023 at Trinidad’s Space to Create and received over 10,000 visitors, made its way to the metro area last year, inviting audiences to literally step inside the classic bedtime story. Nostalgia hits hard: Adults tear up, kids try to grab the mouse, and everyone wants to touch the yarn.

Artist Zaida Sever loves her snakes — and she loves educating people about them. We met Sever last fall at Cherry Creek Trail Wall Fest, where she was painting a mural of her ball python, Ramen, in a bowl of ramen. Sever started Denver Art Noodle last year, a project that combines her two passions of snakes and art through visual media and events. “I wanted to see people get scared and overcome it; I wanted to see people get excited and do something they don’t normally get to do,” Sever says.

Last summer, a giant sculpture of a rhino was erected in RiNo as part of the Denargo Market project, a multiphase, mixed-use redevelopment led by joint venture partners Golub & Company and Formativ that spans seventeen acres of the South Platte riverfront northeast of downtown Denver. The sculpture, designed by Sasaki and fabricated by local companies JunoWorks and Eldorado Walls, with structural engineering by Craft Engineering Studio, is more than thirty feet tall and 22,000 pounds — and it’s climbable for people of all ages and skill levels. Residents voted to name the structure “Rhingo.”

Last fall, MSU Denver unveiled “Tribute to the Westside,” a piece that pays homage to the culture of Denver’s Westside neighborhood, telling stories of resilience, displacement and artistic presence. The massive mural in the Art District on Santa Fe depicts Chicano and Indigenous imagery, including a boxer, horses and a child in a headdress. The project was a collaboration between students, high school interns, faculty and other members of the community, and it was designed by Mid-Brow Collective. It’s a colorful and meaningful example of what a community can do when it comes together.

Brightflight, the drone company behind Denver’s annual July 3 Indy Eve drone show, various college halftime shows and Visit Denver’s Mile High Holidays drone show, was selected for an even bigger project this year. In honor of Colorado’s 150th birthday, Brightflight is creating more than forty unique drone shows for events across the state in 2026 to tell the story of Colorado and honor each city or town hosting the shows. “We want people to be proud they live in Colorado, that they’re from Colorado,” Brightflight owner Tom Dolan says. “We want people to have that warm and fuzzy feeling that this is their hometown.”

Jake Brasch’s The Reservoir arrived last January with rare emotional precision. The plot revolves around a young gay man struggling with addiction who returns home to Denver, where he reconnects with his grandparents and attempts to rebuild his life. Brasch balances humor, vulnerability and intergenerational wisdom with striking confidence for a new work. In a theater landscape crowded with adaptations and revivals, The Reservoir stands out for its compassionate portrait of recovery, family and the messy process of becoming an adult. The play recently finished its initial Off-Broadway run at the Atlantic Theatre Company, and if there is any justice in the world, it will have a long life in the regional theater space.

Lucas Hnath’s eerie drama The Thin Place asks audiences to consider what might lie just beyond the edges of reality. Under the expert direction of Jessica Robblee, the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company expertly embraced that question in its deeply unsettling production. The play was performed at both The Savoy Denver and Boulder’s Dairy Art Center, and BETC’s staging, led by Madison Taylor’s chilling performance, relied on the audience’s imagination, allowing silence, shadow and suggestion to carry as much weight as dialogue. The effect is a theatrical séance that leaves you wondering if you’ve seen the other side or just the limits of your perception.

Theatermakers in Colorado frequently talk about building a pipeline for new musicals. Emy McGuire simply went out and wrote one. The Legend of Anne Bonny blends folk-inflected music, feminist swagger and maritime mythmaking into a bold new musical about the infamous Irish pirate. Rather than treating Bonny as a historical footnote, McGuire turns her into a larger-than-life hero navigating a world that underestimated her at every turn. With memorable songs and a rebellious spirit, The Legend of Anne Bonny is an epic, scrappy musical that shows how original work can thrive outside of Broadway development machines.

Colorado history rarely gets the hip-hop treatment, but Emancipation Theater Company isn’t interested in doing things the conventional way. Jedidiah Blackstone: Origin Story of an Alter Ego & the Untold Tales from the Darkside of the West fuses rap, spoken word and theatrical storytelling to explore overlooked chapters of Black history in the American West. Jeff Campbell’s performance as modern cowboy poet Jedidiah Blackstone provides an explosive history lesson about Black people’s contributions to the development of Central City, full of rhythm and urgency. Jedidiah Blackstone proves that historical storytelling doesn’t have to be dusty or distant; it can be relevant, refreshing and even have a sick beat.

