Author Interviews

Originally from California, author Leslie Patten fell in love with Wyoming almost fifteen years ago and eventually made it her permanent home. The naturalist moved to a rustic cabin near Cody and became fascinated with the wildlife she saw right outside her door. Leslie Patten discusses writing, dogs, mountain lions, and moving from the most populated state to the least.

Her latest book Koda and the Wolves: Tales of a Red Dog is out now.

Many places around the world have towns with predominantly white populations living in close proximity or directly on tribal land. Dr. Jeffrey Denis is an Associate professor at McMaster University in Canada wanted to see how small border towns like this talk about race. Wyoming Public Radio’s Taylar Stagner talked with Denis about his new book and the connections he made in Northwest Ontario.

Ken Keffer grew up exploring the outdoors around his childhood home in Buffalo. The Wyomingite eventually turned his passion for nature into a career as an educator and author. Wyoming Public Radio's Megan Feighery spoke to him about his new book, Earth Almanac, birding, and his fondness for a unique creature.

July 19, 2020 marks the 110th anniversary of the Cathedral Home for Children, a youth residential treatment center in Laramie. A new book, Keeping the Promise: Cathedral Home for Children, tells the organization's history through interviews, photographs, and archival materials.

Former board member Sally Biegert and former executive director Robin Haas spent three years researching, writing, and designing the book. As they told Wyoming Public Radio's Micah Schweizer, the Cathedral Home's origin dates back to an unexpected encounter at the Lander train station in 1910.

Even before the pandemic struck, rural American communities were suffering, and the blow from this new downturn could hurt even more. But a new book is optimistic that small towns can thrive, if they learn to embrace the innovations of the future.

There's an ongoing debate in the American West about which state granted women the right to vote first. Wyoming ratified the decision first in 1869 but didn't vote until the fall of the next year; but Utah women actually went to the polls seven months earlier than that.

Either way, it was Western states that made the leap, and a new book called No Place For A Woman: The Struggle for Suffrage in the Wild West explores what it was about Western women that made them such suffragists.

Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards interviewed author Chris Enss.

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.