The 1st Annual
August 8-10, 2025
In Beautiful Cedaredge, Colorado
Shelley Read
Shelley Read’s international bestselling debut novel, Go As A River, has been translated into thirty-four languages and is in development for film with Mazur Kaplan Productions. Winner of the High Plains Book Award for Fiction and the Reading the West Award for Best Debut, Go As A River is also a Sunday Times bestseller, Goodreads Choice Award Finalist, Amazon Editor's Pick Best Debut, Indie Next Pick, and Colorado Public Radio Books We Love selection, among other national and international accolades.
Shelley was an award-winning Senior Lecturer at Western Colorado University for nearly three decades where she taught writing, literature, environmental studies, and honors. She is a mom, mountaineer, world traveler, and fifth generation Coloradan who lives with her family in the Elk Mountains of the Western Slope.
Wendy Videlock
Wendy Videlock lives on the outskirts of Palisade at the foot of The Grand Mesa. She's authored five books of poetry, a children's book and a collection of essays. Her work appears most notably in Best American Poetry, the New York Times, Poetry Magazine, Hudson Review, Rattle and O Magazine. Wendy is the winner of the Keats Soul Making Prize, The PTB Sonnet Prize, The AMP Sonnet Prize, the Fisher Prize and the Cantor Prize. Her syndicated newspaper column, The Barefoot Laureate, appears across the Four Corner states.
Wendy also teaches for THINK360 and directs several literary programs across the region, advocating for the arts in public spaces. Wendy serves as poet laureate of Western Colorado. Learn more HERE.
Dr. Timothy Winegard
Dr. Timothy C. Winegard is a New York Times bestselling author of six books including The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity (2024) and The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator (2019). His works have been published globally in more than fifteen languages. He holds a PhD from the University of Oxford, served as an officer in the Canadian and British Armies, and has appeared on numerous documentaries, television programs, and podcasts.
Dr. Winegard is an Associate Professor of History at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction. As a true Canadian, he is also the head coach of Colorado Mesa University's Hockey Team. Visit his Colorado Mesa University information page:
www.coloradomesa.edu/directory/social-behavioral-sciences/timothy-winegard.html
Christie Aschwanden
Christie Aschwanden is author of the New York Times bestseller, Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn From the Strange Science of Recovery, co-host of Emerging Form, a show about the creative process airing on KVNF, and host and producer of UNCERTAIN, a podcast from Scientific American. She’s the former lead science writer at FiveThirtyEight and was previously a health columnist for The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Wired, Smithsonian, Slate, Popular Science,
Discover, Science and Nature.She’s received fellowships from the Santa Fe Institute, the Carter Center and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. She was a National Magazine Award finalist in 2011 and has received numerous prizes including a National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Award, an Information is Beautiful Award and a AAAS Kavli Science Journalism prize.
Kierstin B Bridger
Kierstin Bridger is a Colorado writer with two published poetry books, including the 2017 Women Writing the West's Willa Award-winning book, Demimonde (Lithic Press.) She’s won the Mark Fischer Poetry Prize, the ACC Writer's Studio prize, and the Fortnight Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Manchester Poetry Competition in the UK. Her essays and poetry have been published in POETRY Magazine, NYQ, Twenty Bellows, December Magazine, PBQ, and Hobart Pulp.
She co-directed the Open Bard Poetry Series in Ridgway and co-hosted the Poetry Voice podcast with Uche Obuji before moving to the banks of the San Juan River. She earned my MFA from Pacific University. KierstinBridger.com
Terri Benson
A life-long writer, Terri is traditionally- and self-published in novel length, with many award-winning articles and short stories published. For seven years, she served as education chair for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers (RMFW.) She remains a member of RMFW as well as Sisters in Crime and Rocky Mountain Mystery Writers. She presents workshops and teaches night classes at Colorado Mesa University Tech in Grand Junction. She works at a non-profit community foundation and, when not writing, she enjoys camping, hiking, and gardening.
For more information, go to www.terribensonwriter.com.
Sara Frances
Sara Frances self-defines as a photojournalist-poet with a personal storytelling mission. After five decades as a professional photographer, her own hybrid style blends image and text. She has spent more than a decade learning the complexities and conventions of independent publishing from a manuscript proposal to a shelf-ready 4-color presentation. Her MA (Comparative Literature) is balanced by her professional photographic association degrees including a credential as a Master Photographic Craftsman. She moderates virtual panel discussions of art and community for the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, New Mexico.
Sara is also a board member of the newly rebranded Collective of Independent Publishers and Authors, home of the CIPA EVVY book awards. A graduate of Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Poetry Collective, she judges both book content and design for CIPA as well as the Independent Book Publishers Association, New Mexico Book Association, and Colorado Authors League. Her recent coffee table book, Unplugged Voices: 125 Tales of Art and Life from Northern New Mexico, the Four Corners and the West, has won 10 book awards.
Cindi Myers
Cindi Myers became one of the most popular people in eighth grade when she and her best friend wrote a torrid historical romance and circulated it among their peers. Fame was short-lived, however; the English teacher confiscated the manuscript and advised her to concentrate on learning to properly diagram a sentence. From this humbling beginning, she has gone on to write more than 100 published novels that have been translated into more than a dozen languages and distributed all over the world.
Her books have been praised for their emotion, humor and realistic characters. She writes stories about relationships that matter, whether the subject is friendship, families, or the love between a man and a woman.
Donald Paul Benjamin
Donald Paul Benjamin is an American novelist with accolades from Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and the New Mexico Book Association. His primary work is the Four Corners Mystery Series. His most recent novel is Mountain: A Cautionary Tale, a dystopian history. In addition to his writing career, he also works as a freelance journalist, cartoonist, and photographer. A U.S. Army veteran, he served as a military journalist, including a tour in Korea.
He resides in Cedaredge where he and his wife, Donna Marie, operate Elevation Press of Colorado, a service which helps independent authors publish their works. For more information, visit https://elevationpressbooks.wordpress.com/
J. Warren Weaver
Born into the wonder of the Colorado mountains, J. Warren has always had a love for nature's beauty and the solitude of the middle of nowhere. Inspired to write at a young age, J. Warren has committed his life to the pursuit of telling immersive and compelling stories in a number of mediums.
J. Warren Weaver is an award-winning international bestselling author who lives in small town Colorado. He enjoys the bountiful great outdoors with his wife, daughter, and one of his three dogs.
When his daughter isn’t demanding his every attention, he writes edge-of-your-seat thrillers, with thought-provoking mysteries.
Pam Chiaro (writing as PK Stuart)
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Pam is a fourth generation western Colorado native, a voracious reader and an author who (at least for now) writes contemporary romantic fantasy. She creates character driven stories that blend magic, suspense, and romance with touches of humor. Pam is on the executive board of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and truly values being part of a strong writing community. After living in the southeast for a decade, she is thrilled to be back enjoying the beauty and western culture of the Colorado Rockies.
When not writing, you'll find her hiking, biking, floating rivers, or exploring archaeological sites in the Four Corners region—proving that active, outdoor-loving women absolutely read and write romance. Connect with her at: https://linktr.ee/pkstuart