Wyoming Arts Council

Make plans now to attend the Equality State Book Festival in Casper


Laurie Lye, primo events organizer for Casper College, sent us this press release:

Casper College and ARTCORE’s Equality State Book Festival emerges again in Casper Sept. 18-20, 2008!

Join memoirist Alexandra Fuller, nature writer Gary Ferguson, children’s author Jack Gantos, trout writer John Gierach, and thirty more authors for three days of talks, readings, panels, writing workshops, a banquet, a poetry slam, a workshop on oral histories, and a day-long book fair.

Alexandra Fuller lives in Wilson. Her latest book is The Legend of Colton H Bryant (Penguin Press, May, 2008), about the life of a young Mormon man from southwestern Wyoming who was killed on the gas rigs. Kirkus Reviews calls it “a latter-day Silkwood [story], quiet and understated, beautifully written, speaking volumes about the priorities of the age.” For an exclusive peek at the first two chapters visit www.wyofile.com. Fuller will read from her work and talk about it Thursday evening Sept. 18 at Durham Hall at Casper College. For more on Fuller and her books, go to www.alexandrafuller.org/.

Gary Ferguson, of Red Lodge, Mont., has written fifteen books on nature and science. Gary’s award winning May 2003 National Geographic title, Hawks Rest: A Season in the Remote Heart of Yellowstone, profiles critical environmental issues in the most remote place in the lower 48. It won both the 2004 Pacific Northwest and 2004 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Awards. In 2004 W.W. Norton released his critically acclaimed title, The Great Divide: The Rocky Mountains in the American Mind. In April 2005 he co-authored Decade of the Wolf: Returning the Wild to Yellowstone with Doug Smith. Ferguson will give the keynote speech at the bookfest banquet at the Petroleum Club in Casper Friday evening Sept. 19. For more on Ferguson check out www.wildwords.net/index.html.

Children’s writer Jack Gantos, of Boston, will visit Casper schools, and offer a free workshop for children’s-book writers Thursday afternoon, Sept. 18, and give a public talk Friday afternoon Sept. 19. Gantos is the author of dozens of books for children, including the Rotten Ralph Rotten Readers, the Joey Pizga books and the Jack Henry series, and books for young adults, including Hole in My Life, (Farrar Straus, 2002), a memoir of crime, prison, and his emergence as a writer. For more on Jack and his books, see www.jackgantos.com/index.html. Gantos will visit Casper schools Thursday and Friday, and offer a free workshop on children’s-book writing Thursday afternoon, Sept. 18 at Casper College, and will give a free public talk Friday afternoon, also at the college.

John Gierach lives in northern Colorado and has written eighteen books including Trout Bum, Sex, Death and Flyfishing, Another Lousy Day in Paradise and Standing in a River Waving a Stick — some of which have also been published in Norway, Japan and France – as well as numerous magazine articles, essays and columns. He is a regular columnist for Fly Rod & Reel and Redstone Review and has been the outdoor correspondent for the Longmont Daily Times-Call newspaper in Longmont, Colorado for the last twenty years. Gierach will head a panel of fly-fishing writers Saturday morning Sept. 20, at the Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper.

For details, see http://www.equalitystatebookfest.com/. All events are open to the public without charge except for the workshops offeredby the UW MFA faculty and the banquet. Soon, you’ll be able to register on-line for the banquet and the workshops; all other events do not require registration. Our registration link should be added in the next few weeks.

If you have any questions that the web site doesn’t answer, call (307) 268-2639 or send an e-mail to Laurie: Llye@caspercollege.edu


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