Mountain Words Festival 2026

Acclaimed author of the books The Paris Wife, Circling the Sun, and Love and Ruin, Paula McLain sits down with Colorado author Shelley Read to discuss her newest novel, Skylark. 

The New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife weaves a mesmerizing tale of Paris above and below—where a woman’s quest for artistic freedom in 1664 intertwines with a doctor’s dangerous mission during the German occupation in the 1940s, revealing a story of courage and resistance that transcends time.

1664: Alouette Voland is the daughter of a master dyer at the famed Gobelin Tapestry Works, who secretly dreams of escaping her circumstances and creating her own masterpiece. When her father is unjustly imprisoned, Alouette’s efforts to save him lead to her own confinement in the notorious Salpêtrière asylum, where thousands of women are held captive and cruelly treated. But within its grim walls, she discovers a small group of brave allies, and the possibility of a life bigger than she ever imagined.
1939: Kristof Larson is a medical student beginning his psychiatric residency in Paris, whose neighbors on the Rue de Gobelins are a Jewish family who have fled Poland. When Nazi forces descend on the city, Kristof becomes their only hope for survival, even as his work as a doctor is jeopardized.
A spellbinding and transportive look at a side of Paris known to very few—the underground city that is a mirror reflection of the glories above—Paula McLain’s unforgettable new novel chronicles two parallel journeys of defiance and rescue that connect in ways both surprising and deeply moving.

Take your Pantsing and Planning to the next level and become a Mapper instead. In this two-part seminar, writing coaches Doug Kurtz and Dan Manzanares will introduce you to the Story Map, their breakthrough tool that helps memoirists of all stripes and skill levels unlock the potential of their books. Part 1, Orientation, is an introduction to the Story Map and how to use it, followed by an open Q&A session. Part 2, Implementation, is a hands-on workshop in which participants will explore the holistic landscape of Story that underlies craft and begin the Story Mapping process. Memoirists at any stage of the writing process are welcome.

Join Denver based poet, writer, storyteller, organizer, and activist, Suzi Q. Smith for a poetry workshop to remember.

Nina McConigley, the West's brightest literary star will share her new novel, How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder. Join her and award winning writer, Megha Majumdar in this lively discussion of McConigley's work. 

NOTE: This will be a shorter session without q&a. Nina will be available for questions at the Townie Books signing table afterwards. 

How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder is the author’s dark debut novel about two Indian-American sisters growing up in rural Wyoming in the 1980s.-NPR, 'How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder' is a dark new novel about sisterhood. 

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/04/nx-s1-5698541/nprs-book-of-the-day-nina-mcconigley-how-to-commit-a-postcolonial-murder

Bible scholar and popular TikToker Dan McClellan confronts misconceptions about the Bible.

The Bible is the world’s most influential book, but do we really know what it says? Every day across social media and in homes, businesses, and public spaces, people try to cut debate short by claiming that "the Bible says so!" However, they commonly disagree about what it actually does and doesn't say, particularly when it comes to socially significant issues. For instance, does the Bible say we should be on the lookout for an antichrist associated with the number 666? Does it say women shouldn’t wear revealing clothing? Does it say it’s okay to hit your kids?

In The Bible Says So, Dan McClellan leverages his popular "data over dogma" approach, and his years of experience in the academy and on social media, to lay out in clear and accessible ways what the data indicate the Bible does and doesn't say about issues ranging from homosexuality, abortion, and slavery to monotheism, inspiration, and even God's wife. Smart, accessible, and informative, The Bible Says So is an invaluable resource for our fractious times.

Dan McClellan is an award-winning public scholar of the Bible. He has over one million followers on social media, and tens of thousands more tune in to his online classes and his Data Over Dogma Podcast. Dan received his PhD from the University of Exeter. He worked previously as a scripture translation supervisor for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is currently an honorary fellow at Birmingham University's Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion.

Join Dan and Gunnison Congregational Church Pastor, Ian Wrisley as they discuss The Bible Says So.  

I have two writing degrees and have taken tons of other writing workshops, but for the last twelve years, our weekly writing group has been the absolute best thing for my writing career/life. Inspired by the Soulquarians music collective and Gail McGuire and Jo Reger’s ideas of Feminist Co-Mentoring, we’ll discuss a possible model for a writing group that centers collaboration, longevity, and care for individuals.  

Take your Pantsing and Planning to the next level and become a Mapper instead. In this two-part seminar, writing coaches Doug Kurtz and Dan Manzanares will introduce you to the Story Map, their breakthrough tool that helps memoirists of all stripes and skill levels unlock the potential of their books. Part 1, Orientation, is an introduction to the Story Map and how to use it, followed by an open Q&A session. Part 2, Implementation, is a hands-on workshop in which participants will explore the holistic landscape of Story that underlies craft and begin the Story Mapping process. Memoirists at any stage of the writing process are welcome.

Four poets of at the height of their prowess with the written word come together to share their voices with the community. Join Karen Terrey, Suzi Q Smith, Erica Reid, and Wendy Videlock as they each read a selection of poems that celebrate the written and spoken word. 

Unstuck: 101 Doorways Leading from the Blank Page to the Last Page is about staying in love with your writing: feeling excited, mischievous, productive, and hopeful—the opposite of being stuck.

