Author Interviews

The Riven Country of Senga Munro tells the story of Senga Munro, an herbal simpler or healer, who tragically loses her daughter. Most of the story is set in contemporary Northeast Wyoming, where the book's author, Renee Carrier, has lived for more than 32 years. Her novel takes on themes of place, grief and magic realism. Wyoming Public Radio's Catherine Wheeler spoke with Carrier about the importance of the story's setting.

By some accounts, Shakespeare wrote King Lear while he was physical distancing during the plague. But that puts a lot of pressure on anyone trying to do creative work while life is in limbo. So how are Wyoming writers coping with quarantine in 2020? And what can we learn from them about creativity in times of stress?

A book out this month takes an unusual look at the role of the rich in American West, examining it through interviews with the super wealthy living in Teton County.

Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards sat down with author and sociologist Justin Farrell to talk about what he learned while researching Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West.

Writer Alexandra Fuller has penned numerous memoirs about her childhood growing up in war-torn Africa in a family constantly scrambling to find stability, and now Fuller has released a new book called Travel Light, Move Fast. It chronicles both her father's death in a Budapest hospital and the horror of her son's death soon after.

Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards sat down with Fuller at her home in Jackson to talk about how, as she gets older, it's even more necessary to process such trauma by writing about it.

A new novel tells the story of a newly-out transgender Harvard student who has to give everything up when his family and girlfriend reject him. He's broke and looking for a new start—so he heads to Wyoming. Continental Divide is partly based on the real-life experiences of author Alex Myers, who was the first openly transgender student at Harvard. He talked with Wyoming Public Radio's Erin Jones about Wyoming, masculinity, and writing a new kind of fiction.

Winters in Norway usually last from October to late May—sound familiar? Norway also has something called the polar night. For about two months, the sun never rises above the horizon, giving way to some of the longest, darkest winters on earth. But to psychologists surprise, rates of seasonal depression there are extremely low for what one would expect. That's why Stanford Doctoral Student Kari Leibowitz went there to learn more. She told Wyoming Public Radio's Maggie Mullen about what she found in a town called Tromsø.

Taylar Stagner spoke with Tiffany Midge a Lakota author about her career as a poet, author, and a columnist for Indian Country Today. Many of her humorist essays have been compiled in her new book Bury My Heart At Chuck E. Cheese. In this new book, she talks about Native representation in movies, pussy hats, and why humor is important in Indian Country.

In her new book Bury My Heart At Chuck E. Cheese, Tiffany Midge combines popular culture with Indigenous humor. Her collection of essays repackages many stories like Fifty Shades of Grey, The King and I, and Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. I asked the Standing Rock Lakota author why it's important to indigenize popular culture.

After checking herself in to a psychiatric hospital in 2013, writer Terese Mailhot was given a notebook. The result is her award-winning debut memoir Heartberries, which tells the story of her coming-of-age on the Seabird Island First Nation in British Columbia, sometimes-tumultuous family relationships, and adult struggles with mental illness.

"My book is essentially about how to love when you come from a dysfunctional home and you have these long shadows of shame kind of following you everywhere you go," said Mailhot, now a New York Times Bestselling author, in an interview with Wyoming Public Radio's Savannah Maher. During a recent visit to the University of Wyoming, Mailhot talked about the book's success and what Native writers risk and gain when they choose to put their stories out into the word.

The author of a book called A Disability History of the United States is visiting the University of Wyoming this week as part of a celebration of the Wyoming Institute for Disabilities. Kim Nielsen is a professor of Disability Studies at the University of Toledo. She tells Wyoming Public Radio's Bob Beck that her book was not planned.

There was a time when surgeries were a spectacle and one of the most unsanitary events you've ever seen. That's until a Doctor named Joseph Lister changed their ways. Author Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris came to the University of Wyoming this week to discuss her award winning and gory book The Butchering Art.

Lander writer and photographer Sara Wiles has been spending time with families on the Wind River Reservation, and taking their pictures, since she started a job as a social worker there in the 1970's. Her latest book, The Arapaho Way: Continuity and Change on the Wind River Reservation, is a culmination of those 40 plus year relationships. Through essays and photographs, it documents the contemporary history of the Wind River.

David Sedaris is a humorist, author, NPR contributor and soon he'll return to Laramie on Monday, October 28th. Dubbed "the master of satire," Sedaris will spend the evening sharing his hilarious observations on the human condition. In advance of this one-night only event, the author, whose works include Santaland Diaries, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, and his most recent bestseller, Calypso, speaks with Wyoming Public Radio's Cooper McKim.

Bestselling author Craig Johnson has just published his fifteenth book. Land of Wolves continues the adventures of Walt Longmire, a sheriff who solves mysteries in a fictional rural Wyoming county.

Wyoming Public Radio's Erin Jones learned about the ten years of perfecting his first novel, how to maintain relationships when you're an artist, and what it's like now to write a book a year.