Award-winning author and fiction professor up at CSU Nina McConigley brought her acclaimed short story collection Cowboys and East Indians to the DCPA stage for a six-week run from mid-January to March 1 — a rare feat for any book of short fiction. But McConigley’s book about the Sen family’s experiences in moving from India to Wyoming — and all the culture shock it brings—was something to behold. It was a rare exploration of rural immigrant experiences in the American West, examining questions of identity, place, family, and community — not to mention another victory for the DCPA and its support of local narratives of quality.

Bowls With the Bard turned Shakespeare’s tangled romantic comedy into a glittery, cannabis-infused disco party with Stoned Twelfth Night. Staged inside Denver’s Coffee Joint consumption lounge (now a psilocybin event space), the show invited audiences to vape or snack on edibles while performers navigated Illyria as a stoner utopia of radical acceptance. Director Paige Flores-Medrano infused the production with dance breaks, goofy smoke moments and a proudly queer sensibility that reframed Viola/Cesario’s disguise as a gender journey rather than a comic trick. With nonbinary performers reshaping the story’s relationships and a haze of joyful chaos hanging in the air, Shakespeare felt less like homework and more like a communal celebration.

The Catamounts turned Westminster’s historic DeSpain Schoolhouse into a playful haunted playground with A Town Called Harris. Audience members entered the fictional town of Harris by selecting old-fashioned professions before following actors through the schoolhouse as a historic pageant devolved into ghostly chaos. Jessica Austgen’s witty script and Adeline Mann’s quick direction kept the investigation moving as small groups cycled through five “haunting” sites in the century-old building. A Town Called Harris’ highly meta-theatrical ghost hunt melded local history, comedy and site-specific ingenuity to create one of the year’s most inventive immersive experiences.

In 2025, Rabbit Hole Recreation Services introduced Colorado to Jubensha with Studio Five, the country’s first dedicated venue for the wildly popular Chinese storytelling game. Known in China as “script murder,” Jubensha drops players into character-driven mysteries where “Jubenturers” read detailed backstories, interrogate one another and piece together clues over several hours. Rabbit Hole elevates the format beyond tabletop roleplay by staging the games inside custom-built “Scene Machine” environments with lighting effects, props and surround sound. The launch titles range from Tree Rings, a moody supernatural mystery set in a haunted village, to the Knives Out-style comedy Snow Manor, transforming a global gaming phenomenon into a fully immersive storytelling experience.

Instead of sending that embarrassing text to your ex, why not read it aloud on stage to a room full of strangers? That’s the general premise of the Unsent show. A few times a year, around a hundred people gather at the Town Hall Collaborative to share the messages, journal entries and poems that they couldn’t bear to reveal until now. With theme nights ranging from death to sex, the event offers attendees cathartic relief and a genuine sense of community. Even if you’re not ready to take the stage yourself, it’s nice to listen and realize you’re not so alone.

Ren Q. Dawe, a trans Boulder comedian, decided to launch Here to Pee after being harassed in a bathroom upon returning home from a national comedy tour. Dawe transformed that experience into a sharp comedic premise: What if trans comedians toured the country simply insisting on their right to exist (and pee) everywhere? The tour kicked off March 1 at Boulder’s Junkyard Social Club and headed to all fifty states with a rotating lineup of mostly trans comics, including Juno Men, Mx. Dahlia Belle and Carlos Kareem Windham. The tour raised funds for grassroots LGBTQ+ organizations while bringing trans joy and fearless punchlines to audiences from Alaska to Wyoming and beyond.

Rebeca Trejo riffs on her growing up in Puerto Rico with Venezuelan roots and life as a young Latina mom in Denver, and she’s performed her stand-up comedy for the Netflix Is a Joke and the High Plains Comedy festivals. Now she’s helping other Spanish-speaking stand-up comedians in Denver find success through her Me Meo Comedy Show, a lineup of local comics with roots from Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia, among others, as well as similar events, like the Latina Comedy Night. Like Trejo, the comedians she recruits joke about life in Denver, Aurora or Thornton with Spanish material that really hits the funny bone for the local metro area’s Latin diaspora.

Conspiracy Circus begins behind the counter of the Learned Lemur, where guests slip through a hidden door and climb a narrow staircase into a secret carnival world above the Colfax oddities shop. Upstairs, the venue’s Carriage House — once a pony stable — transforms into a tiny midway lined with carnival games, UFO murals and illustrated placards celebrating the evening’s performers. Audience members sit just feet from acts that might include fire-breathing stripteases, nose-spike hammering, strongman stunts or emcee Babyface Reid reclining on a bed of nails while a cinder block is smashed across his chest. Weird, in your face and gleefully unhinged, Conspiracy Circus keeps the dying art of the American sideshow gloriously alive.

