Aspen Words

ALOUD: High Altitude Poetry Jam
2015-02-28 18:30 (America/Denver) | United States
Aspen Words is proud to bring poets and RFV favorites Logan Phillips and Myrlin Hepworth back to The Wheeler stage. Joined by Mercedez Holtry and youth from local schools, this evening celebrates the power of the spoken word. FREE!

Cumbia Dance Party
2015-02-27 21:00
Aspen Words presents DJ and spoken word artist, Logan “Dirtyverbs” Phillips, in a night of heart-pounding Latin music and dance. Following the Youth Poetry Slam at 6:30. FREE! ¡Entrada Gratis! ¡Invita a los amigos!

Youth Poetry Slam
2015-02-27 18:30
This February, poets Myrlin Hepworth, Logan Phillips, and Mercedez Holtry will inspire over 3,000 local youth from 13 schools to tell their stories through the power of the spoken word. The result is this exhilarating night of Spoken Word Poetry created and performed by the youth of the Roaring Fork Valley. If you’re looking for inspiration, don’t miss this.
Registration for young poets begins at 5:30 and is open to all RFV 7th – 12th graders.
Winners will perform with Myrlin, Logan, and Mercedez at The Wheeler on February 28.
Stay for the Cumbia dance party at 9:00!

George Packer
2015-02-10 18:00 - 19:00
George Packer is a staff writer for the New Yorker and the author of The Unwinding, which won the 2013 National Book Award for Nonfiction. His earlier book, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, was named one of the ten best books of 2005 by The New York Times Book Review. He is also the author of two novels, The Half Man and Central Square, and two other works of nonfiction, Blood of the Liberals, which won the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and The Village of Waiting. His play, Betrayed, ran off-Broadway for five months in 2008 and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play. He has contributed numerous articles, essays, and reviews to the New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, Harper’s and other publications.
“A brilliant and innovative book that transcends journalism to become literature.”—Bookforum
[The Unwinding] hums—with sorrow, with outrage and with compassion . . .” “[Packer has] written something close to a nonfiction masterpiece.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
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AWN Aspiring Writers' Quarterly Meeting
2015-01-13 18:00 - 20:00
The Aspen Writers’ Network offers opportunities for Roaring Fork Valley writers — from beginners to advanced professional writers — to gather once a quarter to respond together to writing prompts and to consider particular issues of craft. These meetings are open to everyone and alternate between Aspen and Carbondale.

Natasha Trethewey
2015-01-06 18:00 - 19:00
Natasha Trethewey is the author of four collections of poetry: Domestic Work, Bellocq’s Ophelia, Native Guard—for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize—and, most recently, Thrall. She has published one work of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The US Poet Laureate from 2012-2014, Trethewey is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. At Emory University, she is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing. Trethewey currently serves as the State Poet Laureate of Mississippi.
“Trethewey’s writing mines the cavernous isolation, brutality, and resilience of African American history, tracing its subterranean echoes to today.” — The New Yorker
“Her poems dig beneath the surface of history –personal or communal, from childhood or from a century ago – to explore the human struggles that we all face.” —Librarian of Congress James Billington
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Jess Walter
2014-12-02 08:00 - 17:00
Jess Walter is the author of eight books, including six novels, one nonfiction title and, most recently, the award-winning short story collection, We Live in Water. His 2012 novel, Beautiful Ruins, was a #1 New York Times bestseller, Esquire’s Book of the Year, and NPR Fresh Air’s Novel of the Year. He was a 2006 National Book Award finalist for the novel The Zero; also in 2006, he won the Edgar Allen Poe award for Citizen Vince. Walter’s work has been translated into 30 languages, and his essays and short fiction have appeared in Best American Short Stories, Harper’s, Esquire, Tin House, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. Walter is also a career journalist, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe.
“Jess Walter is as talented a natural storyteller as is working in American fiction these days”
—Michael Lindgren, Washington Post
“Walter has emerged as one of the country’s most dazzling novelists … so freakishly, fiendishly good, it isn’t fair.”
—Ken Armstrong, Seattle Times
