Laura Pritchett
Laura Pritchett's newest novel, Playing with {Wild}Fire (Torrey House, 2024), recounts the moments leading up to an evacuation due to a megafire in a small community in Colorado. She’s the author of six other novels: Three Keys (Ballantine, 2024), The Blue Hour (Counterpoint, 2017), Red Lightning (Counterpoint, 2015) Stars Go Blue (Counterpoint, 2014), Sky Bridge (Milkweed Editions, 2009), and Hell's Bottom, Colorado (Milkweed Editions, 2001).
Known for championing the complex and contemporary West, giving voice to the working class, and re-writing the “Western,” her books have garnered the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the WILLA, the High Plains Book Award, several Colorado Book Awards, and others.
She’s also the author of one play, two nonfiction books, and editor of three environmental-based anthologies.
She developed and directs the MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University, one of the few in the nation with a focus on environmental and place-based writing.
She earned her Ph.D. from Purdue University.
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, O Magazine, Salon, High Country News, The Millions, Publisher’s Weekly, The Sun, Brain, Child, and many others.
She is also known for her environmental stewardship, particularly in regard to land preservation and river health. You can find out more at her website www.laurapritchett.com or www.makingfriendswithdeath.com
“And I bet it's harder than people think, isn't it? Everything looks so simple from a distance. Then, the more you look, the more you see. And that's when you have to rise to the challenge.”
“I'll figure out how to be truer: to let people go if they need to be let go of, and to hold on tight if that's what's called for. I will pay attention, so I can cross each human heart that comes across my path, cross it as true as I can.”
“For some reason I believed that if you fell in love it was a guaranteed thing that your path would cross with his, and I never wondered how if would feel to fall in love with a man whose future just couldn't include you.”
“Only in a place like this do earth and sky come together in such a way that they bridge into one, and in such a place a person could put up her arms and find herself in heaven.”
“And isn't it funny how if one person speaks for real, then the other person can too? We just did that. We just became friends. It's just a matter of finding the right person and crossing that barrier together, almost like you're holding hands, but really you're holding the most tender place inside you.”
“I think humans are only capable of small moments of honesty. Then they get tired and back away. It's something to foster, this ability to keep it for longer. How to keep being honest and aware.”
“If you can't get what you want, you end up doing something else, just to get some relief. Just to keep from going crazy. Because when you're sad enough, you look for ways to fill you up.”
“Because the difference between a friend and a real friend is that you and the real friend come from the same territory, of the same place deep inside you, and that means you see the world in the same kind of way. You know each other even before you do.”
“Art is what gets us beyond what is real. It makes reality more real. It also shortens the distance we gotta travel to see how connected we are. ”
“You got to start thinking, and you've got to let go of the idea that you're something special to somebody, because none of us are, and if you don't, if you don't stop dreaming about that, you're going to end up all snap-snap-snapped to pieces.”