Laura Pritchett is the author of seven novels. Known for championing the complex and contemporary West and giving voice to the working class, her books have been recognized with the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the High Plains Book Award, several Colorado book awards, and others. She directs the MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University. More at www.laurapritchett.com

SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory. What inspired you to write it? Where did the story/theme originate?

Pritchett: Colorado’s wildfires! In 2020, I lived on the evacuation perimeter of what became Colorado’s largest wildfire, which burned for five months and burned 208,000 acres. It was horrible for so many people in so many ways – I think all Coloradoans have experienced some real trauma and heartbreak. 

As so many of us know, the sky was gray, the sun glowed red, ash littered our homes. My home is positioned so that I could see the traffic coming off the mountain – trailers filled with horses and goats and belongings, and we could all see the hard work of firefighters and emergency response teams heading up. Helicopters and planes overhead, burned pine needles at my feet.  

I started writing my community’s stories. When I’m stressed, I write – it’s good therapy, for one thing – it’s a way to bear witness and sit with one’s emotions. But it’s more than that, too. Writing fiction about our reality offers a way to explain the situation to others, which hopefully increases empathy, awareness, and action. 

UNDERWRITTEN BY

Each week, The Colorado Sun and Colorado Humanities & Center For The Book feature an excerpt from a Colorado book and an interview with the author. Explore the SunLit archives at coloradosun.com/sunlit.

So I was writing various stories, and then in the summer of 2022, I got COVID, and could barely get off my couch for about three months. Another form of suffering! That’s another collective trauma many of us share, sadly. And although I was quite foggy in the head, one thing I could do was start to compile all my writings and weave a collection that came together during the next year. Something about the fog of wildfire and the fog of COVID helped me clarify the collection, oddly.

Basically, I wanted to celebrate the heroes (sung and unsung) during the fire and the restoration efforts afterwards. I wanted to shout out the amount of expertise and knowledge and dedication out there. I wanted to write about the everyday people who pitched in and helped one another during tough times. I wanted fiction to contain the reality we live in. 

SunLit: Place this excerpt in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole? Why did you select it?

Pritchett: This excerpt is from the first chapter and serves as an introduction to the characters and the setting and the situation.  As readers can see, the book is told from many points of view, and if you read on, you’ll find some of the narrators are non-human. All these individuals are experiencing the same event  — but reacting to it in many ways.  

SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write? 

Pritchett: I was born in Colorado, grew up on a ranch in northern Colorado, and have a deep love for this state. I left a few times, but I always circled back, like a dog that needs to circle around before settling in for a nap. 

My novels are all set in the contemporary and complex American West — because that is the area I know and love. I feel as attached to this valley as deeply as the roots of native grass. Each novel has been informed by the events of the day, and since my novels tend to be very place-based, it’s no surprise that many of the plot events are based on actual sufferings — drought, blizzards, floods — because these inform the lives of those who live in the West. So, contemporary Colorado and our wildfires are the primary experiences that shaped this book. 

Specifically, this book is an ode to LaPorte and Bellvue (near Fort Collins) in northern Colorado. While I do think that kinship exists anywhere — Paris or New York or wherever — it’s also true that people in rural communities must come together in unique ways, especially in times of crisis. Political and other bifurcations exist — there are old wounds and old feuds. I’m not saying there’s not. But when things are burning up, people tend to rise to the occasion and support one another. 

That is one reason I chose to narrate the novel from many points of view — so we could see just how deeply one person depends upon another, often without the other person’s knowledge. 

SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?

Pritchett: Place-based writing is my field — I direct the MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University, which I have to say is a really, really cool program. I built the writing program I wish I had had, basically. 

But anyway, I teach a graduate level writing course on experimental form and technique in Nature Writing — it’s one of my favorite classes — and I always do the assignments along with my students. So, as I was assigning listicle or episodic or what’s known as “hermit crab” work, I was writing too. Why write this way? For one thing, it can be wildly and playfully subversive, it can upend expectation. For another, form can inform content. Which is only to say, this book is based on experimental form, which is my current passion.  

“Playing with (Wild)fire”

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SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?

Pritchett: As usual, it was not in the writing of it. It was in the publishing of it. It was quite a frustrating  journey — but it had a happy ending. My agent quit during the pandemic and, as authors know, it’s hard to sell a book without an agent. My old press didn’t want to look at an un-agented book. 

So, all that was a disappointing drag. I was casting around for a new agent (and found one, who immediately sold my upmarket novel “Three Keys,” which is coming out this summer), but that casting around took a long time. Meanwhile, I had this book done, and I knew it was a literary book, which means only a certain number of presses are interested. 

So I sent it un-agented to Torrey House Press, which is based in Utah, and which has a focus on land-based work set in the American West. While they are smaller, they are mighty, and I want to give them a huge shoutout. Their focus and dedication to “voices for the West” has resulted in some of the best books being published about our area today. They’re willing to take a chance on unique books and I was so grateful to be added to their fine list (check ‘em out at torreyhouse.org). They have produced a gorgeous book — and I am so, so happy. 

SunLit: What’s the most important thing – a theme, lesson, emotion or realization — that readers should take from this book? 

Pritchett: Believing in — and being part of — our local community. In these times of bifurcated politics and really different ideologies, which might get worse as we head into election season, we can remember that we are all human, that we can all help each other during crisis, that we can be a cohesive, helpful, supportive group. In my book, people tease each other about their belief systems — right, left, religious, not, woo-woo, everything — because, well, people do do this. But then they get past it all. We can too. We need to.  