Going to school might seem an ordinary rite of passage for children, but in Indian Country, school it has long meant assimilation and discrimination. It's why, back in the 1950's, the two tribes on the Wind River Reservation began the arduous process of starting their own school.

The Internet has changed a lot of things about the way we read, think, and do politics, and it's also changed the creative writing of teens. Spoiler, this is a positive story about kids and the Internet.

Back in 1908, Hawaiian Cowboys competed in the Cheyenne Frontier Days. In the new book, Aloha Rodeo: The Three Cowboys, the World's Greatest Rodeo, and the Hidden History of the American West, co-author David Wolman explores how and why Hawaiian Cowboys came to compete in the rodeo. Wyoming Public Radio's Kamila Kudelska asked Wolman if the two cowboy cultures were different in any way.

In her newest book, Wyoming author Mary Billiter takes the life-altering mental health issues faced by her actual son and turns the experience into a work of fiction. A Divided Mind is a story told through the eyes of Tara and her son Branson as they confront the voices and hallucinations taking over his mind. Billiter consulted her son Kyle Thomas throughout the writing process. Wyoming Public Radio's Tennessee Watson sat down with them to learn more.

In 2016 author and journalist Heather Hansman set out to paddle the Green River from its start in the Wind River Mountains 700 miles to its confluence with the Colorado River in Utah. Her goal was to understand this tributary - who got to use its water and why. Now she is out with a new book called Downriver. She told Wyoming Public Radio's Caroline Ballard why she chose the Green River.

Two twin girls set out on a quest to save a species on the brink of extinction. This is the premise of the new children’s novel Akorena and the League of Crows.

The oral histories of the Eastern Shoshone tribe say their ancestors have lived in the Wind River Basin for time immemorial. Now there is a history to help explores the tribe's relationship with the ecosystem of the area.

Adam Hodge is an associate professor of history at Lourdes University in Ohio and author of the new book Ecology and Ethnogenesis: An Environmental History of the Wind River Shoshones, 1000-1868. Wyoming Public Radio's Taylar Stagner spoke with Hodge. 

The book Treeborne is about a woman name Janie Treeborne who lives in Elberta, Alabama. She's being interviewed after learning that she may need to abandon her community after an old dam is about to break. The book takes us back through flashbacks from her life and family that goes back many years and involves an odd cast of characters. 

A University of Wyoming alum published her book of stories last month. Kali Fajardo-Anstine grew up in Denver. Her new book, Sabrina & Corina, tells the stories of indigenous Latina women in Colorado. Wyoming Public Radio's Erin Jones talked with Fajardo-Anstine about dropping out of high school, her ancestors' storytelling, and reaching new audiences.

Award-winning columnist and author Dave Barry will give a talk April 18 at 1:30 p.m. in the University of Wyoming Union Ballroom as part of the UW Libraries Development Board's annual author event. He joined Wyoming Public Radio's Caroline Ballard for a conversation about his career and his new book Lessons From Lucy.

Author and journalist Ron Franscell is out with a new book. It tells the story of a Wyoming couple who committed several murders in the 1970s and 80s to get their own "happily ever after," and how they were finally brought to justice after several decades. Wyoming Public Radio's Caroline Ballard spoke with Franscell about his book Alice and Gerald: A Homicidal Love Story, and he told her he became interested in the story after hearing about their arrests in the news a few years ago.

A few years back, one of the world's most beloved children's book authors completed her last book just four days before she passed away at the age of 92. Jean Craighead George was the Newberry award-winning author of over 100 picture and chapter books including Julie of the Wolves and My Side of the Mountain.  

Wyoming native and author Lillian Clark is out with her new Young Adult novel Immoral Code. It tells the story of five teens trying to pull off an elaborate heist, stealing thousands of dollars from one of their absent fathers to pay for college tuition. She talked to Wyoming Public Radio’s Caroline Ballard about how one inspiration for the book came from the 1999 movie “Office Space.”

Luis Alberto Urrea has written 16 books, including the novel The Hummingbird's Daughter, and the nonfiction book The Devil's Highway, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Urrea will give a talk at the Gateway Center in Laramie on Tuesday, February 19, at 7 p.m.

Wyoming Public Radio's Erin Jones talked with Urrea about family, the border, and the story of how he came to write his latest novel, House of Broken Angels.

The population in Tie Siding, Wyoming is technically zero - it's basically just a post office that serves homes and ranches in this part of southeast Wyoming. Even though the population is tiny, there is not one but two popular mystery writers living there. And they're married to each other.

The Big Heartless tackles the intersection of humans and wolves, family and freedom, in a remote corner of the Mountain West. The play premiered in Laramie, Wyoming in April 2018 with an upcoming production in the author’s home state of New Mexico in February 2019.