Writer in Residence

WOLVERINE FARM WRITERS IN RESIDENCE

Wolverine Farm Publishing and Wolverine Farm Letterpress and Publick House strive to be valuable resources for local writers of all genres. In order to better serve the writing community and encourage individual authors and poets to interact with one another and build a strong network, we present the Writer in Residence (WIR) program. Each month we select a local writer who agrees to be present and in good writing form at the Publick House throughout the month, and to perform a free, public, in-house reading or workshop.

 

2019 WRITERS IN RESIDENCE

JANUARY Joshua Zaffos

Joshua Zaffos is a reporter and writer in Fort Collins, and also an instructor of environmental communications and journalism at Colorado State University. His work, covering the environment, science, and culture across the West and beyond, has appeared in High Country News, Audubon, Slate, Wired, Yale Environment 360, Hakai, and many other national and local outlets. Web: joshuazaffos.com Twitter: @jzaffos

 

FEBRUARY Sarah Paige Ryan

Sarah Paige Ryan writes fiction and nonfiction about all the stuff that sparks wonder. She has published a camping guidebook, a memoir, and short stories and magazine articles about everything from cellular clocks to climate change. Her heart is in kidlit, and she’s hard at work on picture books, a YA novel, and a chapter book series. Hopefully, she’ll be able to invite ya’ll to a book release party someday. Web: https://sarahpaigeryan.com/

Special Event: 

Picture Book Party
March 10th, 3-5pm
 
Calling all kids and picture book lovers! Have you always wanted to try writing a picture book, but you’re not sure where to begin? Join us for an afternoon of inspiration and laughter, and leave with your very own first draft. We’ll talk about the picture book fiction genre, main characters, and story arcs. We’ll swap ideas, write stories, and share drafts. No experience necessary, and no art skills needed. Best for ages 8 and up. Hosted by Writer in Residence Sarah Paige Ryan.

MARCH Elaine Wall

Elaine Wall  has degrees in economics and accounting, which she does not use. Her writing has been read by her friend, Melissa, who likes it quite a bit, and her parents and brother and sister-in-law, who are sort of meh about it. Her wife and kids are her greatest pride. But she would like to win a fancy literary prize one day—a Pulitzer or the Man Booker Prize, say—so as to flip the bird at the haters. Yes, her family, too. Because, can you imagine the Thanksgiving after that went down? They’d be eating crow. Instead of turkey, she means. Or, in her brother’s case, Tofurky. So, he’ll be eating a soy-based crow substitute instead—“croy,” let’s call it. She believes the Wolverine Farm Writer in Residence program is the first step toward her goals of limitless adoration and world domination.

Elaine writes fiction—the science kind, mostly—has written three novels, and many poems.

APRIL Ally Eden

Ally Eden is a writer and photographer based out of Fort Collins.  You can catch her live at coffee shops, slam competitions, or late at night in damp grassy knolls where street cats congregate.  When she’s not narrating her own stories, she’s relaying them for others as an English/Spanish interpreter.  Ally also speaks, dances, plays and performs under the moniker Gato Hato.  Check out her spoken word album,Aullar, on gatohato.bandcamp.com or follow her photography @gato_hato on IG and at allyeden.com.

Special Event:

Dabble in the Dark: a communal writing experience on May Day (May 1st). We’ll hear micro-fiction that finds levity in the occult, taboo, perverse and unseen, as well as write some together based on prompts. Darkness: it’s not just for Halloween!

May 1st, 7:30-9pm

MAY John Staughton

John Staughton is a writer, editor, photographer and publisher with roots in Chicago, an address in Colorado, and pieces of his heart scattered across the world. He often feels that half his life is spent on rootless wanders, slowing time in forgotten diners and mountain vistas, flinging into foreign cities, and embracing the liminal space of transport hubs (from country gas pumps to international airports) where transience reigns.
The other half is the work, of course, the sitting quiet and digesting what the brain has tucked away, the writing, the blank pages, reconnecting with beautifools and building community, seeking out laughter and flesh, the squeezing of good blood from stone, the caffeination and self-examination and the months of words between the weeks of gleeful lostness.
Fortunately, these two lifestyles blur like passing clouds and highway signs. Those muddled moments of transition, between solitude and not, have been the mystery fuel behind his writing in recent years. The work exorcises his struggles with aloneness, from the sacred joys of empty space to the lethal moments of mental isolation, and will culminate in a short story collection to be released in 2019 titled “Saudade: Singing for the Echoes”.
You can find examples of John’s work, including fiction, poetry, essays and photography, in publications like Stain’d, The First Line and Sheriff Nottingham.
Special Event: TBA!

2018 WRITERS IN RESIDENCE

JANUARY Michael Bussmann

Michael Bussmann was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1978. He is a now an adult-aged-person living in Northern Colorado. His work can be read in printed places like The Matter Journal, The Front Range Review, The Poetic Inventory of Rocky Mountain National Park and some other places too.

Special Event: January 18th with Franklin K. R. Cline.

