When Lynda and I moved to the Cortez, Colorado area in 2012, I quickly perceived, accurately or not, a dearth of what I would characterize as “literary culture.” By that I mean an independent bookstore that hosts readings, a newspaper that features book reviews, a library that proactively promotes writing and the written word. This was in contrast with both our home in California, where I’d served on the board of the Pasadena Public Library Foundation for over twenty years, and our more recent home in Santa Fe which, or so it’s been said, boasts more authors per capita than any city in America.
I’d been one of those authors, or at least I’d aspired to be, as my debut novel Hush Money was but a few months from publication by St. Martin’s Minotaur when Lynda and I planted our flag in McElmo Canyon, which lies south and west of Cortez. Both Hush Money and my second novel, Hard Twisted, published by Bloomsbury, appeared in 2012 – a life-altering combination about which I’ve written here previously. But once that smoke had cleared, and once I’d returned from a whirlwind tour of readings and signings that stretched from Vroman’s in California to the Mysterious Bookshop in New York, I redirected my focus closer to home, and to what I might do to help inculcate, or at least stimulate, a robust and sustainable literary culture here in southwestern Colorado.
Our local monthly newspaper, the Four Corners Free Press, only rarely featured book reviews, and so I approached publisher-editor Gail Binkley and volunteered my services in writing a regular monthly review column. To lighten some of that burden, I enlisted my friend, the Durango-based author Scott Graham, and together Scott and I (later joined by Mancos author Mark Stevens) wrote over seventy review columns, right up until the paper’s final issue in January of 2024.
In addition to that monthly column, which we’d christened “Prose & Cons,” I volunteered to host a series of author events at the Cortez Public Library, including those featuring author friends Jonathan Evison, Beau L’Amour, Vince Lee, and Anne Hillerman. Lastly, and again working with the Cortez Public Library, and with the libraries in Montrose, Moab, Dolores, Mancos, and Ignacio, we inaugurated the six-city “Four Corners/One Book” regional reading program which, in its 2019 pre-Covid incarnation, featured my sixth novel, from Torrey House Press, Church of the Graveyard Saints.
As these initiatives were underway, a small group of local authors began meeting on a monthly basis, first in Cortez, then at the Mancos Public Library, and finally, as the meetings grew both in size and interest, on the third Wednesday evening of every month at Cortez’s delightful ZU Gallery. And thus was born the phenomenon now known as Four Corners Writers.
The stated mission of Four Corners Writers was and is to “identify, develop, and promote literary voices in the American Southwest” by means, initially, of our monthly ZU Gallery workshops, which feature a combination of guest speakers, panels, and open-mic readings, and which regularly draw between twenty and thirty monthly attendees. These events – planned and hosted by a core group of local published authors that include not just me, Scott, and Mark, but also rom-com novelist Bethany Turner, poet-author Lisa C. Taylor, and archeologist-novelist Kevin T. Jones – have served to identify and help develop an enthusiastic, if previously diffuse, cadre of local poets and writers. More importantly, they’ve served as a much-needed spiritual hub for a diverse group of local writers at various stages of their writing journeys.
Identify? Check. Develop? Check. But what about promote?
Enter the LOR Foundation which, aided by the City of Cortez’s Public Arts Advisory Committee, offered grant funding for projects designed “to make Cortez an amazing place to call home.” Seizing upon that opportunity in the spring of 2024, I applied for, and Four Corners Writers was ultimately awarded, a generous grant to achieve two key objectives. The first was to formally incorporate FCW and qualify it for tax-exempt status under IRC section 501(c)(3). The second was to publish an anthology of local writing in time for the 2024 Holiday shopping season.
We began the latter task by drafting and publicizing, both at the FCW workshops and via social media, a set of Submission Guidelines for those local writers wishing to offer their work for consideration. We were soon delighted to receive over 140 fabulous submissions, from which the editors – Mark, Lisa, and I – selected twelve short stories, thirteen essays, and twenty-four poems for publication. We concurrently, with the help of Mancos artist Jody Chapel, hosted a cover-art contest that yielded a wonderful image (below) by local photographer Lawrence Blair Goral. And after several months of reading, editing, proofreading, and making innumerable design and marketing decisions, we proudly published Four Corners Voices: Stories, Poetry, Essays in mid-December of 2024, on time and under budget.
The anthology was a labor of love. None of the editors was paid for any of the yeoman work they performed. Nearly all the selected works appear in the anthology for the very first time, with many of the featured writers earning their first-ever publishing credits. And with public readings currently scheduled for the Sunflower Theatre in Cortez (on January 25th), Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, and the Dolores Public Library, many will have the novel and invaluable experience of reading their works aloud before a live audience.
We hope that Four Corners Voices will be joined by a second, sister anthology in 2025. That will depend on sales, and you can help turn that vision, and all of FCW’s ongoing efforts, into reality by ordering your copy of the anthology here, or wherever books are sold.
Thank you for your support!
