Notes, journals and her blog gave “Bless the Birds” author Susan J. Tweit “primary source material” for the account of her final trip with her husband.
memoir
Posted inSunLit, SunLit Interviews
SunLit Interview: Kathryn Wilder started with essays. Slowly, they grew into a cohesive narrative.
Kathryn Wilder’s work has been cited in Best American Essays, nominated for the Pushcart Prize and other awards, and has appeared in several publications and anthologies. A graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Wilder was a finalist for the 2016, 2019, and 2022 Ellen Meloy Fund Desert Writers Award; […]
Posted inBook Excerpts, SunLit
SunLit Excerpt: In “Desert Chrome,” a woman’s familiar sense of place points her toward salvation
I take to my truck one fall morning and drive away from the problems I’m creating. Three border collies on the folded-down seat behind me, a long empty highway under my tires, I drive. For miles. Hours. A memory drifts in through an open window: sitting on a slab of red sandstone watching boaters run […]
Posted inSunLit, SunLit Interviews
SunLit Interview: After decades, Stephen Trimble came to grips with a personal, but universal story
Stephen Trimble has published 25 award-winning books as writer, editor, and photographer during 45 years of paying attention to the landscapes and peoples of the Desert West. He’s received The Sierra Club’s Ansel Adams Award for photography and conservation and a Doctor of Humane Letters from his alma mater, Colorado College. In 2019, he was […]
Posted inBook Excerpts, SunLit
SunLit Excerpt: “The Mike File” reveals one family’s story of a boy lost to the mental health system
(Stephen Trimble’s memoir, The Mike File: A Story of Grief and Hope, tells the story of his brother, Mike, committed to the Colorado State Hospital in Pueblo in 1957, after sequential diagnoses of “retardation,” schizophrenia, and epilepsy. The author was 6, Mike was 14. Mike never lived at home again. In this excerpt, Mike has […]
Posted inBook Excerpts, SunLit
SunLit Special Edition: “Tell Me Everything” combines an investigation with personal memoir
My first few cases, I had no idea what I was doing. Grayson sent me to a women’s triathlon where a personal injury client had gotten run over by a bicycle the previous year. His instructions were rushed—for lawyers, every minute is worth dollars—so I wasn’t sure how to find witnesses to talk to. During […]
Posted inBook Excerpts, SunLit
A genre-defying memoir calls on history, science and gripping narrative in a meditation on grief
Sarah Adleman was born and raised between the bayous of Houston, the swamps of Louisiana, and the desert of El Paso. She was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bangladesh, studied yoga in India, and taught English in China. Sarah earned her MFA from the University of Texas at El Paso and works as a Yoga […]
Posted inOpinion, Write On, Colorado
I watched love bloom over Zoom. Beautiful things still happen.
When the quarantine began in Colorado, I forced myself to find one small silver lining—now I would have time to take a memoir and essay writing class that I’d been wanting to take for years. I work as a playwright and director in theater, and usually rehearsals and performances keep me busy. Now, of course, […]
Posted inBook Excerpts, SunLit
An unexpected moment in baggage claim sent the Colorado author on her most difficult journey
Michele Morris is the award-winning author of two cookbooks (“Tasting Colorado” and “A Taste of Washington”) and a freelance food and travel writer whose work has appeared in The Denver Post, Colorado Homes & Lifestyles, Edible Front Range, and Nourish. Her memoir, “Poco a Poco,” was released in 2018 and has garnered several awards, including a Nautilus Book Award. Proceeds from the book support families impacted by brain aneurysms. The […]