Poetry is big in Denver literary circles this week, as 100 Thousand Poets for Change takes over the city with a series of weekend events and the local slam community sends off its 2015 contender for the Individual World Poetry Slam. And then there’s also a side-trip to literary Iceland…
John Lahr wants us to see what’s behind the curtain. The eminent theater critic, who retired recently after covering the beat for the the New Yorker magazine for 21 years, produces the most probing, original and well-written work on performance, performers and the theater today. His most recent collection of profiles…
Near-native Josh Viola, award-winning author of The Bane of Yoto, was frustrated by the commercialization of publishing — so frustrated that he set out to change the way authors are treated by launching Hex Publishers, a local indie press putting out mainstream-quality literature. Now, with the help of co-founder and…
Ready to replenish that book pile on your nightstand? Revisit a favorite mystery series, get inside the head of an autistic man or brush up on your Star Wars lore in anticipation of the December release of Star Wars: Episode VII at book signings this week in Denver. Margaret Coel,…
In 2012, the year of the first Denver Comic Con, Pop Culture Classroom released its Storytelling Through Comics curriculum to Denver Public Schools. And for the past three years, proceeds from Denver Comic Con have funded both staffing and supplies for the Classroom, a local nonprofit founded in 2010 (as…
As a kid, Bob Baron would read all the cartoons he could find in the newspapers on the coffee table in the family room. His dad was a journalist, and there were always a few lying around. With the speed of the Flash, he’d consume Walt Kelly’s satirical strip “Pogo,”…
This is a week for beginnings and endings: The Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers will host a panel on how to write and publish a book, while BMoCA’s Biennial-affiliated Line Break poetry series will say so long after seven poetic weeks. And in between, author Paul Levitt will talk about his…
“Poetry can be dangerous,” said Jalâl ad-Dîn Rûmî, “especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it.” But poetry can also be provocative, entertaining and amazing, as three literary events this week will show. Anne Waldman, Eleni Sikelianos and Roger Green Syntax…
Of all starving artists, poets may be the most starving. A challenging art form that demands a type of time and engagement most people just aren’t willing to give, poetry tends to get sidelined even in communities dedicated to nurturing challenging art that demands time and engagement, relegated instead to…
Forgiveness gets a bad rap: It’s seen as akin to giving in, backing down, capitulation. In reality, the opposite is true, says Megan Feldman Bettencourt in her book Triumph of the Heart: Forgiveness in an Unforgiving World: Forgiveness is hard. That, the Denver-based author says, is the real reason we…
Some of the best books tell true stories of hardship overcome: Bob Yehling’s Just Add Water follows the incredible career of Clay Marzo, a world-class surfer who just happens to have Asperger’s syndrome; while Megan Feldman Bettencourt’s Triumph of the Heart: Forgiveness in an Unforgiving World, shows how a man’s forgiveness…
Long periods of silence — sometimes up to two hours — pervade Denver-based author Bob Yehling’s interview tapes with world-champion surfer Clay Marzo. Marzo doesn’t do a lot of talking. Marzo has Asperger’s, a fact that made Just Add Water, Yehling’s biography of the surfer, necessary and vital. But it…
The University of Denver’s graduate creative writing program is getting ready to pump out a fire-hose of new novels over the next couple of months — well, at least two. DU Director of Creative Writing (and one of our 100 Colorado Creatives) Selah Saterstrom’s much-anticipated, Katrina-inspired SLAB — which Square Product…
Someone said poetry is the art of juxtaposition, and this work week’s book-ended (get it?) readings offer a convenient study: A nineteenth-century lawman sets out to take back his tarnished reputation from the bandit who framed him and ends up falling in love; meanwhile, in postmodern Brooklyn, a young drone…
Denver author Danica Favorite estimates she wrote between 15 and 20 novels before she got the first one published — so many, at any rate, she can’t even recall the exact number. Romance novels tend to draw snickers from the literary crowd, but it’s hard to think of a “literary” writer…
Is it any coincidence that Bridget Foley’s childhood home of Littleton provides the setting for Hugo & Rose, her debut novel of dreams, obsession and suburban ennui? Childhood homes tend to exert a powerful influence on the subconscious, and the subconscious is a powerful force in Hugo & Rose, which…
Author appearances this week bring a dark, surreal dream-weirdness in convenient contrast to our sunny, deep-summer vibe. In Bridget Foley’s Hugo & Rose, a dream-cum-reality comes with obsession and threat, while Josiah Hesse’s Carnality: Dancing on Red Lake follows the subconscious slow leak of a lost man’s childhood trauma. But for…
A pastor performing a baptism drops the mic in the baptismal pool, electrocuting himself and the baptismal candidate, and things pretty much go downhill from there. That’s the basic set-up of Denver author Tiffany Quay Tyson’s Three Rivers, which follows the parallel narratives of three characters as a flood wrecks their…
As the title implies, Nancy Stohlman’s The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories is a weird-ass book. Aside from including copious fun facts about foxes and the story of a man whose wife is turning into a piano, it’s also presented in a format that, while still unusual, is gaining literary…
One night just before college graduation, Amy Butcher’s close friend Kevin met her for a drink and walked her home. It was just a one-block walk on a warm night in sleepy Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, but he insisted, and she let him see her to her door. Then he went home…
Counterpath Press was ousted from its longtime home near the Mercury Cafe over the winter, and since then the MasterMind winner has been seeking out new ways to reach the public while also searching for a new home. One temporary solution: Counterpath landed a booth at City Park Jazz, and…
In the current Westword cover story, artist Lauri Lynnxe Murphy (who writes about her Mayday Experiment here every Tuesday) talks about the changing area where she lives, the Whittier neighborhood, and describes how a class of students from Manual High School have been involved with the Gentrification Project, studying the…
