Author Interviews

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.

The last few years have brought revelation after revelation about just how long and complex the migration routes are for Wyoming's elk, pronghorn and mule deer. Everyone involved in wildlife agrees these routes need special protections. But there hasn't been a comprehensive set of maps showing this maze of routes zigzagging all over the state. Until now.

Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards sat down with Matt Kauffman and Emilene Ostlind, two of the editors of Wild Migrations: Atlas Of Wyoming's Ungulates.

Uncharted: A Journey Along the Edge of Time and Survival traces the evolution of Cate Cabot’s life in the aftermath of a hitchhike that nearly cost the author and her friends their lives.  

Feminist, queer, fun, The Best Bad Things is an historical crime novel whose main character, Alma, is an ex-detective who goes undercover to infiltrate a Port Townsend, WA smuggling ring. But what she’s really up to becomes one of the central mysteries of the book.

Most people know John Wesley Powell as the first man to travel through the Grand Canyon. However, as author of The Promise of the Grand Canyon: John Wesley Powell’s Perilous Journey and His Vision for the American West, John F. Ross found out that adventure inspired Powell to re-envision water usage in the West. 

This new hybrid-memoir explores the lives and stories of American women prophets and mystics, outliers and outcasts of the American religious story. Through this personal journey, Adrian Shirk discovers new alternatives for spiritual truth seekers. 

Novelist Alyson Hagy has been a professor at the University of Wyoming for 20 years and her last three novels were set in a realistic American West. But for her eighth novel, Scribe, Hagy ventures into very new territory, a dystopia in the Blue Ridge Mountain of Virginia, an area where Hagy spent her childhood. Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards asked Hagy where the inspiration for such a radical new direction came from. Hagy says it all started on a visit home.

From the Gros Ventre Valley of Wyoming to a Walmart parking lot in Logan, Utah, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb traveled to all kinds places for his new book, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter. Goldfarb says beavers have super powers. In fact, he calls them ecological and hydrological swiss army knives. And in the right circumstances, Goldfarb says they can tackle all kinds of problems that plague the West. Wyoming Public Radio’s Maggie Mullen spoke with the author ahead of his visit to Teton County Library Wednesday, September 26 starting at 5 p.m.  

Alyson Hagy’s new novel Scribe is about the power—and dangers—of storytelling. Amid a population decimated by civil war and disease that relies on a barter system, a woman known as Scribe exchanges her skill in letter-writing to get what she needs. One day, a strange man shows up in need of a letter, setting off a series of terrible events that bring Scribe to a crossroads she can escape. 

In Wildness, John Hausdoerffer and his co-editor Gavin Van Horn bring together authors from a variety of landscapes, cultures, and backgrounds to share their stories of what “wildness” looks like when people take an active role in becoming co-creators of well-being with the places they live, work, and play. In re-imagining the possibilities for wildness, Hausdoerffer discusses his hopes for creating communities attuned to the wild in their midst and able to work together across differences to care for these places.

In his new novel A Short in the Ruins, Kevin Powers explores the dark history of slavery in this country, using one plantation near his home in Virginia as the fictionalized setting and following characters generationally from the Civil War to the 20th century in order to examine the ways we live with history and legacy of suffering and violence.  

Sara Dant grew up in the American West and deeply loves its culture, history, and landscape. In Losing Eden, she traces the environmental history and development of this region in order to help readers understand how the land has shaped and been shaped by the people who here, while also offering some positive models for shaping the future well-being of the West.

Have you ever wanted to pack up your bag, leave everyday life behind, and follow in the footsteps of famous polar explorers? Well, author and explorer Aaron Linsdau does just that — trekking solo to remote locations like Alaska, Greenland, and Antarctica. He has also translated his experiences into a career as a motivational speaker and will be speaking at the Wyoming Writers Conference in Dubois in June. Linsdau told Wyoming Public Radio’s Caroline Ballard he first started thinking about becoming an explorer when he picked up backpacking in California.

In times of trauma and sorrow, Diane Les Becquets turned to the wilderness for solace. Now, as an award-winning author, she sets her books back in those most hidden places as a challenge to return on her own terms.

In Breaking Wild, she tracks two women through the remote terrain of Northern Colorado, women who are lost in two very different ways.  

In the early 20th century, tribal members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma became extremely wealthy after discovering oil underneath their reservation. Then, dozens of Osage members started turning up murdered in a vast conspiracy meant to redirect their wealth into the hands of white men.

In the recent book Killers of the Flower Moon, author David Grann explores this chapter in American history. Grann visited the University of Wyoming as a guest lecturer, and Wyoming Public Radio's Caroline Ballard spoke with him about how he first became interested in the Osage Indian Murders and their legacy.