Erika Wurth's guest appearances

Erika Wurth

KGNU & Boulder Bookstore Radio Book Club

OPB's State of Wonder

Quentin Tarantino

Chuck Klosterman

John Doe

Jason Isbell

Paul Simon

Lily Tomlin

Colson Whitehead

Willie Nelson

George Takei

Wayne Coyne

Matt Sheehy

Tracy K. Smith

Craig Finn

Aaron Draplin

Jay Som

OwlTail

Timothy Egan

Sherwin Bitsui

Bobbie Conner

Every summer, writers from all over the country head to the base of the towering Wallowa Mountains for Summer Fishtrap, a conference about writing and the West. This year, the festival runs July 10–16 with a slew of workshops, public events, and a keynote talk by the award-winning nature writer Robert Michael Pyle.In anticipation of the event, we're going to listen back to a live show we did at the festival last year, where we talked with the National Book Award–winner Timothy Egan, several founders of the festival, and two up-and-coming Native writers. 01:00 A round table with festival founders Kim Stafford (writer and Lewis and Clark professor) and Rich Wandschneider (former longtime Fishtrap director and now head of the Josephy library), as well as festival board president Rose Caslar, a Wallowa County native who took her first Fishtrap class at 15. They talk about Josephy's influence, the place of Western writing, the reaction to hanging a four-point buck rack in a Lewis and Clark College dormitory and the area's troubled relationship with its original inhabitants, the Nez Perce. 13:30 - The Josephy Center for Arts and Culture director, Cheryl Coughlan, tells us about how the center helps to culture a creative life in a rural community.  17:56 - Keynote speaker Timothy Egan discusses reporting on stories hidden in plain site. Best known for his National Book Award–winning “The Worst Hard Time,” chronicling Dust Bowl stories, Egan has also written about the photographer Edward Curtis, the wildfire that gave rise to the U.S. Forest Service and western issues of all types for his regular op-eds in the "New York Times." His published the book he told us about, "The Immortal Irishman," in March. 25:10 - We venture to Fishtrap's lodge for a youth workshop on writing hip-hop theater with poet Myrlin Hepworth, who has a new mixtape out called "Eulogy in Blue." 29:10 - Roberta Connor, the director of the Tamastlikt Cultural Institute whose family includes Nez Perce, Umatilla and Cayuse ancestry, was invited to Fishtrap to talk about what happens when Native stories are told by white writers and to share some of the hidden stories that speak most deeply to her.36:57 - We close with a discussion with two of this year's most rambunctious workshop leaders, writers Erika Wurth and Sherwin Bitsui. Wurth, who is Apache, Chickasaw and Cherokee, most recently published "Crazy Horse's Girlfriend" and is working on a novel about Native gangs. Bitsui is a Diné from the Navajo Reservation in White Cone, Arizona, and his most recent poetry collection, "Floodsong," won the American Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award.The music in this week's show comes from Tony Furtado's newest album, "The Bell." Furtado has a number of Oregon shows coming up, including on July 28 in Bend at the Volcanic Theatre and on August 3 in Sandy at Meinig Park.

Every summer, writers from all over the country head to the base of the towering Wallowa Mountains for Summer Fishtrap, a conference about writing and the West. This year, the festival runs July 10–16 with a slew of workshops, public events, and a keynote talk by the award-winning nature writer Robert Michael Pyle. In anticipation of the event, we're going to listen back to a live show we did at the festival last year, where we talked with the National Book Award–winner Timothy Egan, several founders of the festival, and two up-and-coming Native writers. 01:00 A round table with festival founders Kim Stafford (writer and Lewis and Clark professor) and Rich Wandschneider (former longtime Fishtrap director and now head of the Josephy library), as well as festival board president Rose Caslar, a Wallowa County native who took her first Fishtrap class at 15. They talk about Josephy's influence, the place of Western writing, the reaction to hanging a four-point buck rack in a Lewis and Clark College dormitory and the area's troubled relationship with its original inhabitants, the Nez Perce. 13:30 - The Josephy Center for Arts and Culture director, Cheryl Coughlan, tells us about how the center helps to culture a creative life in a rural community. 17:56 - Keynote speaker Timothy Egan discusses reporting on stories hidden in plain site. Best known for his National Book Award–winning “The Worst Hard Time,” chronicling Dust Bowl stories, Egan has also written about the photographer Edward Curtis, the wildfire that gave rise to the U.S. Forest Service and western issues of all types for his regular op-eds in the "New York Times." His published the book he told us about, "The Immortal Irishman," in March. 25:10 - We venture to Fishtrap's lodge for a youth workshop on writing hip-hop theater with poet Myrlin Hepworth, who has a new mixtape out called "Eulogy in Blue." 29:10 - Roberta Connor, the director of the Tamastlikt Cultural Institute whose family includes Nez Perce, Umatilla and Cayuse ancestry, was invited to Fishtrap to talk about what happens when Native stories are told by white writers and to share some of the hidden stories that speak most deeply to her. 36:57 - We close with a discussion with two of this year's most rambunctious workshop leaders, writers Erika Wurth and Sherwin Bitsui. Wurth, who is Apache, Chickasaw and Cherokee, most recently published "Crazy Horse's Girlfriend" and is working on a novel about Native gangs. Bitsui is a Diné from the Navajo Reservation in White Cone, Arizona, and his most recent poetry collection, "Floodsong," won the American Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award. The music in this week's show comes from Tony Furtado's newest album, "The Bell." Furtado has a number of Oregon shows coming up, including on July 28 in Bend at the Volcanic Theatre and on August 3 in Sandy at Meinig Park.

Summer Fishtrap: Timothy Egan, Bobbie Conner, Sherwin Bitsui & Erika Wurth, + more!