Tony Hillerman, Gretel Ehrlich, William Kittredge, N. Scott Momaday and Luis Alberto Urrea will highlight the 30th annual Aspen Summer Words Literary Festival through Thursday at the Gant Hotel in Aspen.
The festival, sponsored by the Aspen Writers’ Foundation, offers author readings, writing workshops and publishing panels.
Other authors scheduled to appear include Denise Chavez, Annick Smith, Stewart Udall, Amy Bloom, Kurt Brown, Ron Carlson, Ted Conover, Gary Ferguson, Laura Fraser, Pam Houston, Page Lambert, Patricia Limerick, Christopher Merrill and Luis Torres.
Featured events will include:
Writing in Place, 7 p.m. Monday- Ehrlich, Smith and Kittredge, all of whom are known for writing about the West’s open space, will discuss geography’s effect on their writing. The discussion will be followed by a screening of the movie “A River Runs Through It.”
La Frontera, 7 p.m. Tuesday- Chavez, Urrea and Conover will discuss border issues with Mexico that have inspired their writing.
Defenders of the West, 7 p.m. Wednesday- Hillerman and Udall both have made causes near and dear to Westerners their lives’ work.
In the Writers’ Room, festival faculty members will give readings and lead discussion each day: Monday, fiction, with Bloom and Carlson; Tuesday, poetry, with Brown and Merrill; Wednesday, freelancing, with Ferguson and Fraser; and Thursday, telling a story, with Houston and Lambert.
Panel discussions will include talks on How to Get Ink with agents and editors of William Morris agency, Vanity Fair and HarperCollins; The New West, with Udall, Limerick, Ferguson and Torres; and Crossing Genres, with Ehrlich, Momaday and Urrea.
A concurrent writing retreat is also offered during the morning hours of the festival. Each course features hands-on instruction.
The Foundation also will present a “Campfire Stories” benefit dinner at the Maroon Bells Lodge at T-Lazy-7, featuring cocktails, barbecue, live music and storytelling by authors in the festival.
A festival pass is $200 and single tickets are $15 to $20. Tickets are available through aspenwriters.org, through the Wheeler Box Office at 970-920-5770 or at the door.
