Submission Guidelines
Rocky Mountain Reader welcomes all reader comments and emails. Send to editor Kathryn Eastburn at kathryn@rockymountainreader.org or to info@rockymountainreader.org. We cannot promise a personal response due to small staff and high volume of emails.
Book Coverage: If you are an author with a Colorado connection and want your book considered for review, please contact the editor with full publication information (publisher, publication date, ISBN, publicity contact). We’re a nonprofit organization with a small staff and limited resources, so except in the case of poetry collections, the titles we consider for review should be traditionally published unless you or your readers can make a strong case for your self-published or subsidy-published books of any kind.
Poetry: We print poetry by invitation only, generally in the form of a book excerpt. Please don’t send unsolicited poetry submissions.
Essays: We welcome original essay submissions from anyone with a Colorado connection, whether you’ve published a book or not. We’re interested in thoughtful, timely, pertinent, well-written essays that tell a true story in a compelling way. Send essays for possible publication to the editor and be sure to include a note explaining your Colorado connection. Ideal length is 800-1,200 words. We pay on publication: $150.
Review and Features Contributors: Rocky Mountain Reader operates on an assignment basis, and some reviews and features are assigned well in advance of publication and/or a book’s release date. If you’d like to contribute book reviews, please contact us with an email of introduction along with links to some of your published work. Reviews and Features generally range from 700-1,200 words in length. We pay on publication: $150.
Event coverage: We’re always eager to receive information about literary festivals, public conferences and other literary events of interest to readers across the state. Please send notices well in advance of the event with key information to the editor, marked Events Listings in the subject line. Provide: name of event, date, description, location and contact information as well as registration information if required.
Independent booksellers: All independent bookstores in Colorado are invited to submit their pertinent information—name, location, contact information, description of inventory and programs offered — to be published under our Independent Booksellers tab. Timely events at your store should be submitted separately, marked Events Listings in the subject line of your email. Send bookseller listings info to: kathryn@rockymountainreader.org or info@rockymountainreader.org. Bookseller listings will be placed at a cost of $10 per month, $50 for six months or $100 for an entire year with payment made to Colorado Humanities on behalf of Rocky Mountain Reader using the QR code below, or by sending a check, clearly marked ‘bookseller listings for Rocky Mountain Reader’ to: Colorado Humanities, 7935 E. Prentice Ave., Suite 450, Greenwood Village, CO 80111.
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Briefly Noted
The Last Animal
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