Critically acclaimed, award-winning author and beloved teacher Ramona Ausubel offers 101 exercises that promise to welcome you back to the page again and again; to reinvigorate your process and help you see your writing through to the end. Full of personal stories and hard-earned wisdom of a veteran writer, Unstuck is written in the first person, human to human, writer to writer. Practical, clear, and welcoming, Unstuck offers immediately useable strategies for beginning, continuing, and finishing a piece of writing.

Organized into doorways and keys, Unstuck turns problems into possibilities, offers keys to put into use right now, all designed to lead the writer back to the art, not toward an outside idea or formula. With Ausubel’s steady, encouraging advice—find your doorway, unlock the lock, and get writing again.


Ramona Ausubel’s fifth book, The Last Animal was a national bestseller, a Barnes & Noble book of the month and named a best book of 2023 by NPR, Kirkus and the Oprah quarterly. Her previous books are Awayland: stories, Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty, A Guide to Being Born and No One is Here Except All of Us. She is the recipient of the PEN/USA Fiction Award, the Cabell First Novelist Award and has been a finalist for both the California and Colorado Book Awards and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review daily, One Story, Tin House, The Oxford American, Ploughshares and elsewhere. She is a professor at Colorado State University and lives in Boulder with her family

Poet Erica Reid returns to Mountain Words with another excellent generative poetry workshop.

Class begins with an exploration of prairie poems old and new, from poets including Emily Dickinson, Heid E. Erdrich, and Camille Dungy. Afterwards we will generate plains-flavored poems of our own, aided by a prairie-specific divination deck that includes thistle for patience, hawks for insight, fire for change, and more.

From 2000 to 2010, River Selby was a wildland firefighter whose given name was Anastasia. This is a memoir of that time in their life—of Ana, the struggles she encountered, and the constraints of what it means to be female-bodied in a male-dominated industry. An illuminating debut from a fierce new voice, Hotshot is a timely reckoning with both the personal and environmental dangers of wildland firefighting.
By the time they were nineteen, Selby had been homeless, addicted to drugs, and sexually assaulted more than once. In a last-ditch effort to find direction, they applied to be a wildland firefighter. Two years later, they joined an elite class of specially trained wildland firefighters known as hotshots. Over the course of five fire seasons, Selby delves into the world of the people—almost entirely men—who risk their lives to fight and sometimes prevent wildfires. Simultaneously hyper visible and invisible, Selby navigated an odd mix of camaraderie and rampant sexism on the job and, when they challenged it, a violent closing of ranks that excluded them from the work they’d come to love.
Drawing on years of firsthand experience on the frontlines of fire and years of research, Selby examines how the collision of fire suppression policy, colonization, and climate change has led to fire seasons of unprecedented duration and severity. A work of rare intimacy, Hotshot provides new insight into fire, the people who fight it, and the diversity of ecosystems dependent on this elemental force.

Fiction workshop with Nina McConigley

One part Educated, one part rebuttal to Hillbilly Elegy, On Fire for God explores the ways evangelical Christianity has preyed upon its followers while galvanizing them into the political force known today as the Christian right.
“Of all the books I’ve read about young people devastated by the fundamentalist religion they’ve grown up with, this one stands out.”­— Frances FitzGerald, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Evangelicals

Exvangelical journalist Josiah Hesse grew up in the stifling working-class town of Mason City, Iowa, raised in the institutions of fundamentalist Christianity: a toxic mixture of schools, ministries, and religious camps that taught creationism, instilled sexual shame, and foretold horrific tales of the rapture. In the churches where he worshipped, pastors siphoned their flocks’ wealth while preaching a doctrine of prosperity. Meanwhile, as economic struggles grew in the community, Hesse’s fellow believers lambasted organized labor and shunned the social safety net, becoming an army for God against the evils of progressivism. Only upon escaping Iowa in search of something more would he consider the possibility that the world wasn’t about to end and that he was woefully unprepared for a future he’d never believed would arrive.

Written in vivid prose, On Fire for God is both an unflinching memoir of religious trauma and survival and a stirring examination of the emotional, political, and sociological effects of the Christian right. Returning to his hometown in search of answers about his upbringing and the political forces at work in the region, Hesse calls into question prevailing theories about the disappearing working class that point to opioids, automation, or globalism as the culprits. His story of awakening and escape exposes how conservative Christian con men have, over generations, trapped working-class believers in an isolated bubble of racism, xenophobia, and self-imposed martyrdom, while stripping communities like his of their wealth and self-esteem. In On Fire for God, Hesse plumbs the depths of his own experience to illuminate, with deep feeling and piercing immediacy, what he describes as the socioeconomic tragedy of the American working class

What Kind of Essay Are You?

The essay is a dynamic and flexible structure, capable of doing anything the writer wishes...but figuring out what one wants the essay to do can be quite difficult! In this workshop, we'll look at a few innovative essay moments and discuss how to approach the essay as an extension of the self, extending a question into the world and diving into the mystery. This is not a class about formulas or cookie-cutter methods of writing, rather an exploration of the self and how one can translate their obsessions into an essayistic form.