It hasn\u2019t been reviewed by the New York Times, yet Colorado writer Shelley Read\u2019s book \u201cGo as a River\u201d (Spiegel and Grau, 2023) has sold over one million copies worldwide and was translated into 30 languages even before it was released first in the U.S.<\/p>\n
On Aug. 11, Read visits the Wilkinson Public LIbrary (WPL) for a conversation about the book, her indelible characters and her love for Colorado during the annual One Book, One Canyon (OBOC) event.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am super honored and excited to be chosen for this year\u2019s event,\u201d Read said. \u201cMy love for Telluride is decades deep.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read spent time as a child in the San Juans and has climbed most of the 14ers here. Not only that, she is excited to talk to people who understand this place.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am a deeply Colorado woman and this is a deeply Colorado book,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m all over the world talking about Colorado, but when I just get to talk with a Colorado audience who gets the truly deeply transformative quality of being in these mountains, it\u2019s the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love, love, love Colorado libraries,\u201d she added. \u201cI always try to say yes to a library because I deeply value Colorado libraries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laura Colbert, who has been a part of OBOC since it began in 2017, has been looking for an opportunity to bring Read to Telluride for some time. Colbert is the adult programs specialist for WPL.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral people have asked that Shelley come speak,\u201d Colbert said. \u201cI\u2019m really psyched to have her as our writer this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read visited Between the Covers bookstore in Telluride in March 2023, shortly after the book came out. She remembers the blizzard that shut everything down for a few hours that afternoon. Nonetheless, in the very depth of that storm, nine people came to hear her. It was her smallest event to date. Her largest was in Indianapolis with more than 1,000 attendees.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo as a River\u201d has won numerous awards, is now in 34 languages, and just this June came out in paperback. It\u2019s currently in development as a film with Mazur Kaplan, a production company that focuses only on bringing books to the screen.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo as a River\u201d is Read\u2019s first novel, and though some big time publications haven\u2019t given it a glance, it took off on Bookstagram \u2014 the Instagram book group \u2014 and was hand-sold reader to reader and book buyer to book buyer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel really proud and grateful about how this book was supported by the public,\u201d Read said.<\/p>\n
Read is a fifth-generation Colorado native and lives in Crested Butte, where she writes, hikes, raised her kids and commuted to Gunnison while she taught at Western Colorado University for 27 years.<\/p>\n
Her journey as a novelist was slow, but steeped in her own childhood and love for Colorado.<\/p>\n
She remembers swimming, fishing and playing around Blue Mesa Reservoir outside of Gunnison as a kid and being hyper aware of the towns that were still underwater. Iola is one of those towns, and the setting for \u201cGo as a River.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very haunting,\u201d Read said. \u201cThose were ancestral farm and ranch lands and some of the best gold medal fishing waters in the state.\u201d<\/p>\n
That feeling as a child and Read\u2019s love of place finds its way into one of the main themes of the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is about place and displacement because place means so very much to me,\u201d Read said.<\/p>\n
After three decades of teaching literature and writing to undergraduates and writing for various publications, she published \u201cGo as a River” at 57. That was after 13 years of scribbling occasionally and thinking deeply about the characters and the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wrote this book from a deeply quiet, authentic place inside myself,\u201d Read said. \u201cIt has layers and layers of themes and concerns that I hold most deeply in my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
The language itself is important, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted the language to reflect the landscape I\u2019m so attached to,\u201d Read said.<\/p>\n
Overall, though, the novel was driven by the main character.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had one goal in mind: to tell Victoria\u2019s story as well as I possibly could. It\u2019s had this very authentic reaction from readers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The success of the novel has taken its time, but its popularity has now taken over Read\u2019s life. She hasn\u2019t really stopped touring since it was released as a hardback, and now with the release in June of the paperback, she\u2019s still going.<\/p>\n
Right now, she is scheduled through the end of the year with events, mostly in Colorado, and with a couple of long breaks in between.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy primary feeling with all of this success is gratitude. My secondary is overwhelm,\u201d she laughed. \u201cBut the best part is meeting the readers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read is working on a second novel that also takes place in Colorado, but it\u2019s not a sequel to \u201cGo as a River.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis takes place in a very different part of Colorado, in the Sangres [Sangre de Cristo mountains]. I\u2019m hoping to end these public events and just spend next year on it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
One Book, One Canyon started in 2017 with Reyna Grande\u2019s \u201cThe Distance Between Us\u201d and until last year has been focused on nonfiction.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a long time, Wilkinson had the distinction of having more nonfiction than fiction readers,\u201d Colbert said. \u201cIt also used to be true of Between the Covers, but it\u2019s not any longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
In February 2024, then-WPL Director Sarah Landeryou wrote in the Daily Planet\u2019s Local Voices column, \u201cAs for print circulation, our library is still a non-fiction leader, with non-fiction outpacing fiction checkouts almost two to one, which is unusual for a public library in the United States. But in the digital sphere, fiction leads non-fiction by nearly five times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each year, OBOC is sponsored by the Friends of Wilkinson Library. The group purchases around 50 copies of the chosen novel and distributes it to the first people to register to attend the author event.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s free copies are already spoken for, but the book is available for checkout in print and online.<\/p>\n
For OBOC last year, readers visited with Peter Heller after reading his 2023 novel, \u201cThe Last Ranger.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth Heller and Read are Colorado-based, yet they\u2019re well-known nationally,\u201d Colbert said.<\/p>\n
The event usually has a strong turnout, and Colbert encouraged everyone to attend on Aug. 11.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s totally fine if you haven\u2019t read the book yet,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Read will also be at the first annual Grand Mesa Writers Symposium in Cedaredge on Aug. 9 with Tim Winegard and Wendy Videlock in conversation with Christie Aschwanden. For more on the weekend events, visit grandmesawriters.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n