About Rocky Mountain Reader

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” — Anna Quindlen

Welcome to Rocky Mountain Reader: A Community of Colorado Readers, Writers and Book Lovers. We’re here to highlight the vast and varied literary landscape of Colorado and to celebrate the value of reading in the lives of Coloradans.

As traditional media has evolved over the last decades, so has coverage of literary arts, disappearing from many newspapers and fragmenting into spot coverage on thousands of specialized, narrowly focused websites. At the same time, organized efforts to censor books in libraries and schools have become familiar news. We hope to provide a centralized literary hub representing a broad range of literary efforts—whether by organizations, libraries, independent bookstores, publishers or individual authors—that will raise awareness among general readers of the essential human urge to exchange ideas, immerse oneself in unknown lives and worlds and enjoy the limitless life of the mind through books.

We’ll publish five stories each week, 44 weeks per year, covering new and recently released books by Colorado authors, about Colorado or set in Colorado; exploring the historic literary canon of the state; featuring notable writers, organizations, events and creative efforts in support of literary arts; and publishing occasional original work (poems, essays). An email newsletter will alert subscribers to each week’s upcoming content as well as news items related to the Colorado literary scene. All content is free; there is no paywall. Paid freelance writers will provide our content, aiming to represent the diversity of genres, writers, identities and interests that flourish in Colorado.

All reviews and features produced by Rocky Mountain Reader will be made available to Colorado newspapers at no cost, filling the gap in local and regional arts coverage created by shrinking page sizes, corporate consolidation and other factors.

We are responsible for raising all funds for our general operation and have spent the last six months gathering donations from individuals, applying for grants and exploring all revenue streams to support the publication. Thank you to everyone who has donated based on faith in our ability to deliver. We appreciate every donor and are especially indebted to those who have contributed $1,000 or more, identified at the bottom of this page.

Rocky Mountain Reader is a nonprofit operating under the fiscal sponsorship of Colorado Humanities, meaning that organization shares with us its legal 501c3 tax exempt status, assists in overseeing financial transactions and lends its statewide reach to our efforts. Thank you, Colorado Humanities!

We welcome all readers and contributors and encourage you to:

  • Click on the donate button and give what you can afford whether one-time, weekly, monthly or annually
  • Click on the subscribe button to receive our weekly newsletter
  • Share your ideas and knowledge of literary efforts and accomplishments around the state
  • Invite others to visit the site, to subscribe and to donate

Thank you for joining us on the page!

Support Rocky Mountain Reader


Rocky Mountain Reader depends on generous contributions from readers to support our operations. Please consider making a donation that you can afford — one-time, monthly or yearly. Donations are tax-deductible.

Newsletter Updates


Subscribing is free! To subscribe, sign up to receive our weekly newsletter that will provide previews and links to upcoming content, literary news items from around Colorado and more.

Briefly Noted


The Last Animal

Ramona Ausubel
Riverhead Books, paperback 2024
276 pages
The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel

Fort Collins-based author-wizard Ramona Ausubel’s most recent novel, The Last Animal, released in 2023 and out now in paperback, makes leaps of imagination across continents and millennia seem perfectly plausible. The story involves single mother Jane, a frustrated grad student in paleobiology, recently widowed; and her two teenage daughters, Eve and Vera, The Last Animal opens with this codependent family unit on a scientific expedition to Siberia where the girls, on a typically boredom-filled afternoon, stumble upon the bones of a 4,000-year old woolly mammoth. That’s just the beginning. Mother and daughters, through a series of subterfuge-fueled moves, end up at an exotic animal farm in Italy where the DNA of their fossil is implanted into an elephant with the goal of resurrecting an extinct species. What happens beyond that is a series of tender, hilarious, heart-rending and suspenseful moments that testify to the unbreakable ties of family, for better or worse, alongside the loneliness and impossibility of thriving without connection. Smart, beguiling, touching and entertaining, The Last Animal peers into our shared animal souls, at once raising pertinent questions about the limits of bioengineering and taking the reader on a helluva good ride. — Kathryn Eastburn

Who We Are


We are a small nonprofit organization composed of book lovers, writers and readers. To become a freelance writer, see Submission Guidelines.
Kathryn Eastburn

Kathryn Eastburn

Editor/Publisher
Perrin Cunningham

Perrin Cunningham

Associate Editor/Publisher
Cate Boddington

Cate Boddington

Copy Editor
James McCurdy

James McCurdy

Intern

Contributing Writers


Alan Prendergast

Beverly Diehl

Ceil Malek

D'Arcy Fallon

Deb Acord

Linda DuVal

Ethne Clarke

James McCurdy

Jeanne Davant

Jeffery Payne

Anna Keating

Kurt Bunch

Laura Pritchett

Marissa Harwood

MB Partlow

Meg Moritz

Michelle Mercer

Sarah Valdez

Shannon Lawrence

Shelli Rottschafer

Suzanne Macaulay

Advisory Board


Dan Manzanares

Helen Thorpe

Emily Sinclair

Jane Hilberry

Major Donors


Rocky Mountain Reader is made possible in part thanks to the generous support from these donors:

Ann and Jeff Pontius

Perrin Cunningham

Cate and Tim Boddington

Jo Cunningham

Diane Alters

John Weiss

Leslie Jackson

Aaron Eastburn

Raphael Sassower

Joseph Coleman

Ronald H. Beck, in memory of Kathy Beck

John Henry Edmondson Foundation