Telluride Literary Arts Festival: Overview

08 May Telluride Literary Arts Festival: Overview

First Literary Arts Festival in Telluride features eclectic events for book lovers. Come get “Lit” in town, Thursday, May 15 – Sunday, May 18.

 “This is an opportunity for everyone to get together and party about reading,” says Between the Covers Bookstore co-owner Daiva Chesonis, the originating force behind Telluride’s newest shoulder-season event, Telluride Literary Arts Festival, slated for May 15-18. A long follower of other cities’ book festivals, Chesonis decided it was time for Telluride to put on its own event for readers (not just writers) to celebrate their love and passion for books. The result? One power-packed weekend featuring everything from performance poetry and a booklovers’ bash to literary burlesque, a moveable literature workshop, coffee with Craig Childs and brunch with Pam Houston. There’s even a bookmaking gathering for kiddos.

Daiva Chesonis of Telluride’s Between the Covers Bookstore, the brains behind the Telluride Literary Festival

Telluride’s inaugural LitFest is an ambitious endeavor being put on by the newly formed Telluride Literary Arts, a coalition of regional writers, readers, and lovers of literature, supporting (and sustaining) all of the literary arts. The organizing entities include the Wilkinson Public Library, Ah Haa School for the Arts, San Miguel County Poets, Telluride Arts, Steaming Bean, and Between the Covers Bookstore. Falling the weekend before Mountainfilm, the collective goal for LitFest is to evolve into a premier literary event in the intra-mountain West, one celebrating not only literary craft and the West’s ongoing literary history, but also the simple joy of reading.

LitFest kicks off Thursday, May 15, 9 p.m. with a Poetry Brothel at the Bean, a vaudeville-style show featuring song, dance, spontaneous theatrical performance, and poetry. The “brothel” venue is meant to be a place of uninhibited creative expression where poets and patrons can be themselves in an intimate setting. Admission is $5 and there is a cash bar.

Those interested in the intricate art of making books are invited to tour the American Academy of Bookbinding at The Stone Building, 117 N. Willow. A longstanding program of the Ah Haa School for the Arts, this spring’s AAB students have been studying Fine Leather Binding with Monique Lallier. A tour of the studio takes place Friday afternoon at 4 p.m.

With a wink and a nod toward Telluride Theatre’s wildly popular Burlesque show, Friday evening, May 16, 8 p.m., Ah Haa hosts Literary Burlesque, an evening of “baring it all,” starring five regional women writers– Amy Irvine McHarg, Kierstin Bridger, Sarah Gilman, Ellen Marie Metrick and Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer – with author Craig Childs acting as emcee. Performances feature intensely vulnerable and revealing poetry – a removing of layers through words, costumes, and projected imagery – and asks what it means to be female, while simultaneously busting cultural and societal cliches. The show lasts roughly one hour. Admission is $5.

Award-winning authors McHarg and Childs return Saturday morning to host Raising the Dead: A Walking Celebration of Landscape and Literature, starting with coffee and pastries at High Alpine Coffee Bar at Between the Covers at 8:30 a.m. and ending at noon, when participants are invited to enjoy lunch and margaritas with the two authors at La Cocina de Luz.

“This festival is about reveling in the sheer pleasure that books bring to our lives, and so Craig and I wanted to offer an opportunity to just wallow in words, particularly the gorgeous, powerful narratives that have shaped who we are as writers of the West, of the natural world,” says McHarg. “In that spirit, we will wander the box canyon wilds, as well as the graveyard and other historic haunts, where we’ll summon (perhaps channel!) the great literati of nature writing: Think Ed Abbey, Ellen Meloy, Pablo Neruda….”

Craig Childs

Amy McHarg, image by Susie Grant

Saturday’s Raising the Dead workshop costs $50. Participants may pre-register at ahhaa.org or in person on the day of the event.

While adults are wandering, kids are invited to a Make Your Own Book Party at Between the Covers at 11 a.m., where little blank hardcover books and plentiful art supplies await each child. For $5 per book, children can write, illustrate, and sign their own literary creations. When complete, kids can decide if they’d like to share their books with fellow junior authors. This story-time bonanza coincides with National Children’s Book Week!

The remainder of Saturday, 2-4 p.m. is dedicated to poetry at Arroyo Wine Bar, starting with a Talking Gourds Poetry Sharing Circle led by Art Goodtimes and featuring Danny Rosen and Wendy Videlock. Then Jack’s Guild takes over place (4-6 p.m.), for a dialogue on craft by the “legendary Jack Mueller,” the North Beach icon and the reigning poet of the Western Slope, according to Goodtimes. “He’s very much off the wall, and he likes to heckle,” Goodtimes notes. “Heckling without nastiness… He’ll ask you a hard question, then plays you nice and strokes your ego.”

Jack Mueller

After a break for dinner, guests gather again at Arroyo ( 6-7:30 p.m.), when Telluride Arts hosts the annual Mark Fischer Poetry Prize gathering. Last year’s winner and this year’s judge, Kyle Harvey, will be present, along with winners and, hopefully, Elaine Fischer. The prize is named in the memory of Mark Fischer, Telluride’s much-loved poet, lawyer, skier, and raconteur. The evening includes readings of some of this year’s pieces.

Kyle Harvey, winner, 2013 Mark Fischer Poetry Prize

Saturday night’s big event is the Book Lovers Bash, complete with DJ Soul Atomic and a costume contest starting at 9 p.m. at Fly Me to the Moon Saloon. Imagine three Hemingways boxing on the dance floor, or Edgar Allan Poe playing pool with Max from the “Where the Wild Things Are.” Attendees at this underground ball for bibliophiles are requested to come dressed as their favorite (or most despised) author or literary character. (Note: The Freebox is ripe for costume pickin’.) Lit Fest’s guest judge is Pam Houston, bestselling author of Cowboys Are My Weakness (also the featured author at Sunday’s Author Brunch). The Book Lovers Bash is a FREE event.

LitFest takes it down a notch on Sunday, enabling some intimate, one-on-one time with two fabulous authors. At 9 a.m., the High Alpine Coffee Bar at Between the Covers Bookstore hosts Second Cup Sneak Peek with Craig Childs. Find out what this denizen of the desert has up his dusty sleeve (and in his umpteen journals) while sipping on that much-needed Sunday morning second cup. Childs has published more than a dozen critically acclaimed books (Secret Knowledge of Water, House of Rain, Finders Keepers, Apocalyptic Planet) and is a commentator for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. He writes about the relationship between humans, animals, landscape, and time.

Second Cup Sneak Peek is free, but BYOV (bring your own vessel).

Finally, save your appetite for the Wilkinson Public Library’s Sunday Brunch with Author Pam Houston, 10 a.m.-noon. Houston divides her time between her ranch in Colorado and the University of California at Davis, where she is director of the Creative Writing Program. Houston has been a frequent contributor to O Magazine, and her writing appears regularly in More and other publications. She authored best-selling novels Cowboys Are My Weakness and Contents May Have Shifted, and – an interesting Telluride note – she also wrote the foreword to the much-beloved Tomboy Bride, by Harriet Fish Backus, a perennial Between the Covers bestseller, according to Chesonis. Aside from reading some of her own work, Houston will honor the LitFest’s mandate to celebrate the reader by reveling her own short list of must-read books.

Pam Houston

Sunday brunch with Pam is free and includes bagels with cream cheese, fruit, coffee and tea.

For the complete LitFest schedule and links to more information, visit tellurideliteraryarts.weebly.com.

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