Our workaday world is so minutely mapped and Googled that we sometimes forget just how much of it was, until fairly recently, unknown and feared — particularly the sea, home of seals mistaken for mermaids and even more fantastic creatures: the sea serpent and the kraken, whales as big as…
Nuclear warfare, biological warfare, meteor impact, global pandemic, global warming, supervolcano, alien invasion, zombie apocalypse… sharknado? All are theoretical ways that human civilization could meet its demise. And while all are gruesome, most would allow the human race to depart Earth with at least a strand of dignity still attached…
Reading is about more than following a narrative or learning facts; it can also be a profound shared experience that culminates in a better understanding of ourselves and each other. In that spirit, welcome to the Westword Book Club, a weekly feature celebrating the books that inspire Denver artists.
Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series are only a small sample of the top 100 banned or challenged books of the past decade. Banning books might sound like a problem of the past, but there are still attempts to…
What helped Rebecca Rosen out of her deep depression wasn’t Zoloft or visits to a therapist. It was guidance from her dead grandmother. The then-college student prayed for help and started communicating with the beyond, which led her to write her first book and heal herself. Since then, Rosen has…
When indie rapper Mac Lethal launched a Tumblr blog to share the profanity laced, English-challenged, semi-delusional text messages that his cousin Bennett sent him, he had no idea it would become such a phenomenon. Now, three years and several million pageviews later, the site has evolved into Texts from Bennett,…
Not the average self-help guru, rock-and-roller Kerry Pastine found that after tapping into her own best self, she was able to show others how to do the same. A life coach for close to two decades and lead singer of The Informants, Pastine recently penned and self-published Know Thyself, a…
While researching his new book on Charles Manson, Jeff Guinn was surprised to learn that the criminal sociopath’s explanation for the Tate-LaBianca murders, which he instructed his “family” of followers to commit, was nothing new. Through interviews with new sources, including Manson’s sister and cousin, Guinn discovered that even as…
Denver’s two premier adult slam-poetry teams — Slam Nuba and the Mercury Cafe, both national winners in years past — have started their weeklong journey toward possible glory in Boston, where the 2013 National Poetry Slam is under way. But here in town, their youthful counterpart, Minor Disturbance, is already…
When Ann Bolinger-McQuade went to get a mammogram in 1986, she wasn’t prompted by her doctor or any signals from the rational world. She was prompted by pure intuition, which turned out to be correct: She had breast cancer. Due to early detection, though, the cancer was treatable. Bolinger-McQuade’s new…
Civic Center Eats will sport a very tasty addition today: DPL Connect, a tricked-out trike that peddles (and pedals) a collection of free books (tomes being purged from the collection) and also serves up a wi-fi hot spot. The book bike made its debut yesterday on the Garden Block of…
First Friday in Denver can be quite a show, especially on Santa Fe Drive — and Westword photographer Danielle Lirette was there on Friday night to document the scene. Below is a sampling of the scenes she snapped; see the full gallery here: First Friday on Denver’s Art District on…
It was the urgency of preserving art that inspired Anne Waldman’s newest book. The visionary poet, activist, and co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University was working on transferring the school’s collection of fragile tapes of performances by artists like John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, and…
Erica Walker Adams is a singular talent with a fascinating hybrid of interests and opinions. Her book, The Mutation of Fortune, available from The Green Lantern Press, a series of related tales that infuse fairy tale archetypes with new energy and focus on a refreshingly capable young female protagonist. In addition to her ongoing work on a follow-up book, Adams offers Tarot card readings and serves as the co-host of Tarot social central. This week, Westword caught up with Adams to discuss her authorial influences, her first exposure to Tarot and why she believes in faeries.
Dead-eyed, sore-covered and mindless, wandering an urban wasteland driven by an insatiable hunger, methamphetamine addicts are the closest real-world equivalent to fiction’s zombies. So what happens if you take those tweakers and make them the sole survivors in a world overrun by actual undead? That’s the premise of Colorado author…
Mario Acevedo is a local author whose 2007 debut novel The Nymphos of Rocky Flats introduced readers to Felix Gomez, an war veteran turned undead gumshoe, and was touted as one of the best new books by a Colorado author in the august pages of Westword that year. Since then, Acevedo has published 4 more Gomez novels, and has just recently co-authored an e-book about an international ponzi scheme called Good Money Gone. I recently met up with Acevedo, a fellow dog owner, to discuss his literary influences, his career, and the community of Colorado writers at Three Dogs Tavern, where we watched our own dogs tentatively befriend one another on the patio out front.
In his new book, Charles F. Price illuminates one of Colorado’s most unsettling and violent stories: the tale of the “Bloody Espinosas.” Through careful research, Price tells the story of the three Hispanic outlaws in 1863 whose goal was to kill every Anglo in the Colorado Territory; they were responsible…
Mother Prioress Dolores Hart may be the most famous nun in America. Born Dolores Hicks, her effortless good looks and girl-next-door charm won her a part — as Dolores Hart — alongside Elvis in 1957’s Loving You. And as the cool-headed leader of a gaggle of thrill-seeking co-eds in the…
Temple Grandin was diagnosed with autism in 1950. And as she explains, that was a good time to be diagnosed: just a decade later, the conversation about the neural development disorder turned to blaming mothers for their children’s different patterns of thinking. But Grandin’s different patterns of thinking has resulted…
Colorado Humanities and the Center for the Book have announced the winners of the 22nd annual Colorado Book Awards from 170 entries, and “the level of talent in Colorado is astonishing,” says Christine Goff, Colorado Book Awards coordinator. The talent includes former Westword staff writer Harrison Candelarie Fletcher, whose book…
It seems obvious that Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) liked hats when you think about it; one of the beloved children’s author’s most famous books, after all, has the word in the title. And in the worlds he constructed, where cats wear hats and food takes on unusual color, whimsy…
In the basement of the Park Hill Community Bookstore, the volunteers who work there have written the opening lines of their favorite books on a yellow door. It’s a daily reminder of the importance of literature — and the reason they decided to donate their time and energy in the…
