Page Lambert: All Things Literary & All Things Natural

At the Tattered Cover signing in Denver last Tuesday night, BK Loren told us that creative nonfiction was a form she only recently discovered.   “I mean, how many people here just rush right out to get the newest nonfiction book?”   Well, apparently dozens of us did that night—at least those of us who loved her recent novel THEFT and hungered for more of her wily take on life. We had come to listen to BK tell labor stories about the birth of ANIMAL MINERAL RADICAL .   Like midwives, we wanted to be present at the birth for that first lungful.   We wanted to see the swaddling cloth wrapped, and unwrapped, and re-wrapped. “Books are about community,” BK said.   “We gather together for books.”   We knew that, of course, but we still nodded our heads and smiled, happy to be there—gathered—eager—expectant.   Friends, fans, family, even perfect strangers—all gathered together.   For a closer look at perfect strangers, read about Ragman in “The Evolution of Hunger” (found in th

If you ever spent a few minutes talking with Gaydell Collier , or heard her read her poignant poetry, or one of her funny essays, or experienced her deep way of listening, or soaked in any of the humble, wise opinions solicited from her, then most likely you loved her too.  Gaydell’s presence is in every nook of my writing office, in every cranny of my heart, in nearly every word I have written in the last 20 years.  Like the thousand winds she wrote about—those which decades ago blew her serendipitously from New York to Wyoming , and those that blew her across the western landscape to Just Beyond Harmony , where she reared her children, planted her roots, sang her songs, wrote her stories, raised her horses, and loved her dogs—she inspired a thousand writers, and more. I first met Gaydell in 1987 when I walked into the little library in Sundance, Wyoming, and she greeted me, handing me the monthly calendar of library events.  “What’s Bearlodge Writers ?” I asked her.