This week’s cover story, “Hip-hop 101,” describes a new venture by CU-Boulder English Professor and Anthology of Rap co-editor Adam Bradley: A “Hip-Hop in the Classroom” program based at Montbello High School, the far northeast Denver school in the midst of a drastic turnaround plan. The story focuses on one…
What do Miami Herald columnists do when they’re bored? They write books, of course, and not necessarily ones that reflect their journalistic oeuvres. Like Carl Hiaasen before him, Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Dave Barry chooses to spin comic thrillers with plenty of Florida color. But given Barry’s proclivity for being funny,…
After 33 years, Boulder’s Left Hand Books is closing its doors. Since it was founded in 1979, the bookstore has offered alternative books and periodicals by such noted authors such as Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky. According to Louise Knapp, a member of the bookstore collective, closing the store became…
Tired of zombies and vampires hogging all the apocalyptic fiction fun? Local author Travis Heermann agrees, so he’s pushing werewolves to the center stage in his new novel The Wild Boys. The timeless shapeshifters of the book come to life thanks to a bioengineered plague that tilts the balance of…
Denver’s vibrant slam poetry community has deep roots. Minor Disturbance is where the youngest poets grow into their words — poets like former East High student Libby Olga Howard, who’s gone on to find her future at Lewis and Clark College. Howard, a Minor Disturbance mainstay of a few years…
“The things we fear about poetry are the things that are good about poetry.” — Jake Adam York Those words inspired me as a dabbler in poems, though the genteel poet and educator Jake Adam York, who died unexpectedly yesterday of a stroke, couldn’t have known that about me. And…
Tired of nativity scenes and that jolly old man in the red suit? Looking for a new way to celebrate the holidays, maybe one that’s full of horrors from beyond time and space? You’re in luck: The H.P. Lovecraft Holiday Special that opens tomorrow at Wesley Chapel in Boulder should…
Noir fiction is full of seedy bars where desperate people make bad decisions to do worse things to each other. So it makes sense that if you want to offer a place for noir writers to read their work and interact with the public, you’ll skip the bookstore and go…
Zombie lit has exploded in the past decade, with the undead menace making its way into everything from award-winning graphic novels (The Walking Dead) to mash-ups with the classics (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies). It’s only natural, then, that the zombie is making its way into the corporate world through…
When worldwide walker and Coloradan Polly Letofsky decided to take a hike, she covered 14,000 or so miles, with the goal of spreading awareness about breast cancer. Sometimes the challenges and hardships of the journey might have taken her off course philosophically, but now that she’s been back a while…
Ken Foster loves pit bulls — and he wants you to have the chance to do that, too. With his new book, I’m a Good Dog, Foster is on a mission to show readers that contrary to popular belief, pit bulls are some of the most loyal, loving — and…
Richard Melnick was diagnosed with cancer a dozen years ago. While fighting a life-threatening illness and facing what could have been a premature death sentence, though, he discovered a new way of viewing the world. One of the subjects he often pondered while in medical limbo was parenting, which he…
From Ernest Hemingway frequenting the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris to Allen Ginsberg and the beat poet’s relationship to City Lights in San Francisco, authors have long had intimate collaborations with the stores that sell their books. My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read and Shop…
French illustrator Serge Bloch has illustrated more than 300 books, his editorial illustrations appear regularly in several newspapers around the world, and two of his book series have been turned into animated series. Starting at 11:45 a.m Sunday, November 4, the Denver FilmCenter will be screening a series of Bloch’s…
The 2012 High Plains Book Awards were announced last Saturday at the Yellowstone Art Museums in Billings, Montana, and winners included a hometown heroine: Jenny Shanks, who took Best Fiction honors for The Ringer. Shanks, who lives in Boulder, loosely based her book on the 1999 slaying of Ismael Mena,…
Is there life after death? After eighteen years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit, most of them spent in the debilitating confines of death row, Damien Echols plans to find out. In 1993 Echols, then eighteen, and two other Arkansas teenagers were arrested and charged with the murders…
The Tarot is often seen as an obscure art, but Tarot Life Cards: Using Your Birthday to Chart Your Course, by Connie Lehman and Irene Clurman, makes it more accessible. Lehman has been drawing, sculpting, embroidering and curating in Colorado for decades. In 2004 she began illustrating Tarot cards for…
Local author (and Watercourse Foods owner) Daniel Landes will be signing copies of his new book, Joonie and the Great Harbinger Stampede, tonight at 7:30 p.m. at Tattered Cover LoDo. Portions of the novel, which features art by local painter Ravi Zupa, will be familiar to diners who’ve frequented WaterCourse…
Women are natural born leaders, according to Alexia Parks; in fact, she says, female leadership could save the world. Parks will talk about this theory and the science behind her book Hardwired: The 10 Major Traits of Women Hardwired by Evolution That Can Save the World tonight at 7 p.m…
Twelve years ago, Shaun Daggett was at a job interview in Colorado Springs, and although he declined the position, the company told him to think about it for a while — a suggestion that ended up changing his life. With time to kill before his plane took off, Daggett decided…
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released five years ago, ending an adored, epic series that kept devoted fans buried in books for almost ten years. Tomorrow, J.K Rowling’s first “adult” novel, The Casual Vacancy, will finally be available. Will the magic and mystery that Rowling fans have come…
In Rudy Ch. Garcia’s debut novel, The Closet of Discarded Dreams, a man awakens in a strange, surreal world made up of dreams — his own, and everyone else’s. In this bizarre place, Che Guevara and Marilyn Monroe debate philosophy and no one ever dies, but not everything is as…
