Mountain Words Festival 2026

Join short fiction writer and novelist Claire Boyles in a workshop to stimulate your creative process.

Beyond the Forest and the Trees: Layers of Landscape and Place

The author Robert Macfarlane writes: “The best of the recent [nature] writing is ethically alert, theoretically literate and wary of the seductions and corruptions of the pastoral. It is sensitive to the dark histories of landscapes and to the structures of ownership and capital that organise – though do not wholly produce – our relations with the natural world.”  To capture this complexity of place, writers must describe the immediate sensory experience of the story (the trees) and the way those physical details operate on character and story tension (the forest). They must also portray, to some degree, the historical and political contexts surrounding both (the atmosphere). In exploring these layers of landscape and place, writers will learn techniques for widening the scope of their work.

In this two-part seminar, geared for both novelists and memoirists, writing coaches Dan Manzanares and Doug Kurtz will use spontaneous ideas from workshop attendees to create a story any agent would drool to read. We'll activate the Story Map, a relational storytelling model, to show the group in real time how a story works and how easy it is to go from first concept to full draft.

In this two-part seminar, geared for both novelists and memoirists, writing coaches Dan Manzanares and Doug Kurtz will use spontaneous ideas from workshop attendees to create a story any agent would drool to read. We'll activate the Story Map, a relational storytelling model, to show the group in real time how a story works and how easy it is to go from first concept to full draft.

Modern readers want to immerse themselves in your story, to feel what the characters see and feel. This class will extend the common exhortation of “show, don’t tell” to the idea of “inside/outside.” Learn how to bring your reader into the world and emotions of the characters. Come prepared to write.

Debut novelists Nina McConigley (How to Commit a Post Colonial Murder) and Claire Boyles (Appraisals) discuss the road to publication. 

What makes something funny—and why do some jokes land while others fall flat? Join comedian and storyteller Shane Mauss for an insightful and entertaining deep dive into the mechanics of comedy. Blending sharp theory with real-world experience, Shane breaks down the fundamentals of humor—timing, structure, surprise—and how they show up across different formats.
From stand-up and storytelling to social media and infotainment, Shane explores how writing shifts depending on the platform, audience, and intent. Drawing from his own evolving career, he shares what he’s learned along the way—how his voice has changed, what’s worked (and what hasn’t), and how to keep pushing creative boundaries while staying authentic.
Whether you’re a comedian, writer, or just comedy-curious, this lecture offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at the craft from someone actively shaping it. The session will wrap with a Q&A, so come ready with questions and ideas.

With urgency, rappers build dynamic three-dimensional worlds and settings in the small space of a verse and song. How do they do this, and what can we learn from them to change our own writing? We'll watch music videos and analyze lyrics of rap songs to figure out what makes their worlds feel developed and immersive.

Megha Majumdar discusses her newest praiseworthy novel, A Guardian and a Theif with debut novelist Nina McConigley

Join acclaimed author Benjamin Percy to learn how contemporary writers engage plot, character, dialogue, and suspense. Percy's book, Thrill Me, is an urgent and entertaining book on craft that brims with Percy's distinctive blend of anecdotes and advice, all in the service of one dictum: thrill the reader.

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.

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

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.  

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

Fiction workshop with Nina McConigley