Registration for the 8th annual Taos Writers Conference closes July 11

WRITERS CONFERENCE IN TAOS

Registration closes Thursday, July 11, for the 8th annual Taos Writers Conference. The conference runs from Friday, July 19, through Sunday, July 21.

Award-winning poet-memoirist Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is the keynote speaker. She will be reading and giving a talk at 5:30 p.m. Friday, July 19, at SOMOS Salon, 108 Civic Plaza Drive, Taos.

Registration for the 8th annual Taos Writers Conference closes July 11

Coke’s reading is free for those registered for the Taos Writers Conference. The reading is $8 for SOMOS members not registered for the conference, and $10 for non-SOMOS members.

Coke will also teach a three-hour workshop on Saturday, July 20, for conference attendees.

Coke’s many honors include the 2023 Thomas Wolfe Prize and Lecture. Her book-length poem “Look at This Blue” was a 2022 National Book Award finalist. She is a Fulbright scholar.

Among the New Mexico writers and poets who are instructors at the conference are Minrose Gwin, Valerie Martinez and Connie Josefs of Albuquerque; Lauren Camp, Jamie Figueroa, Johnny D. Boggs, Julia Goldberg and Tommy Archuleta, all of Santa Fe. Among the Taos area conference instructors are Veronica Golos, Sawnie Morris, Allegra Huston and Sean Murphy.

For details on registering, go to somostaos.org/taos-writers-conference/#about.

COLLECTED WORKS

Collected Works is hosting two author events.

Noted writing teacher and author Natalie Goldberg will talk about her new book “Writing on Empty: A Guide to Finding Your Voice” at 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 9. In the book, Goldberg shares her inspiring journey out of a period of writer’s block and her return to a life of creativity, growth and healing.

And at 6 p.m. Friday, July 12, environmental journalist Justin Nobel talks about his new book “Petroleum-238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It.” Nobel’s book is the culmination of his seven-year investigation into how the U.S. oil and gas industry has avoided lax governmental regulations and legal loopholes, creating a radioactive public health crisis. Nobel contends that more comes to the surface at a well than just oil and gas; the industry produces billions of tones of waste, much of it toxic and radioactive. What happens to this waste? It is spilled, spread, injected and dumped across the country.

Collected Works is located at 202 Galisteo St., downtown Santa Fe.

AWARDS

Albuquerque’s Lynn C. Miller has received two awards for her 2023 short story collection “The Lost Archive.” The book received a gold medal in the category of Fiction-Short Story/Anthology from the Midwest Independent Publishers Association, and it was a bronze medalist in the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards.

— By David Steinberg/ For the Journal