Author
Shelley Read is a fifth generation Coloradoan who lives with her family in the Elk Mountains of the Western Slope. She was a Senior Lecturer at Western Colorado University for nearly three decades, where she taught writing, literature, environmental studies, and Honors, and was a founder of the Environment & Sustainability major and a support program for first-generation and at-risk students. Shelley holds degrees in writing and literary studies from the University of Denver and Temple University’s Graduate Program in Creative Writing. She is a regular contributor to Crested Butte Magazine and Gunnison Valley Journal, and has written for the Denver Post and a variety of publications. She is a mom, mountaineer, world traveler, and lover of small creatures and old dogs. Go as a River is her first novel.
In this interview, Shelley and I discuss Go as a River, the kernel of inspiration that sparked the story, her love of nature and wilderness, grief and how she explores it in her writing, connecting with others through grief, her …