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World Changing Fiction
PANELISTS
Bethany Turner
Bethany Turner writes pop culture-infused rom-coms for a new generation of readers who crave fiction that tackles the thorny issues of life with humor and insight. Bethany was a back-to-back finalist for the Colorado Book Award in the category of Romance, winning in 2024 for her novel Brynn and Sebastian Hate Each Other, which was also an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Romance. She won back-to-back Colorado Authors League Awards for Best Romance in 2024 and 2025. Her eighth romantic comedy, Wes and Addie Had Their Chance, was published in July of this year by HarperCollins. She lives in Cortez, Colorado where she serves on the board of the Colorado Book Award-winning Four Corners Writers. Bethany met her radio broadcaster husband in the nineties in a chat room called Disco Inferno and have been happily married for nearly 25 years with adult sons.
CC Harrison
C. C. Harrison is an award winning author of contemporary suspense and American West fiction. Her books include THE CHARMSTONE, SAGE CANE’S HOUSE OF GRACE AND FAVOR, DEATH BY G-STRING and THE WOMEN OF BANDIT BEND. She says, “I write books about ordinary women having extraordinary experiences because of someone’s mistake, and sometimes their own. Courageous women who find a way to overcome fear and obstacles to do what needs to be done.”
Meredith Blevins
Meredith Blevins has had nine books traditionally published and has about the same number in her trash bin. Two more books are in the works. Her Mystic Café series won starred reviews in all the trades, which surprised the bejeebers out of her. She has worked as a creative arts therapist, a financial columnist, and a dental assistant. She is also a five-time winner of the Magellan gold for best in travel writing. Meredith lived in Bluff, UT with her husband, Win, for twenty years, and now lives in Tucson. She has a rowdy, complicated family, including those in Bluff, and is a huge fan of true love.
Stacie Shannon Denetsosie
Stacie Shannon Denetsosie is a citizen of the Navajo Nation. Her clans are Todích’íí’nii (Bitterwater Clan), born for Naakaii (Mexican Clan). She is a fiction writer and poet. She was named a 2025 National Book Foundation 5 Under 25 Honoree. Her debut short story collection, The Missing Morningstar and Other Stories, was named a 2024 Southwest Book of the Year, a Foreword INDIES Book Award winner, and a 2024 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize finalist. Stacie received her MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Originally from Kayenta, Arizona, she currently resides in Northern Utah with her husband and cat.
Rusty Munn
Storytelling, both spoken around a campfire and written, has been an integral part of Rusty Munn’s long life. Years living and working in remote areas of the west has given him a distinctive perspective on our society and the natural world. The characters inhabiting his world as a wilderness outfitter and guide, a Forest Service soil scientist and global environmental instrumentation specialist gives him a unique look through which he writes. Rusty lives in the Four Corners area in Bluff, Utah, where he has further opportunity to live among nonconforming folks and desert landscapes to explore with his partner and dogs.
What the River Knows
Panelist Biographies
Mark Sundeen
Mark Sundeen is the author of Delusions + Grandeur, The Unsettlers, The Man Who Quit Money, The Making of Toro, and Car Camping. His work has been translated into eight languages. A contributing editor for Outside Magazine, his work has appeared in the New York Times, The Believer, National Geographic Adventure, McSweeneys, and Best American Essays. He has won the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award and fellowships from Macdowell Colony, Montello Foundation, Montana Arts Council and Utah Arts Council. A former river guide and Outward Bound instructor, he is an associate professor of environmental writing at the University of Montana.
Brian Chaffin
Dr. Brian Chaffin is the Executive Director of Clark Fork Coalition, a watershed nonprofit organization in western Montana, and a professor of water policy in the W.A. Franke College of Forestry & Conservation at the University of Montana. He is the author of over 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters about rivers, conservation, and environmental governance. Brian has worked as a river ranger for the U.S. Forest Service, a researcher at the U.S. EPA, and still works as a wilderness river outfitter in Alaska as co-owner of Sundog Expeditions. He and his wife Jenni helped found The Redside Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to supporting the health and strength of the professional outdoor guiding community. Brian has a Ph.D. from Oregon State University.
Diego Riley and Will Buckley
Diego Riley and Will Buckley are longtime creative partners and filmmakers with a deep love for the natural world, a shared fascination with human-impact systems, and a commitment to socially impactful storytelling. Diego is a Cuban-American writer and director raised across four countries, primarily in Latin America; Will, a photographer and filmmaker shaped by the vast western landscapes of Wyoming. With experience spanning documentaries, sketch comedy, story-driven commercials, music videos, and even United Nations campaigns, Diego and Will draw out the emotional heart of a story and bring it to life with a strong and intentional visual style.
Language and Landscape: Writing Nonfiction With Purpose
Panelist Biographies
Lynne Spriggs O’Connor
Lynne Spriggs O’Connor spent ten consecutive summers on northern Montana’s Blackfeet Indian reservation while doing fieldwork for her Ph.D. in Native American Art History from Columbia University. After moving to Montana in her early forties, she curated a three-year project called Bison: American Icon, a major permanent exhibit of Native American art for the C.M. Russell Museum on bison in the Northern Plains. For the past 15 years, she has lived with her husband on a cattle ranch in an isolated mountain valley in northeastern Montana. In 2021, O’Connor and her husband partnered with the National Audubon Conservation Ranching Initiative, utilizing regenerative grazing practices to help sustain this increasingly threatened habitat. Elk Love is her first memoir.
Mark Sundeen
Mark Sundeen is the author of Delusions + Grandeur, The Unsettlers, The Man Who Quit Money, The Making of Toro, and Car Camping. His work has been translated into eight languages. A contributing editor for Outside Magazine, his work has appeared in the New York Times, The Believer, National Geographic Adventure, McSweeneys, and Best American Essays. He has won the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award and fellowships from Macdowell Colony, Montello Foundation, Montana Arts Council and Utah Arts Council. A former river guide and Outward Bound instructor, he is an associate professor of environmental writing at the University of Montana.
Robin Patten
A freelance writer, naturalist, and teacher, Robin Patten has spent most of her life exploring and writing about the natural world. Her lyrical nonfiction weaves together ecology, environmental history, and personal narrative, often delving into the human relationship with nature and the environment. She received the John Burroughs Nature Essay Award for “The Carcass Chronicle,” and her writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. Her first book, The Mountain: Journeys in High Places, continues her exploration of people and place.