Every Sunday from 6 to 9 p.m., a dirt road in North Boulder leads to one of the city’s most joyful gatherings. Inside the Boulder Circus Center, the Boulder Juggling Club hosts a weekly open jam where beginners practicing their first three-ball cascade share the floor with veteran club-passers chasing advanced tricks. The group, founded nearly two decades ago, is famously welcoming; showing up is the only requirement. That same spirit powers the annual Boulder Juggling Festival, which fills venues across Boulder each July with workshops, open gyms, juggling games and a public showcase. Whether you’re mastering three balls or attempting something far more ambitious, Boulder’s juggling community always has room for one more throw.

For years, Aurora’s theatermakers, dancers and musicians have struggled to find rehearsal rooms that weren’t overpriced, overbooked or designed for something else entirely. 1400 Dallas Arts fixes that problem. Operating under the mission of The People’s Building, the former police station has been renovated into a city-owned rehearsal hub with mirrored dance studios, smaller rooms for music lessons and play readings, and even a self-tape studio for actors. Hourly rentals start around $20, intentionally kept low so independent artists can afford to use it. 1400 Dallas Arts fills a critical gap in the metro area by providing performers with the physical space they require to experiment, rehearse and bring new projects to life.

In an era dominated by corporate multiplex chains, Denver’s Sie FilmCenter remains gloriously independent. Operated by Denver Film, the theater champions international cinema, documentaries and adventurous new releases that might never appear in a typical movie theater. It’s also the beating heart of the city’s film culture, hosting the Denver Film Festival, filmmaker Q&As and community screenings throughout the year. Plus, the Sie has the best damn popcorn in the state, as well as friendly staff who are always eager to talk about movies. For cinephiles who still believe film is an art form worth celebrating collectively, the Sie FilmCenter is indispensable.

When the folks behind the Sundance Film Festival, founded by actor Robert Redford in 1978, announced that they were looking to move the famed showcase for independent cinema from its longtime home in Utah, their options were plentiful. But from the beginning, Boulder had a leg up, thanks in part to Redford’s history as a CU Boulder student — and its winning bid sent a jolt of excitement through the Colorado film community. Much needs to be done prior to Sundance’s Boulder debut in January 2027, but the selection has already supercharged the state’s movie industry. We can’t wait for the curtains to open.

Kahane Corn Cooperman’s Creede U.S.A. captures the unlikely coexistence that defines one of Colorado’s strangest small towns. Creede, with a population of around 300, is home to miners, ranchers and artists who share a single main street, which is anchored by Creede Repertory Theatre, the company that helped reinvent the former silver boomtown in the 1960s. Cooperman patiently follows the town through two years of school board debates, Pride celebrations, mining contests and theater seasons. Arguments get heated, compromises disappoint, and neighbors still show up with cake afterward. It’s a deeply moving documentary about the messy and tenaciously human work that goes into small-town democracy.

The Colorado Environmental Film Festival presents local and international documentaries annually about countless topics relating to climate change, wildlife and Colorado farmlands. Recent local films have taught their audiences about water management and ecological restoration on the Colorado River, and the growing incorporation of solar fields in local farms and ranches. Others focus more on laughs by satirizing national headlines about plastic straws or poking fun at plants’ abilities to communicate with us. Not a fan of theaters? Each year’s presented films are also available for online purchase for a week after the festival closes its doors.

The Denver Film Festival has been around as long as Sundance; both launched in 1978. But while Sundance is all about independent cinema, DFF takes a broader view, incorporating everything from student films to Academy Award wannabes. Indeed, the event is among the more important regional festivals when it comes to Oscar campaigning, which is why so many celebrities show up for screenings. Emma Stone dropped by just prior to taking home her first statuette for La La Land, and more recent honorees have included 2026 supporting actor nominee Delroy Lindo, along with director Gus Van Sant, and actors Lucy Liu and Niecy Nash-Betts. Clearly, the Denver Film Festival is ready for its closeup.

The thirteenth edition of the Denver Silent Film Festival will be lucky for cineastes with a taste for productions from the era before Hollywood learned to talk. This year’s edition at the Sie FilmCenter begins on April 10 with 1924’s The Thief of Bagdad, starring the pride of Denver East High School, Douglas Fairbanks, and concludes on April 12 with the rare opportunity to see 1929’s Queen Kelly, a fascinating disaster lensed by Erich Von Stroheim and starring Gloria Swanson, with an audience. As an added bonus, musical luminaries will provide live accompaniment to the flicks. Expect the sound of the silents to be as captivating as the action on screen.

Denver Indigenous author Erika T. Wurth has been successfully mining the Mile High City’s past for narrative nuggets of gold for years now, and her latest novel, a story of the supernatural and the spirit world, is set at no less than the local landmark Brown Palace Hotel. Wurth, who cut her teeth on writing about her own roots in the Chickasaw, Cherokee and Mexican Apache Nations, has expanded into some of Denver’s favorite haunts — including the real ghost story of socialite Louise Hill who lived in room 904 for fifteen years, from 1940 to 1955 … and some say never left. Want to recognize your own city in a book that explores horror? Dangerous, maybe, but thrilling, too.

