Taos Literary Festival Update
Editor’s Note: The “Taos Writers on Taos” is turning into a transformative event, given the responses and as yet unconfirmed solicitations of writers, who have slipped my mind but been last minute invitees. If you, dear reader and potential audience member, want to learn something of the experience of being a Taoseno or just a human being, this is the place to be, beginning with John Nichols on Friday night: “60 years of typing and they put you on the day shift: five decades of B.S. and counting: my life writing novels, memoirs, screenplays, and embarrassing polemical jeremiads” and ending (maybe) on Sunday night with Sylvia Rodriguez’s “History, Memory, and Querencia,” land, water, and Nuevomexicano identity and attachment to place.
Ultimately, the festival is about the place and people in this isolated enclave what with all its convoluted relationships, simmering feuds, expressions of compassion and mesmerizing attractions, including the flora and fauna. As Hamlet says, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt in your philosophy.” Attend the event (s) and you will believe that Shakespeare must have studied Plutarch’s lives of famous and not-so-famous Taoseños.
Format
We are going to conduct this a bit like an open workshop: Read your most intense passages or passages, five to seven minutes (and not more than 15 minutes). Then one of us will lead a short Q and A, whether about the prose or content and move on. If you receive this tentative schedule and the time suggested or agreed to conflicts, get right back to me, bwhaley@newmex.com and I’ll try to make adjustments.
If we run over in terms of requests, I may double up with some writers, per their permission. The form allows us all to get to know each other better. We realize nobody can stay for the duration but please invite friends and hang around if possible. We’re all in this together. Check out the books for sale.
Thanks. Bill
July 24, Friday Night:
Open 6 PM. Brodsky/Nichols Books on sale.
7:00 PM: Nichols on Deck
July 25, Sat.
10: 12. Booksellers Set Up
12:00 Open
12:30: Fabi Romero: Life in the mountain village of San Cristobal before electricity, telephones, and motor vehicles.
1:00 Martha Grossman: Martha Grossman focuses on a seminal event from her memoir and how her husband of forty-two years left her and she reentered the dating scene at the age of sixty-six.
1:30 pm: Elizabeth Cunningham: “1847: A Tale of Two Sisters and the Taos Revolt”
2:00 pm: Julian Romero: The Taosenos’ Experience of WWII.
2:30 pm: Cindy Brown: From the Taos Hiking Guide, she shares ideas about the trail and the benefits of nature.
3:00 pm: Steve Tapia
3:30 pm: Bob Silver: Commentaries on contemporary Taos life.
4:00 pm: John Farr: “Another Day in Paradise”
4:30 pm: Kika Vargas:
5: 00 pm: Steve Fox: From R.C. Gordon-McCutchan’s book, “The Taos Indians and the Fight for Blue Lake:” i.e. “The Lakers” and 90-year-old Taos Cacique Juan de Dios Romero celebrate a 60-year fight.
5:30 pm: John Suazo: “The Man Who Really Killed the Deer.”
6:00 pm: Richard Trujillo: “From the Tio Zuco Tales”
6:30 pm: Taylor Streit
7:00 pm: Jim Wagner
7:30 pm: Paul O’Connor: Frank Waters.
Rick Richards: TBA
8:00 pm: Bill Whaley: “Tribute to Ruthie”
Sunday PM
12 Noon Book Fair Opens
12:30 Bob Romero
1:00 Trudy Healy
1:30 Jonathan WarmDay Coming
2: 00: Debra Villalobos-Whaley
2:30: Linda Fair
3:00: Kelly Pasholk/Catherine Naylor
3:30. Lynn Robinson: On Walter Chappell
4:00 Debra Diamond
4:30: Anne MacNaughton: From recent works including current collection Kali.
5:00 Meier/Fair
5:30. Phaedra Greenwood
6:00: Fred Dillen: “First chapter of PRUDENCE: “Teenage girl, runaway orphan from blue collar Vermont, comes to ski in remote New Mexico fifty years ago.
6:30: Kay Matthews: Short stories and the story of environmental politics in forest communities.
7:00: Sylvia Rodriguez: “History, Memory, and Querencia,” land, water, and Nuevomexicano identity and attachment to place.
7:30 Q&A Authors Present