SunLit: Walk us through your writing process: Where and how do you write?

Pritchett: I wake up and write for an hour or two every morning, usually from about 7 to 9 a.m. I love writing — it is never a chore. It’s my spiritual practice, my addiction. I have never had “writer’s block.” I just have limitations on my time and body. I have defied all PTs suggestions and have found that the most comfortable place to write is in my bed, with my laptop, looking out at the fields and mountains outside my window. 

Far less painful than typing at a desk, though that’s what everyone suggests. I stop after an hour or two to eat breakfast and get some exercise, and then I move on to my job as director and prof in this MFA program I mentioned. I love that too.   

SunLit: You are known for championing the complex and contemporary West, giving voice to the working class, and “re-writing the traditional Western.” Tell us about that. 

Pritchett: In much of our past literary history, the West has been portrayed one way: Men were the focus, they were quiet and stoic, they had a bunch of broken dreams, and they had a minority figure and a woman to help them out. Very cliché. Very incomplete. Very dumb, if you ask me. 

And it’s still going on, which is a bit crazy-making. But some literature has rapidly changed; we’ve evolved. We’ve quit being so romantic and nostalgic, and our literary world is more inclusive and diverse. We should write those books and we should read those books. We can be part of a movement that presses for environmental and social justice and inclusion. 

Books have a lot of power, after all. They show us how to live, or how we could live. They make us less lonely, they connect us, and they illustrate ways of being human. In a certain odd way, art is what makes us more real.

So, what is my plan? To keep pushing the boundaries of the literature set in the West. I want the full spectrum and an honest gaze directed at politics, poverty, wealth, class issues, climate change. A good book’s job is to expose real lives, the blood and heart inside us all, not celebrate some old tired myth.

SunLit: Tell us about your next project.

Pritchett: My seventh novel, “Three Keys,” is coming out in July, and I’m really excited about that one, too – and it’s partially set in Colorado (southern Colorado, near Salida, this time).  That one is coming out from Penguin Random. It’s unusual for an author to have two books come out in one year, but there were delays because of COVID and so on. Anyway, it’s about a woman traveling across America (including Colorado) and breaking into people’s homes. But she does it for a very good reason (you’ll have to read it to find out!). I’m also putting the finishing touches on a memoir that I’ll soon be sending to my agent. 

A few more quick questions

SunLit: Which do you enjoy more as you work on a book – writing or editing?

Pritchett: Both, absolutely! One is generative, one is polishing, and they both make my heart sing. 

SunLit: What’s the first piece of writing – at any age – that you remember being proud of?

Pritchett: I wrote President Reagan as a kid, asking that power lines be diverted around our family ranch — and (crazily) it worked! I got a reply from some governmental office and everything. Talk about an early lesson in the potential power of writing!

SunLit: What three writers, from any era, would you invite over for a great discussion about literature and writing? 

Pritchett: Oh, lordy. Only three? That’s painful. But okay: Louise Erdrich, John Steinbeck, Jane Austen. Oh, but wait. Vonnegut. Ross Gay. Barbara Kingsolver! Kent Haruf will forever be one of Colorado’s greatest writers in my opinion, and he was a friend, and I miss him. I have a lot of questions for Emily Dickinson. Ada Limòn. I have failed you, failed this question. I’m so sorry! Also, I have to say, one of the chapters in the book contains another list of books I adore, ones which are spared from a fire, so I got to shout out some authors there, too.   

SunLit: Do you have a favorite quote about writing?

Pritchett: “Writing is an exercise in longing” – Isabelle Allende.

SunLit: What does the current collection of books on your home shelves tell visitors about you?

Pritchett: That I care very much about place, conservation, climate change, the environment. That we have a deep ethical obligation to save this one blue spinning ball — not just for humans, but for all creatures. That we are absolutely at a critical moment in time and that we are not doing enough. 

SunLit: Soundtrack or silence? What’s the audio background that helps you write?

Pritchett: Silence for sure.

SunLit: What music do you listen to for sheer enjoyment?

Pritchett: Folk. And unsurprisingly, I like singer-songwriters who are good with lyrics. Townes Van Zandt! 

SunLit: What event, and at what age, convinced you that you wanted to be a writer?

Pritchett: At age 7 or so, I wrote in my first page of my first diary, “I will be a riter [sic] just like Laura Ingalls Wilder.” I planned on being a writer then, it was my only mission — and was very stubborn about it, going on to earn a PhD just so I could do so. Why? Because I was already having a deep love affair with books. They made me feel less alone, they taught me to be human, they offered stories and delights. 

SunLit: Greatest writing fear?

Pritchett: Banning of books, contempt for education and open minds, the limited number of people who care about books at all. That’s my fear for writing in general. As for myself, I don’t think I have any. I love it too much. Whether it gets published or not, readers like it or not, I’m too in love to have personal fears. But do I have fears about the ways in which voices are being silenced, shut down, not elevated, not read. 

SunLit: Greatest writing satisfaction?

Pritchett: Having a regular-Joe reader (i.e., not a critic) write me a kind word about how they felt seen or heard or less alone. That’s heaven. 

Type of Story: Q&A

An interview to provide a relevant perspective, edited for clarity and not fully fact-checked.

This byline is used for articles and guides written collaboratively by The Colorado Sun reporters, editors and producers.