September 11 - 13, 2026
In Beautiful Cedaredge, Colorado
Craig Childs
Craig Childs is a hopeless tracker of wonder, a writer and wanderer living between Telluride and the Utah border. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, The New York Times, and he's been featured on Radiolab and NPR's Morning Edition. He has published more than a dozen books and is a contributing editor at Adventure Journal magazine. Childs writing has been praised by literary critics for vividly chronicling the
geography and history of the American Southwest and has received numerous accolades for his work, including the National Outdoor Book Award in 1998 and the Orion Book Award in 2013, and is a three-time recipient of the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute's Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award (2007, 2012, and 2018).
Bibliography
-
Stone Desert: A Naturalist's Exploration of Canyonlands National Park (1995)
-
Crossing Paths: Uncommon Encounters With Animals in the Wild (1997)
-
Grand Canyon: Time Below the Rim (1999)
-
The Secret Knowledge of Water (2000)
-
Soul of Nowhere (2002)
-
The Desert Cries: A Season of Flash Floods in a Dry Land (2002)
-
The Way Out: A True Story of Survival (2005)
-
House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest (2007)
-
The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild (2007)
-
Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession (2010)
-
Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Future of the Earth (2012)
-
Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America (2018)
-
Virga & Bone: Essays from Dry Places (2019)
-
Tracing Time: Seasons of Rock Art on the Colorado Plateau (2022)
-
The Wild Dark: Finding the Night Sky in the Age of Light (2025)
Kierstin Bridger
Kierstin Bridger is a Colorado writer and teaching instructor who hikes, skis, forages, and lives in the San Juan Mountains near Telluride. She is the author of Demimonde (Lithic Press), the 2017 Women Writing the West's Willa Award. Her full collection is called All Ember (Urban Farmhouse Press). She was the Winner of the Mark Fischer Poetry Prize, the 2015 ACC Writer’s Studio award, the 9th Fortnight Poetry Prize, Second Place
Winner of Charter Oak Award for Best Historical Fiction for her World War I poetry, finalist for the Jeff Marks Poetry Contest, and was an Erbacce Prize for Poetry featured poet for her work on historical poems concerning an early 20th century Telluride prostitute and Jack Dempsey. Bridger was shortlisted for the Manchester Poetry Competition in the UK. She co-hosted Open Bard Poetry for seven years and co-created the podcast Poetry Voice with poet Uche Ogbuchi, but that was before memoir writing consumed her. Find more of her work in Poetry, December, Sugar House Review, Prairie Schooner, Twenty Bellows, and Painted Bride Quarterly. She earned her MFA at Pacific University. www.kierstinbridger.com
Paolo Bacigalupi
Paolo Bacigalupi is an internationally bestselling author of speculative fiction. Hiswriting has appeared in WIRED Magazine, High Country News, Salon.com, OnEarth Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. His short fiction has been anthologized in various “Year’s Best” collections of short science fiction and fantasy, nominated for three Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards,
and won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best science fiction short story of the year. His short story collection PUMP SIX AND OTHER STORIES was a 2008 Locus Award winner for Best Collection and also named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly.
His debut novel THE WINDUP GIRL was named by TIME Magazine as one of the ten best novels of 2009, and also won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards. Internationally, it has won the Seiun Award (Japan), The Ignotus Award (Spain), The Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis (Germany), and the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire (France).
His debut young adult novel, SHIP BREAKER, was a Michael L. Printz Award Winner, and a National Book Award Finalist, and its sequel, THE
DROWNED CITIES, was a 2012 Kirkus Reviews Best of YA Book, A 2012 VOYA Perfect Ten Book, and 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist.
He has also written ZOMBIE BASEBALL BEATDOWN for middle-grade children, about zombies, baseball, and, of all things, meatpacking plants. Another novel for teens, THE DOUBT FACTORY --a contemporary thriller about public relations and the product defense industry--was a both an Edgar Award and Locus Award Finalist.
His novel THE WATER KNIFE is for adults and is a The New York Times Bestseller, a near-future thriller about climate change and drought in the southwestern United States.
His latest book is NAVOLA, an epic fantasy inspired in part by the history and politics of the Italian Renaissance.
He can be found online at windupstories.com.