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The Official Bio Laura Pritchett is the author of a novel, Sky Bridge (winner of the WILLA Literary Award and finalist for the Dublin International Award and the Colorado Book Award) and a collection of short stories, Hell's Bottom, Colorado (winner of the PEN USA award and the Milkweed National Fiction Prize). Pritchett is co-editor of two books: Home Land: Ranching and a West that Works and The Pulse of the River: Colorado Writers Speak for the Endangered Cache la Poudre. Her third collection, The Gleaners: Eco-Essays on Recycling, Re-Use, and Living Lightly on the Land, is due out in Spring 2009. Pritchett's work has also appeared in numerous magazines, including The Sun, Orion, High Country News, High Desert Journal, Natural Resources Journal, Colorado Review, 5280, and the books Comeback Wolves: Western Writers Welcome the Wolf Home and Social Issues Firsthand: The Environment. Pritchett received her B.A. and M.A. in English at Colorado State University and her Ph.D. in Contemporary American Literature/Creative Writing at Purdue University. She is a board member of the Rocky Mountain Land Library and the Colorado Art Ranch, teaches occasional writing courses, and is a freelance writer. Pritchett has had work nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has served as the judge for several literary contests, including the 2005 PEN USA Award for Fiction. She is currently finishing three books: a new novel entitled Blue Moon Mountain, a memoir called The Normal One, and an anthology about sex and nature. She lives in Colorado, near the small cattle ranch where she was raised. Of Hell's Bottom, critics have had this to say: Booklist writes, "Pritchett excels at juxtaposing the sensuous with the severe, the rapturous with the repugnant." Kirkus notes that the book "vividly conveys a world where decency and humanity are challenged repeatedly, and diminished, yet still manage to gain small, significant victories." Publisher's Weekly writes that "Pritchett¹s debut is an admirable, steely-eyed collection of stories and vignettes featuring a family of ranchers in mountain-shadowed Colorado. . . . Pritchett, raised a rancher herself, writes beautifully about the hard work and casual cruelty of ranch life. . . . Fans of Annie Proulx's Close Range and Jon Billman's When We Were Wolves should enjoy this visceral, accomplished collection." The Rocky Mountain News says that the book "displays the talent of a brilliant, new writer." This collection of short stories was also a recommended title in "Book Sense 76," the publication of independent booksellers. Publisher's Weekly calls Sky Bridge a "compassionate, finely observed first novel" and Bookslist writes, "In this spare yet haunting portrait of the American West, Pritchett's powerful, poetic voice speaks with clarity, wisdom, and passion about country, family, and one young woman's majestic spirit." Library Journal calls it a "captivating novel" that "offers a gritty but redeeming picture of a family that never quite lets go of hope, and characters who are not soon forgotten."This book was picked as a "Top Ten Books of the Year" by School Library Journal. Of Home Land, Linda Hasselstrom writes, "Here in Home Land are all the reasons rural and urban people need to recall that we both love the same land. Reading the pages of this aptly named book, people who work the land and people who visit it can remember our shared heritage, and see ways we might work together to care for our West. We share the West's present, and it's time we started working together on its future." Ed Marston adds, "Trust me: This is not a collection of essays. It is a string of pearls. This book throbs with the beating heart of the West." Gary Nabhan says, "The future of the working landscapes in the West is at stake; the rest of the West will be a mere facade without them. The publication of this Home Land anthology, with its focus on the sustainability of ranch lands in the region, will go a long way toward moving the discussion and the practice of land stewardship in the right direction. These essays are 'keepers'; not a one should be culled from the herd." Of Pulse of the River, Charles Wilkinson writes, "The Poudre now faces all the West's classic wrecking forces-dams, diversions, and plain neglect-and they can ruin this life force before we know it. Read Pulse of the River and let these writers take you to their river. My guess it that it will fuel a passion to honor a magical place that needs and deserves our help" Stephen Trimble writes, "Gary Wockner and Laura Pritchett have skillfully gathered these essays and poems and sent them purling downstream to readers, in hopes that all of us will learn to love this threatened river enough to save it." George Sibley says, "This is a book with all the blessed diversity of the Cache la Poudre itself, moving through all the wildlands and farmlands, uplands and flatlands of nature and human nature conjoined."Laura
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