Three long-time friends and colleagues converge to share their work.

Art Beck will be reading from his latest book, Angel Rain, Poems 1977-2020 (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2022). He received the Northern California Book Award for poetry in translation for his book Opera Omnia Luxorius, a Duet for Sitar and Trombone (Otis Books/Seismicity 2012). His Mea Roma (Shearsman Books, 2018) a “meditative sampling” of Martial epigrams, was a runner up in the American Literary Translators Association’s 2018 Cliff Becker Book Prize. His Etudes, a Rilke Recital (Shanti Arts 2020) was a finalist in the 2021 NCBA.

Denise Low, Ph.D., is a former Kansas Poet Laureate. Her essays about surviving COVID-19 are in Jigsaw Puzzling (Meadowlark Press, 2022). She won the a Red Mountain Press award for Shadow Light: Poems. Other publications are the memoir, The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival (Univ. of Nebraska Press); Wing: Poems (Red Mountain, Hefner Heitz Award finalist); Casino Bestiary (Spartan). She has won four Kansas Notable Book Awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. At Haskell Indian Nations University, she founded the creative writing program. She teaches for Baker University’s School of Professional and Graduate Studies. Board memberships include Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po) and formerly, Associated Writers and Writing Programs (board president, diversity committee, Writer’s Chronicle contributing editor). Her heritage includes Northern European and Lenape/Munsee (Delaware) heritage. She lives in California’s Sonoma County with her husband, the author Tom Weso. www.deniselow.net

As for Art Goodtimes, retired in 2016 after five terms as Colorado’s only Green Party county commissioner. He’s won numerous awards for his political activism including from the Dept. of Interior, the U.S. Forest Service, the Colorado Weed Managers Association and Club 20 of Grand Junction. In his political capacity, he served on several dozen boards and commissions on the local, regional, state and national levels. He co-founded the Sheep Mountain Alliance, Telluride’s local environmental group.

A former newspaper editor, he had a 40+ year run writing weekly and monthly op-ed columns for print and online publications including the Telluride Times, the San Miguel Journal, the Telluride Times-Journal, the Watch, the Daily Planet, the MontroseMirror.com, and Colorado Poets Center. He currently writes a monthly op-ed column “Looking South from Lone Cone” for the Cortez-based print publication the Four Corners Free Press.

Art studied to be a Roman Catholic priest for seven years, and has continued to marry people as a Universal Life minister. A former poetry editor for Earth First! Journal, Wild Earth and the Mountain Gazette, he currently co-directs the Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds poetry project, is poetry editor for Fungi magazine (fungimag.com), and co-hosts the Sage Green Journal online literary anthology (sagegreenjournal.org). Former president and current Trustee Emeritus, he was founder of the Institute’s Prospect Basin Fen Project and its Ute Reconciliation and Indigenous Peoples Day projects and remains on their advisory boards. Director of the Institute’s Telluride Mushroom Festival for its first 25 years, he remains as Cultural Director and Poet-in-Residence.

His poetry books include As If the World Really Mattered (La Alameda Press, Albuquerque, 2007) and Looking South to Lone Cone (Western Eye Press, Sedona, 2013). He was co-editor of the anthology MycoEpithalamia: Mushroom Wedding Poems (Fungi Press, CA, 2016). Turn Star Press of Telluride brought out a limited edition chapbook in 2019 that he co-authored called Telluride Valley Floor. Art’s latest book is Dancing on Edge: The McRedeye Poems (Lithic Press, Fruita, CO, 2019).

A widower and a grandpa, Art lives alone on Wrights Mesa near Norwood. His oldest daughter Iris Willow and his granddaughter Aurora Willow Fan live in San Francisco’s Glen Park neighborhood with his son-in-law Bertrand Fan. His oldest son Rio Coyotl lives in Durango, and his youngest son Greg R. Osha’ works in DC for PKMG US Services. His youngest daughter Sara Mae Friedberg makes her home in Telluride with partner Dylan Price and works for the Telluride Science Research Center.