Aspen Words

WINTER WORDS - Adam Johnson
2016-02-13 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Denver) | United States
Adam Johnson is the author of the novel The Orphan Master’s Son, and most recently, a collection of short stories titled Fortune Smiles, winner of the 2015 National Book Award for Fiction. The Orphan Master’s Son won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the California Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was named one of the best books of the year by more than a dozen publications and spent almost a year on the New York Times Bestseller List. Johnson’s other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Stegner Fellowship; he was also a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award. His previous books are Emporium, a short story collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us.
The reading and talk will be followed by a Q+A and book signing. Explore Booksellers will have books for purchase at the event.
Winter Words 2016 InfoPurchase Tickets

YOUTH POETRY SLAM
2016-02-12 18:30 - 20:30
Aspen Words’ 3rd annual Youth Poetry Slam will be hosted by Roaring Fork Valley’s favorite performance poets Myrlin Hepworth, Logan Phillips, and Mercedez Holtry and will feature the brave high school poets from Glenwood Springs, Carbondale, Basalt, and Aspen! It’s going to be an exhilarating night celebrating the power of youth voices.
This event is FREE and audience members of all ages are welcome. The slam starts at 6:30 pm!

WINTER WORDS - Alison Bechdel + Beth Malone
2016-01-27 18:00 - 19:00
Cartoonist Alison Bechdel is the creator of the long-running comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. She has published two graphic memoirs. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is about her childhood in an artistic family and her relationship with her father, and has been developed into a Broadway musical starring Beth Malone. Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama explores her relationship with her mother through the lens of psychoanalytic theory. She is the recipient of a 2014 MacArthur fellowship.
In conversation with Tony-nominated Fun Home star Beth Malone
Beth Malone starred in the 2015 Tony Award-winning musical Fun Home, based on Alison Bechdel’s best-selling graphic memoir. Raised in Castle Rock, Colorado, Malone spent much of her 20’s in Aspen, where she was a Crystal Palace dinner theater staffer and performed at Theatre Aspen. After leaving Aspen, she completed a graduate degree with the drama department at UC Irvine and settled in Los Angeles. Malone spent much of 2014 at The Denver Center, starring as Molly Brown in the world premiere of a wholly reimagined version of The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Other original Broadway and Off Broadway credits include June Carter Cash in Ring of Fire, Betty Jean in The Marvelous Wonderettes, and Alison in Bingo!. Regional theatre appearances include 9 to 5, The Break Up Notebook, Annie Get Your Gun, Les Miserables, and the world premiere of Sister Act. Malone has been part of Fun Home through most of its formative stages and was nominated for the 2015 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role as Alison Bechdel.
The reading and talk will be followed by a Q+A and book signing. Explore Booksellers will have books for purchase at the event.
Winter Words 2016 InfoPurchase Tickets

MEMBERS RECEPTION with Juan Felipe Herrera
2016-01-12 19:30 - 21:00
Aspen Words members are invited to join Juan Felipe Herrera for a reception with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres at the Gonzo Gallery following the public event.
In partnership with English in ActionSponsored by Aspen Peak
RSVP to Jamie Kravitz
Entry is complimentary for Aspen Words members. Ticket sales at the door for non-members will benefit English In Action.

WINTER WORDS - Juan Felipe Herrera
2016-01-12 18:00 - 19:00
Juan Felipe Herrera is the 21st Poet Laureate of the United States (2015-2016) and is the first Latino to hold the position. From 2012-2014, Herrera served as California State Poet Laureate. Herrera’s many collections of poetry include Notes on the Assemblage; Senegal Taxi; Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems, a recipient of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross The Border: Undocuments 1971-2007. He is also the author of Crashboomlove: A Novel in Verse, which received the Americas Award. His books of prose for children include: SkateFate, Calling The Doves, which won the Ezra Jack Keats Award; Upside Down Boy, which was adapted into a musical for young audiences in New York City; and Cinnamon Girl: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box. Herrera is also a performance artist and activist on behalf of migrant and indigenous communities and at-risk youth.
The reading and talk will be followed by a Q+A and book signing. Explore Booksellers will have books for purchase at the event.
Winter Words 2016 Info Purchase Tickets
AW MEMBER PARTY TO FOLLOW THE PAEPCKE EVENT With special guest Juan Felipe Herrera
Sponsored by Aspen Peak magazineIn partnership with English in Action Gonzo Gallery | 7:30pm RSVP to Jamie KravitzBecome a member

Vivian Gornick + Dani Shapiro + Darin Strauss - Aspen New York Book Series
2015-11-19 18:30 - 20:00
Join the Aspen Institute and Aspen Words for an evening featuring Vivian Gornick, Dani Shapiro, and Darin Strauss discussing the art of the memoir. Books by the authors will be available for purchase and signing.
RSVP HERE

Vivian Gornick is an American critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist. Her work has appeared in The Village Voice, The New York Times, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, and many other publications. She has published eleven books; the most recent, The Odd Woman and the City, was published in May, 2015. In 2014 she was the Bedell Distinguished Visiting Professor in Nonfiction at the University of Iowa.
Dani Shapiro’s most recent books include the memoirs Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, and Devotion, and the novels Black & White and Family History. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, The Virginia Quarterly Review, n+1, One Story, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Op-Ed pages, and many other publications, and has been featured on “Oprah” and “This American Life.”

Darin Strauss is a national- and internationally-bestselling author. His books have been New York Times, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and NPR Best Books of the Year, among other honors. He is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship and numerous other prizes. Strauss recently began a stint as a recurring columnist on faith atSalon, has written screenplays for Disney, Gary Oldman, and Julie Taylor. He is the Clinical Professor of Fiction at NYU’s creative writing program.
6:30 – 7:30 pm Program 7:30 – 8:00 pm Reception

Reading & Talk with Marcia Butler
2015-11-18 18:00 - 19:00
Marcia Butler’s life has been driven by creativity. For 25 years she performed throughout the world as a professional oboist. She was hailed by the New York Times as “a first rate artist” and performed and recorded with such luminaries as pianist Andre Watts, soprano Dawn Upshaw and jazz great Keith Jarrett. In 2002 Marcia switched careers and began her interior design firm, Marcia Butler Interior Design. She has served well over 100 clients in twelve years and her design work has been published in shelter magazines. Now as an author, her memoir The Skin Above My Knee was recently sold to Little, Brown and Company, with a release date of January 2017. She has published numerous personal essays in journals and online literary sites and is currently working on a novel. Marcia participated in Richard Russo’s Fiction workshop at Aspen Summer Words 2015 and lives in New York City.
Free event, open to the public.

ALOUD: High Altitude Poetry Jam
2015-02-28 18:30
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