 

FEBRUARY Rico Moore

Rico Moore’s journalistic work is presently focused on investigating and telling the stories of human impacts on wildlife and their habitats in Colorado, with particular emphasis on good governance, particularly at the state level, state and regional environmental agencies, the fossil fuel industry, ecology, conservation biology, climate change, and advocacy.

Rico completed an interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus on critical theory and literature at CU-Boulder. His graduate work, a Masters of Fine Arts in poetry at CSU-Fort Collins, investigated the role and function of language in poetry as it establishes and mediates relationships between people and the natural world. And along with experience working in the sciences, conservation and advocacy, he is well-positioned to report on complex, interrelated and evolving stories that impact the living earth and our relationship with it. Rico is also a fifth generation northern Coloradan and an avid outdoorsman, hunting and fly-fishing since youth. He lives with his wife and their cat in Fort Collins.

Special Events: February 2nd, First Friday at the Farm & February 5, Pub Talk with Wildlife Journalist Rico Moore

MARCH Sue Ring deRosset

Sue Ring deRosset, MA-CNF, is a teacher and editor and the author of The Vulture Trees (WFP, 2016). She has taught creative writing workshops at Front Range Community College, Northern Colorado Writers, and Fort Collins’s Book Fest. In 2010 she was the managing editor of Matter journal and a judge for the Anthology category of the Colorado Book Award. Her stories and essays have appeared in the Sun, Wildlife Conservation, Utah Holiday, Matter, Front Range Review, and other national and regional journals and magazines. She lives in Fort Collins, where she is at work on a memoir and a series of novels. Through Draft Horse Writing & Editing Services, Sue Ring deRosset works one-on-one with writers on the Front Range as a creative writing coach, developmental book editor, and copyeditor. Please visit: drafthorsewriting.wordpress.com

Special Event: March 31st Craft Chat! Narrative Arts & Subversive Structures. A free workshop!

APRIL Laura Pritchett

Laura Pritchett is the author of nine books and one play, which premiers at Bas Bleu Theatre in Fort Collins, Co, from April 8 to May 6 (www.basbleu.org for more info). Her work has been the recipient of the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the WILLA, the High Plains Book Award, and others. More at www.laurapritchett.com or www.makingfriendswithdeath.com

Special Event: April 16th Death Prep Extravaganza

MAY Ed Hall

Dr. Ed Hall is an ecologist and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability at Colorado State University. His research covers topics including: the causes and consequences of microbial biomass; and the interactive human and natural dimensions of tropical watersheds. His primary study site is Lake Yojoa, a lake located in the highlands of central Honduras that has had human inhabitants for 4500 years. As a writer in residence at WFP Ed is exploring different ways of knowing and understanding through meditation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the scientific method. He will give a short reading and lecture to the public later this year titled, “How do we know: the value of objective and subjective approaches to learning and knowing.”

JUNE Jason Hardung

Jason Hardung’s work has or will appear in many journals and magazines including: Cimarron Review, 3AM, Monkey Bicycle, Evergreen Review, Entropy, The Common, Metazen, Word Riot, and The New York Quarterly. He has two books of poetry out on Epic Rites Press and Lummox Press. In 2013 he was named Poet Laureate of Fort Collins. Sometimes he teaches the therapeutic value of poetry to teenagers in juvenile detention facilities and rehabs in Colorado, based on his own struggles with the justice system, drug addiction and mental illness.

Special Event: June 29th, Local Literary Magic: Four Poets

JULY Jack Martin

Jack Martin lives in Fort Collins and teaches high school in Arvada, CO. He received his MFA at CSU. His poems have appeared in many journals including Ploughshares, Agni, Georgia Review, and Matter; and most recently in North American Review, Wisconsin Review, Rust+Moth, HCE Review, Diagram, and Tupelo Quarterly. He has poems forthcoming in Matter, Superstition Review, and Ghost Town.

Special Event: July 26th, The Soggy Bottom Rhubarb Boys’ Brimstone and Poetry Extravaganza

AUGUST April Moore

April Moore is Director of Northern Colorado Writers, the author of two books, and a freelance editor. Her first book, Folsom’s 93, is a historical nonfiction about the lives and crimes of Folsom Prison’s executed men and her second, is Bobbing for Watermelons, a novel. She has written for publications and her short stories have appeared in anthologies. April is also a freelance illustrator and often collaborates with other authors on projects. Currently, she is working on a young adult novel.

SEPTEMBER Meg Schiel

Meg Schiel owns the largest collection of Pride and Prejudice in Colorado, loves to run, and adores a black cat named Kippen. She lives just outside city limits with her husband and two children.

OCTOBER Courtney Zenner

Courtney Zenner is a nonfiction writer. She grew up in Colorado, searched the globe for the perfect home, and chose to settle near the Rocky Mountains. She was a Writing Fellow at Barnard College and a Bowie Fellow at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver. Her work has appeared in The Sun and Sabal. She is currently writing a memoir about the legacy of mental illness in her family, a story set in the countryside of Vietnam, a Zen monastery in Southwestern France, the streets of New York City, and the suburbs of Denver. She lives in Fort Collins with her family.