Author Interviews

In 2018, the Ucross artist residency program in Northern Wyoming hosted its first fellows for its Native American fellowship for visual artists to have the space and time to focus solely on their art. This past fall, the program extended the opportunity to its first Native American writing fellow.

Wyoming Public Radio's Catherine Wheeler spoke with Diné writer and teacher Brendan Basham about his forthcoming debut novel, Swim Home to the Vanished, and his time at Ucross while on his fellowship.

In 1978, one of Wyoming's most infamous killings took place in Rock Springs. Rock Springs Director of Safety Ed Cantrell shot his deputy Michael Rosa, who was in the backseat of a car. Cantrell said he shot Rosa in self-defense, while others suggested that Cantrell was trying to keep Rosa from testifying about local corruption he had witnessed.

Cantrell hired Wyoming Attorney Gerry Spence and was acquitted of first-degree murder in Pinedale. Award-winning investigative journalist Rone Tempest has written about the incident in his new book, The Last Western. He sets the stage by describing Rock Springs at the time.

In 2016, the national park system celebrated its hundredth birthday. When poet karla k. morton learned that there had never been a complete book of poetry written to celebrate all 62 national parks, she decided to do just that, along with her friend and fellow Texas poet laureate Alan Birkelbach.

Wyoming Public Radio's Micah Schweizer spoke to the two poets about how their new book, The National Parks: A Century of Grace, came to be.

The University of Wyoming Libraries hosted award-winning poet and writer, Camille T. Dungy, for a virtual reading of her work on October 24, 2020. Dungy was born in Denver and has written and edited publications that often explore the ties between race and the environment.

Wyoming Public Radio's Naina Rao spoke with her about how she got started with poetry, her reflections on her journey, and what she thinks about the state of society today.

Mountain lions are one of the great conservation success stories. Hunting once whittled their numbers down to a few thousand. But when they were re-classified as a game instead of vermin, they made a big comeback. But it's also led to more conflicts with humans.

A new book called the Cougar Conundrum: Sharing the World with a Successful Predator offers ideas for how to live with these big predators and how to better manage them. Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards chatted with author Mark Elbroch, the Director of Panthera's Puma project.

Nestled in between Cody and Powell in northwest Wyoming, the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center tells the story of over 10,000 Japanese-Americans who were held in the internment camp against their will during World War II. It turns out, the museum wouldn't exist if it weren't for the formerly incarcerated and their children's' dedication.

Chair of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation Shirley Ann Higuchi just released her new book Setsuko's Secret, which tells these stories. To start, Wyoming Public Radio's Kamila Kudelska asked Higuchi how she learned about her parents' time at Heart Mountain.

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.