Denver comedian Josh Blue spent two decades writing Something to Stare At, dictating stories to five different scribes before rewriting the entire manuscript to unify its voice. The memoir traces Blue’s improbable path from an emergency birth in Cameroon to representing the U.S. in Paralympic soccer and eventually winning Last Comic Standing in 2006. Fans who know him from stand-up or America’s Got Talent will appreciate the humor, but the book digs deeper into the life behind the punchlines. Blue rejects easy inspiration stories, instead providing a raw, funny and unmistakably personal account of how he built a career by telling the truth about his wild life.

Though the cover of Melissa Strong’s debut memoir pictures her gripping tightly to sandstone, Climbing Through: A Courageous Story of Grit, Healing and Second Chances is not a story about bouldering. While she was a sponsored athlete, her global climbing excursions were also funded by hospitality work. However, in the midst of opening her acclaimed Estes Park restaurant Bird & Jim, she suffered a near-fatal electrocution accident, causing her to lose parts of several fingers. Strong’s book chronicles her grueling physical and emotional recovery, which ultimately allowed her to climb again. But what will truly inspire readers is her abundant gratitude through it all, both for her community and a new lease on life.

In 2007, Lynn Blake was riding high. She was 27, it was Valentine’s Day, she’d just returned from a whirlwind honeymoon, and she was starting a new job in Vail. And then came the sudden and completely unexpected cardiac arrest that utterly redirected her life. Blake’s book Heart of the Matter details her near-death experience, and is both a memoir and an inspirational how-to on living one’s life purposefully and accepting the role anxiety plays while working through it successfully. Just like the Colorado mountains in which Blake’s story takes place, all of our lives have hand climbs, distant precipices, and shadowed valleys. This book is all about how to thrive throughout the trip.

Colorado didn’t have an anthology of poetry from all of the state’s poets laureate until recently. Begin Where You Are was started by social entrepreneur Turner Wyatt, who collaborated on the book with modern poets laureate Mary Crow, David Mason, Joe Hutchison, Bobby LeFebre, Andrea Gibson, and Gibson’s friend, Julia Seldin. The book launched in December, featuring poetry from all ten of Colorado’s poets laureate, including some previously unpublished poetry. Proceeds from the book will support Crisosto Apache, who was announced as the state’s eleventh poet laureate earlier this year, in their travels to more rural and underserved areas around the state.

In a world in which toxic masculinity shouts its way off our various screens — and comes from our national leadership, no less — it does the heart some good to read a Denver poet address that point of view with a critical eye, and no small amount of grace. Seth Brady Tucker, who teaches at the Colorado School of Mines and Lighthouse Writers Workshop, doesn’t vilify American men in his new collection The Cruelty Virtues, but he does examine it from the outside in and the inside out. “I’m impatient for empathy not to be seen as a sin,” he told us in a 2026 interview in honor of the new collection’s launch. If you relate to that statement, this book will be a balm.

Justin Renteria, who sometimes goes by the art name el Justo, is both a comic creator and an illustrator of some notability, working with The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, WIRED, Mother Jones, and many more. (He’s also done some artwork in the past for us here at Westword.) Additionally, in the last few years, he’s been hard at work in the graphic novel medium with That Rufus Karl is One Bad Hombre, the story of a retired assassin pulled out of a peaceful retirement from the fast food industry by the pressures of his past. With equal parts hilarity and brutality, this story shines, as does the art that depicts it. Find it at Mutiny Comics, Time Warp in Boulder, or ask your local shop to carry it. You’ll be a fan of this bad hombre.

No zine is too weird for the Zine Library, a volunteer-run room in the Denver Public Library’s Bob Ragland branch that houses shelves of around 20,000 zines — all donated and all available for checkout on Saturdays when the DZL is open. One of the strangest zines DZL volunteer Vera Benschop recalls receiving is Rock Book, an envelope full of rocks. But the truth is, a zine can be anything. “Nobody can tell you what to write, nobody can tell you what you can publish, they can’t tell you your opinion’s wrong,” Benschop says.

Throughout a year filled with national alarm regarding the state of the free press under the Trump Administration, no one has covered the growing news deserts, mass layoffs and rare victories of Colorado journalism in 2025 more thoroughly than educator and journalist Corey Hutchins. Providing weekly reportage on his Substack page Inside the News in Colorado, Hutchins has discussed the cancellation of Life On Capitol Hill, the conservative broadcast giant Sinclair’s recent attempt to acquire KMGH Denver7, and much more. Those concerned about the fate of Colorado outlets and the state’s shifting media landscape owe it to themselves to subscribe to this free newsletter.