March 20:

Host Hillary Leftwich! Hillary Leftwich grew up in Colorado Springs where Focus on the Family reigns supreme and Ted Haggard is currently hiding in his closet. Still. She survived Christian school where brainwashed fanatical classmates failed to save her soul and forced her to play Satan in the school play. Her English teacher accused her of practicing witchcraft (true) and playing Dungeons and Dragons during lunch when really all she was doing was listening to The Melvins and writing strange stories that made her classmates feel “weird.” She later won the Colorado Young Writers Award and felt vindicated. She is co-host for At the Inkwell Denver and recently graduated with her MFA from Regis University. Her first book is forthcoming from Civil Coping Mechanisms (CCM) in 2019.

Featuring Erika T. Wurth! Erika T. Wurth’s publications include a novel, Crazy Horse’s Girlfriend, two collections of poetry and a collection of short stories, Buckskin Cocaine. Her novel You Who Enter Here is forthcoming from SUNY. A writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, she teaches creative writing at Western Illinois University and has been a guest writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including Boulevard, Drunken Boat, The Writer’s Chronicle, Waxwing and The Kenyon Review. She is represented by Peter Steinberg. She is Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee and was raised outside of Denver.

Featuring Jay Halsey! Jay Halsey’s poems and photos have been published online and in print. He has held three featured art openings along the Front Range and his performances include reading for Don’t Yell at Me, At the Inkwell Denver, Punketry, and The Wilder Variety Hour. His photography has been used as covers for three poetry collections and featured in fundraising campaigns for the Rocky Mountain Land Library in Fairplay, Colorado. At 19 years old he flipped his junker Camaro into a crowded gas station after crossing into oncoming traffic, climbed out unscathed, then went home and climbed into bed. Since then he’s worked as a champion for those worse off than he, explored and recorded desolate places absent of people, and written of times bad and good and everything in between.

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