David Gessner, Leave It As It Is

Join award-winning author David Gessner as he reads an excerpt from his newest book, Leave It As It Is, which includes reading on Bluff.

Hannah Hindley, Lazarus in the Desert: Death and Life in Arizona’s Endangered Waterways

The Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers has chosen Hannah Hindley of Tucson, Arizona, as the recipient of the fifteenth annual Desert Writers Award.

Ms. Hindley is currently a graduate student seeking a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona. Her essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Terrain, Harvard Review, Territory Magazine, and River Teeth. Her work over the past decade as a writer and wilderness guide has taken her to Alaska, Mexico, California’s High Sierra, Hawaii, and Washington.

Bluff Showcase, 5pm – 6pm

Zoom Webinar (Link will be updated here)

Although we’re all meeting virtually, we want you to remember Bluff businesses who have helped support the festival for so many years.

Our first Bluff showcase includes a video on Bluff and continues with a feature on Comb Ridge Eat and Drink. After that, we’ll highlight an incredible artists through an artistic demonstration!

Bluff Film Festival – 7pm – 8:30pm

Zoom Webinar (Link will be updated here)

Join us as we view films highlighting the incredible culture along with the challenges in our region. This two-day event will includes 8-10 films along with Q&A sessions. Click here to see the details.

Paper Wings with Renee Podunovich and Sonja Horoshko – 10:30am

Zoom Webinar

Renee Podunovich and Sonja Horoshko present “Paper Wings,” a collaborative letterpress project printed at the Mancos Common Press studio. They will explain their process and experience using the 100 year old letterpress, and techniques related to Italian Renaissance book binding.

You can find information directly on their blog at: https://paperwingsletterpress.blogspot.com

WET, An Anthology of Water Poems and Prose from Writers of the Four Corners Region 1pm – 2:30pm

Zoom Webinar

WET is a collection of water poetry and prose from thirty professional regional writers. The ZOOM Webinar will feature a selection of poems and prose from authors in the book.

WET is multi-cultural and addresses multiple geographic locations including cohorts of writers from the high country around Telluride through the southwest Colorado watershed to the native communities, including Acoma, Hopi, Navajo, and Ute Mountain Ute and as far west as Gray Mountain near the Grand Canyon and the little Colorado River. The submissions are not journalism, or academic papers but speak love to water, instead. The cover image is from The Painted Desert Project, Chip Thomas. Lorraine Nakai is memorialized in the book.

Bluff Showcase, 4:30pm – 5:30pm

Zoom Webinar (Link will be updated here)

Although we’re all meeting virtually, we want you to remember Bluff businesses who have helped support the festival for so many years.

Our next Bluff showcase will highlight Twin Rocks Trading Post and Cow Canyon Trading Post and includes separate features on some of the amazing artists who sell their work there!

Songs and Symbols of the Southwest with Ed Kabotie – 5:30pm – 7pm

Location: Zoom Webinar

Tewa/Hopi composer & visual artist, Ed Kabotie, will share a very personal view of his ancestral homeland. The presentation will include musical performance and a viewing of Ed’s art, as he shares his heart for the people and lands of the Colorado Plateau.

Bluff Film Festival – 7pm – 8:30pm

Zoom Webinar (Link will be updated here)

Join us as we view films highlighting the incredible culture along with the challenges in our region. This two-day event will includes 8-10 films along with Q&A sessions. Click here to see the details Here

Water Colors from the Earth 10am – 11am

Location: Zoom Webinar

DesignBuildBLUFF invites you to join the Bluff Palette Project. We envision this as a collaborative project between DBB students, community members, artists and local experts. Our main goal is to celebrate and record this beautiful place we call home.

In the first phase of this project, we explored local sites and made earth pigments into watercolor paints. We will take the viewers through this process, as well as discuss our inspiration from the landscape, vernacular architecture of this area and natural building techniques used in DesignBuildBLUFF’s 20 year history and how we can build on this work together

“Air Mail” reading and Letters to Bluff, 12pm

Zoom Webinar

Join us Sunday afternoon as we close our weekend of festivities with an intimate discussion on 2020’s impact on our community and surrounding areas. Our special guests, Pam Houston and Amy Irvine will spend the remainder of the hour reading from their new book, Airmail.

Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics, and Place

Air Mail book description:

When the state of Colorado ordered its residents to shelter in place in response to the spread of coronavirus, writers Pam Houston and Amy Irvine—who had never met—began a correspondence based on their shared devotion to the rugged, windswept mountains that surround their homes, one on either side of the Continental Divide. As the numbers of infected and dead rose and the nation split dangerously over the crisis, Houston and Irvine found their letters to one another as necessary as breath. Part tribute to wilderness, part indictment against tyranny and greed, Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics, and Place reveals the evolution of a friendship that galvanizes as it chronicles a strange new world.