New Mexico authors to discuss ‘Landscape of Dreams’ in symposium at Collected Works
SANTA FE, N.M. – Four New Mexico authors, including best-selling novelist Anne Hillerman and noted historian Paul Andrew Hutton, will discuss writing about the American West on Thursday, February 25, at Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse in Santa Fe, NM.
Lesley Poling-Kempes and Jack Loeffler will also take part in “Landscape of Dreams: Santa Fe and the Creative West,” Western Writers of America’s second James Ersfeld Western Writing Symposium. The free event is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. at the bookstore, 202 Galisteo Street, Santa Fe, NM.
The four authors will share their thoughts on creativity, the lure of the West, fiction, nonfiction and music, and respond to audience comments and questions.
The intent of the program is to encourage people in the writing field, with a focus on the Western genre. Western Writers of America, which was founded in the 1950s to promote and honor literature about the West, debuted the symposium, which features various subjects and authors, last year at the Denver Public Library.
Hillerman, the eldest of best-selling mystery author Tony Hillerman’s six children, grew up in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, surrounded by stories and beautiful landscapes. Her first novel, Spider Woman’s Daughter, debuted at No. 10 on the New York Times best-seller list. Her second book in the new series, Rock with Wings, and also made the NYT list and was recently released in paperback. Both are mysteries in the tradition of her father’s Navajo books.
Hutton is an American cultural historian, award-winning author, documentary writer and television personality. He is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. His latest book, The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History, will be published by Crown in May.
Loeffler, aural historian, sound collage artist, writer, environmental activist and New Mexico resident for more than 50 years, is co-curating an exhibition on the history of counter-culture in the Southwest and beyond, scheduled to open at the New Mexico History Museum in 2017. His books include: Headed Upstream: Interviews with Iconoclasts; La Musica de los Viejitos; Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey; Healing the West: Voices of Culture and Habitat; Survival Along the Continental Divide; and Thinking Like a Watershed.
Poling-Kempes is the award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction books about the American Southwest. Her novel Bone Horses, received the 2014 WILLA Literary Award for Contemporary Fiction and the Tony Hillerman Award. Her latest nonfiction book, Ladies of the Canyon: A League of Extraordinary Women & Their Adventures in the American Southwest, was released in 2015 and has been nominated for the MPBA Reading the West nonfiction award.
The symposium is named after Ersfeld, Western Writers of America’s assistant director who died of cancer in 2011 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the age of 62.
For more information, log on to CWBookstore.com or call Collected Works at (505) 988-4226.
