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Best Free Entertainment

Denver Skatepark

Dude! There is nothing cheaper than free, and free is one concept that truly befits the sport of skateboarding, which, at its best, has no rules -- except, perhaps, those agreed upon by the boarders themselves. And that's exactly how things work at this 60,000-square-foot, city-built facility, which opened to the public in summer 2001 and has been such a hit that it's already expanding. But the fun at Denver Skatepark isn't reserved just for the kids who cram the place: Watching the action can be every bit as entertaining. Grab a soda and hot dog from the cart that always seems to be there when the boarders are, find a spot with good sightlines of the concrete bowls and ramps, and prepare to be amazed -- and amused.

Best Annual Festival -- City

Colorado Performing Arts Festival

A local staple for eleven years, the Colorado Performing Arts Festival offers locals an opportunity to revel in homegrown arts, whether it be music, theater, dance, or something a touch more avant-garde. Visitors to the 2002 event, held in late September at the Denver Performing Arts Complex, saw Aztec dancers, story weavers, poetry jazz and even kids' comedians. But the best part is that there's no charge to discover the talent lingering within our city limits.

Best Annual Festival -- Mountains

Colorado BBQ Challenge

This annual celebration of hickory-smoked meats and serious sauce (sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbecue Society) is the high country's best family-style blowout. Visitors sample 'cue from more than seventy of the nation's best grill and smoker masters, making the array of meat and sauce choices finger-lickin' heaven on earth. Sides of down-home, kid-friendly entertainment, a pancake breakfast and Frisco's homespun setting (and dreamy August weather) add even more sustenance to the event. Need a reason to head to the hills? This is it.

Best Place for Pasty Poets to Get a Tan

Ink!

We know, we know. Poets and sunshine go together like peanut butter and broken glass. But if you ever tire of pouring your heart out from some ratty couch in some dim, cloistered coffee shop, why not give Ink! a try? First off, they brew up some mean java, grinding beans from all over the planet and clearly explaining the flavors du jour so you don't accidentally find yourself with a light French chicory when what you wanted was a dark, powerful Sumatran. Second, when the weather is nice, sidewalk tables have a great view of the new condo complex going up on the other side of Lincoln. You poets love that urban-renewal land-rape stuff, don't you? So grab yourself a sweet, foamy latte, bring along your journal, and catch a few rays while you get a look at the real world going by. Trust us: It beats crying alone in the rain anyday.

Best New Paperback Writer

Erika Krouse

In a time when a collection of short stories is as de rigueur for debut authors as the tell-all publishing roman a clef, Erika Krouse's Come Up and See Me Sometime, a novel in thirteen stories, is refreshingly honest and well crafted. In fact, the Boulder writer's collection of independent young women at loose ends even elicited a positive review from the notoriously persnickety New York Times Review of Books. Krause introduces each story with an epigram from Mae West, the patron saint of tough dames and wicked wit, setting the stage for a hearty mix of both.

Best Novel About a Car Saleswoman

Up
Lisa Jones

Life, love and used-car lots. It's the stuff of vanity presses. In Up, we find Becky Pine, a recent CU graduate, looking for a life (surprise) as she picks up and moves to Los Angeles. A used-car lot takes her in, and Pine gets schooled on love, life and being a newly outed lesbian. It's a quasi-autobiographical story: Lisa Jones (not the Bullet Proof Diva and Village Voice writer) also grew up in Denver, moved to California and sold cars. Why she gave up that glamorous lifestyle to become a Denver copy editor, we can only imagine.

Best Sophomore Non-Fiction Book

Blood Diamonds
Greg Campbell

Greg Campbell knows a bit about adventure and horror. The Fort Collins freelance writer and dad was held at gunpoint and hung with the boys of Soldier of Fortune for his first book, The Road to Kosovo. But he upped the danger quotient in 2002's Blood Diamonds, his investigation into the Sierra Leone diamond trade. In that West African country, Campbell found villagers who'd had their hands chopped off by machetes to ensure their cooperation with the Revolutionary United Front militias; he also witnessed instances of ethnic cleansing and mass rape. In his 282-page book, he explores the role of diamonds in financing the country's civil war and terrorist organizations -- including al-Qaeda -- and their effect on everyday people. Campbell, who has given up the war-correspondent life, is currently posted Stateside, as the founding editor of the Fort Collins Weekly.

Best Young-Adult Book

Crispin: The Cross of Lead
Avi

Our very own single-name artist, Avi, finally won the coveted Newbery Medal this year with his fiftieth adventure novel, Crispin: The Cross of Lead. The Brooklyn-born writer dabbles in many genres, but in Crispin, he combined historical and young adult fiction, portraying the life of a thirteen-year old peasant boy living in fourteenth-century England. The parentless lad is accused of murder and must win his freedom and find his own identity. Maybe he and Avi's next fictional character, Oscar Westerwit, the New York City "full-sized uptown romantic" squirrel, should compare notes.

Best Shelf Life for an Arts Support Group

Rocky Mountain Women's Institute

Women have been trying to balance life and art since before Virginia Woolf longed for a room of her own and Tillie Olsen traded her ironing board for a typewriter. And for the past 27 years, Colorado women looking to fend off the mundane for twelve glorious months have turned to the Rocky Mountain Women's Institute. The well-connected non-profit artists' colony annually grants approximately ten artists, writers and scholars $1,250 stipends, a venue to show their finished work, and the sense of a creative life. What the winners do with their laundry is their business.

Best Book Event

Writers Respond to Readers
Tattered Cover Book Store

There was an international flair to the fifth annual "Writers Respond to Readers" event at the Tattered Cover, where aspiring scribes and readaholics rubbed bookmarks with known authors in a small group setting. Esmeralda Santiago, Francesca Marciano, Lynn Freed and Simon Winchester made up the eclectic writerly circle this year, suggesting that the event is crossing borders, both geographic and literary, as it grows. Authors even go so far as to give sage advice on getting from the page to the publisher.

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