Spoken Words

From an industry job in Colorado, to aliens abducting New York, John Stith presents and interesting and entertaining perspective of his writing career. He takes the time to describe his clashes with creativity, perseverance, and his undying respect for the laws of physics.

C.J. Box, bestselling Wyoming author, reads from the latest in his Joe Pickett series, Vicious Circle. He talks about what it means for a story to be a western, getting people to reveal state secrets, and why he’ll never retire to Florida.

Bruce Smith, an ecologist and former manager of the wildlife and conservation programs at the National Elk Refuge, talks about the passions that took him from Michigan to the most remote reaches of Wyoming. He reads from his new book, Stories From Afield: Adventures with Wild Things in Wild Places, on the expected and unexpected challenges of conservation.

Journalist Sara Hayden talks about the challenges of recreating a disjointed family history from Colorado to China and back. She reads from her essay, Living Room, and details the influence that growing up mixed race in Wyoming has had on her writing.

Wyoming writer Matt Daly talks about his collection of poetry and the every day, small town moments that make up his particular perspective of the rural west.

Bestselling author Jeff Guinn reads from (and remembers the awfully painful research for) Silver City, the final book in his Cash McLendon trilogy. And though his books are set in the late 1800s, he finds distinct parallels between the journalism of the past and today’s “alternative facts.”

In celebration of the National Parks Centennial, these Texas poets laureate are traveling across the country to visit 50 National Parks to write poems about them. They talk about Yellowstone, and what it’s like to write poetry that transmits powerful emotional experiences.

The Irish writer reads from his new novel, Days Without End, and discusses the pleasures and pitfalls of writing historical fiction. He traces adventure in America from the Civil War era to his time hitchhiking across the country in the 1970s, and looks hopefully toward the future for outsiders in the States.

Nina McConigley talks about her in-progress, untitled novel – breaking down the particulars of how she approached writing about identity, diversity, and 1980s Wyoming. Backtracking through her own memories of growing up in Wyoming, she compares the past and present state of Wyoming’s diversity, and talks about the challenges she has overcome in writing her novel.

Introducing Wyoming Public Media’s new podcast, Spoken Words. Listen for a sneak peek from its producers: students from the University of Wyoming’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. The first two episodes of Spoken Words drop June 13.