Author Antonya Nelson on LitFest, buying books and Funny Once

Paint the town read! As LitFest 2014 continues at Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop, we caught up with award-winning author Antonya Nelson, who’ll be teaching two classes this week and participate in a free reading on Thursday, June 19. Nelson teaches creative writing at the University of Houston and is the author…

Photos: The costumes of Denver Comic Con

More than 85,000 people walked through the aisles of the Denver Comic Con over the weekend, according to the folks behind the rapidly growing convention, and a lot of them were in costume. Con cosplay, after all, is an art unto itself, featuring hand-built costumery that can sometimes take months…

CU Denver Digital Creation Lab shows off at Denver Comic Con

There were plenty of Spider Men, and Women, at Denver Comic Con this year, but there was only one Spider, a machine that allows users to create digital sculptures with ZBrush, industry-standard animation software. The Digital Animation Center (DAC) from the University of Colorado Denver has set up the Spider…

Greg Weisman on his new book, and his Comic con experience

Although he is known mostly as the co-creator of the animated series, “Gargoyles,” Greg Weisman has taken on a new challenge: young adult fiction. Spirits of Ash and Foam, the second in his growing series, officially comes out July 8, and the author was at Denver Comic Con over the…

3 things to do for free in Denver this week, June 16-19

Summer is in full swing and you’re probably saving up your cash to party with 2 Chainz this weekend at the Westword Music Showcase. So if you want to have a good time this week without burning a hole in your wallet, here’s a few things to try. Celebrate sports,…

Photos: Flyboys and jitterbugging dames at the 1940s WWII Era Ball

The annual 1940s WWII Era Ball goes back in time right down to every last retro detail, with re-enactor appearances by ’40s celebrities, swinging to big band music and some cherry examples of WWII aircraft for a backdrop at the Boulder Airport. Photographer Jake Shane was there on Saturday night…

TEDx Mile High premieres tomorrow with sixteen regional speakers

TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design brings sixteen local leaders innovators and entrepreneurs to Ellie Caulkins Opera House tomorrow for an independently organized TEDx Mile High event. The theme is “Emergence” — of new ideas, thinking and technology — which will be threaded through the presentations. Educators, musicians,…

Gary Reilly’s posthumous pre-war novel shows some life

We’ve written before about the strange career of Denver cabbie and secret author Gary Reilly, who wrote more than two dozen novels over decades but never tried to publish any of them before his death from cancer in 2011, at the age of 61. That long silence is now being…

Gallery Sketches: Three shows for the weekend of June 13-15

It’s Friday the thirteenth, but that’s no reason to stay home: Tonight and in the days to come, Friday Flash, Denver Comic Con and OhHeckYeah will transform downtown into a wham! pow! high-tech and pop-culture art paradise, while the otherworldly, monumental glass shapes of Chihuly will wow the crowds at…

How to make a geek: Nurture nerdiness

It doesn’t take a geek to raise a geek, but it sure helps. My elder daughter will turn 21 this year, and as she reaches the final gateway to adulthood (woohoo, booze!), it’s safe to say that just as surely as she got my genes — sorry about that terrible…