Events

November 12, 2024 | 9 a.m. MT

Q & A with Nora Gold, Editor of The Jewish Fiction Journal


The Substack Lit Mag News hosts Nora Gold, editor of The Jewish Fiction Journal, for a free online Q&A on Tuesday, Nov. 12 at 9 a.m. Mountain Time (11 a.m. Eastern). The journal is the only English-language journal devoted exclusively to the publishin g of Jewish fiction, showcasing the finest contemporary writing on Jewish themes (either written in, or translated into, English), and providing an online community for writers and readers of Jewish fiction from around the world. This interview is open to all to attend and ask questions.

Address

Online

Learn More
November 14, 2024 | 7-9 p.m.

Visiting Author Series hosts Diné author Natanya Ann Pulley


UCCS Heller Center for Arts & Humanities welcomes Diné author, Natanya Ann Pulley, on Tuesday, Nov. 14 as part of the center’s ongoing Visiting Author Series. Pulley will offer a public reading, a Q&A session and will sign books. Light refreshments will be served. Online access to the event is available via Zoom; contact Catherine Grandorff for Zoom info at cgrandor@uccs.edu. Pulley’s short story collection, With Teeth, was winner of the 2018 Many Voices Project competition. Her writing projects include a nonfiction collection, The First Narcissism (University of New Mexico Press), a novel re-imagining Peter Pan and an experimental novel-in-stories. She was a 2022 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in Creative Writing. Learn more about Pulley at https://www.natanyapulley.com.

Address

1250 North Campus Heights Drive, Colorado Springs, CO

Click here to view this address on a Google Map
Learn More
November 16, 2024 | 1 p.m.

Meet the Author at Douglas County Library, Risa August


The Douglas County Library in Castle Rock hosts a Meet the Author Book Signing by Risa August, author of The Road Unpaved: Border to Border with a Brain Tumor and a Bike, on Saturday, November 16. August’s book was published in 2023, recounting her experience of a grueling bike tour from Canada to Mexico on the Pacific Coast Highway, after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. Headquartered in Colorado, she is a Gestalt practitioner and a patient advocate for rare pituitary diseases.

Address

Douglas County Library, Castle Rock, 100 S. Wilcox Street, Castle Rock, CO 80104

Click here to view this address on a Google Map
January 31, 2025 | Ongoing

Western Colorado Writers’ Forum anthology submissions open


Western Colorado Writers’ Forum announces a call for manuscripts for its anthology, Western Colorado Voices, showcasing the diverse talents of Colorado residents west of the continental divide. They are seeking fiction, memoir, history and poetry, original work that highlights a love of the human experience and finely-wrought language. All manuscripts will be judged anonymously by their editorial board. The anthology will be printed both as an e-book and print-on-demand hard copy. Submissions open Nov. 1 and end Jan. 31, 2025. For guidelines and more, click here.

Address

Online

Learn More

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