Book It: The Five Best Literary Events This Week

Denver’s literary scene marches into mid-July with lines from Lyons, some high-velocity vehicular violence, a Boulder writer coming home again, a book about bookshops hosted by a bookstore, and the 2018 Youth One Book One Denver author entertaining and inspiring, middle-grade style. It’s a pretty wide range of attractions, something for everyone in the family.

Eight Poets Read 80 Years of Poems about Small Towns
Tuesday, July 10, 6:30 p.m.
Lyons Redstone Museum
340 High Street, Lyons
Free
Ease on up the road to Lyons to enjoy eight published poets from the Lyons area, reading from their own poems as well as the work of past local poets, all focused on a love for the small-town life. It’s a night hosted by the Lyons Redstone Museum that promises to be a “delightful and once-in-a-lifetime” event honoring the lyric and language of Lyons.

Mario Acevedo and Josh Viola, Blood & Gasoline
Tuesday, July 10, 7 p.m.
Tattered Cover
2526 East Colfax Avenue
Free
Blood & Gasoline: High-Octane, High-Velocity Action is a collection of seventeen stories of heroes and anti-heroes on journeys of desperation: white knuckles on steering wheels and hearts pounding to the staccato beat of magnum hollow-point bullets slamming against flesh and steel. Editor Mario Acevedo and contributor Josh Viola ankle it into the Tattered Cover, where they’ll flap their gums and sign some books. Don’t miss it: This is a book that’s hitting on all eight.
Victor Pearn, Light Across the Alley and Dream Season
Tuesday, July 10, 7:30 p.m.
Boulder Bookstore
1107 Pearl Street, Boulder
$5
University of Colorado Boulder alumnus Victor Pearn returns to Boulder to read from and sign his two newest books. Light Across the Alley is the fictional story of a CU freshman who experiences visions on her way to becoming a matchmaker. Dream Season recounts the inspiring true story of Pearn’s brother and his winning basketball season in small-town Illinois back in 1957.

Amy Meyerson, The Bookshop of Yesterdays
Wednesday, July 11, 7 p.m.
Tattered Cover
2526 East Colfax Avenu
Free
Amy Meyerson brings her debut novel, The Bookshop of Yesterdays, to the Tattered Cover for a reading and signing. Meyerson’s novel is the story of a woman who grew up in her uncle’s bookstore, solving the scavenger hunts he’d design for her one after the other…until a family falling-out took him out of her life. Upon his death some years later, she finds herself the sudden owner of her uncle’s bookstore, which is both on the brink of bankruptcy and offering her one last scavenger hunt full of love, family, and the discovery of a hidden past.

Dusti Bowling, Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus
Friday, July 13, 5 p.m.
BookBar
4280 Tennyson Street
Free
BookBar welcomes Arizona author Dusti Bowling, reading and signing her 2018 Youth One Book One Denver winner Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus. The novel tells the story of Aven Green, who was born without arms and with a sense of humor to deal with all the challenges her disability — and life in general — brings. Publisher’s Weekly calls the book “sensitive and funny…openhearted and empathetic.” Bowling will also be leading BookGirl, a mother-daughter book club, on Saturday morning at 10:30.

Do you have an event you'd like us to include in one of our lists? Send the details to [email protected].