You are hereThe Echeverria Family Nonfiction Track
The Echeverria Family Nonfiction Track
Novice and experienced writers find new perspectives in telling a story with just the right amount of creativity, detail, research and voice. Specialized workshops — from memoirs to researched historicals — reveal the dos, don’ts and better nots from our experienced faculty.
Faculty:
Michael Perry
Michael Perry is a writer and a humorist. Perry who has three best-selling memoirs to his credit, also has written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Backpacker, Outside, and Salon.com. Perry was born on a small farm in rural Wisconsin, and raised as part of an obscure, fundamentalist sect. He has spent many years as a volunteer firefighter, which his first book, Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren At A Time, chronicles. The majority of his writing discusses his farming background and life lessons. Perry was educated at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Currently, he hosts Big Top Chautauqua's Tent Show Radio.
Dennis Palumbo
Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter (My Favorite Year; Welcome Back, Kotter, etc.), Dennis Palumbo is now a licensed psychotherapist and author of Writing From the Inside Out (John Wiley). His work helping writers has been profiled in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, GQ and other publications, as well as on CNN, NPR and PBS. He also blogs regularly for the Huffington Post.
His mystery fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Strand, Written By and elsewhere, and is collected in From Crime to Crime (Tallfellow Press). His crime novel, Mirror Image (Poisoned Pen Press), is the first in a new series featuring psychologist Daniel Rinaldi, a trauma expert who consults with the Pittsburgh Police. The sequel, Fever Dream, is on sale now.
Alyson Hagy
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Alyson Hagy was raised on a farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She is the author of three previous collections of short fiction and two novels, Keeneland, Snow, Ashes, and Ghosts of Wyoming. She lives and teaches in Laramie, Wyoming. Her new novel, Boleto, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in May 2012
Mark Hummel
Mark Hummel's fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in numerous literary journals including The Bloomsbury Review, Dogwood, Fugue, Talking River Review, Weber: The Contemporary West, and Zone 3. He spent twenty years teaching fiction and essay writing in college classrooms, directing writing programs, and administrating a writers’ conference. Hummel is the editor of the online nonfiction magazine bioStories (www.biostories.com). An adjunct faculty member at Journeys School in Jackson, WY, his current writing is focused on novel length fiction.
Broughton Coburn
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Broughton Coburn, author or editor of seven books, including two national bestsellers, has worked in environmental conservation and development in the Himalaya for more than two of the past three decades. In addition to directing projects for the World Bank, World Wildlife Fund and American Himalayan Foundation, he was instrumental in the creation of two large, Himalayan protected areas. Nepali Aama: Life Lessons of a Himalayan Woman and Aama in America: A Pilgrimage of the Heart are his first two books. He also wrote and co-authored the bestsellers Everest: Mountain Without Mercy and Touching My Father’s Soul: A Sherpa’s Journey to the Top of Everest, and an award-winning young adult title, Triumph on Everest: A Photobiography of Sir Edmund Hillary. He has co-edited Himalaya: Personal Accounts of Grandeur, Challenge and Hope and Ahead of Their Time: Voices for Wyoming Wilderness. At present, he lives in Wilson, Wyoming with his wife and two children, and is working on a book for Random House on the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition.
Jeremy Schmidt
Jeremy Schmidt is a writer and photographer of natural history and adventure travel, especially along the winding frontiers between the modern world and what’s left of the natural and indigenous. He is the author or co-author of more than fifteen books and hundreds of articles for magazines including Audubon, International Wildlife, National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, Natura (Italy), Panorama (Netherlands), Outside, GEO, and others. For twelve years he was the adventure columnist for Universal Press Syndicate.
Assignments have taken him to all continents except Antarctica, to report on panda research in China, apartheid’s impact on the national parks of South Africa, volcano surfing in Russia, Buddhist pilgrims in Tibet, the nature reserves of Costa Rica, India’s last working elephants, throat-singing reindeer nomads in Mongolia, the survival of mountain gorillas of Congo during the Rwandan genocide, and more.
His book Himalayan Passage won the first Barbara Savage Award for adventure writing; it’s recently been called a “classic of Himalayan travel as it used to be.” He figures that just means it’s an old book. Other awards include the 1992 Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing (in National Geographic Traveler), and the Ranger Rick John Strohm Award for children’s writing.
Patti Sherlock
Patti Sherlock's latest book, A Dog for All Seasons, St. Martin's, 2010, describes her years with Duncan, a border collie who helped her on an Idaho sheep farm and saw her through many cycles of change. Sherlock has written two other nonfiction books and three novels for young adults. Letters from Wolfie, Penguin-Putnam, which won numerous awards, told the story of a 13-year-old boy who volunteered his dog to be a scout dog during the Vietnam war. Her other books are Taking Back Our Lives, a meditation book, Some Fine Dog and Four of a Kind, Holiday House, and Alone on the Mountain, Doubleday, which chronicled the life of western shepherds.
John Byrne Cooke
John Byrne Cooke won a Spur Award for his first novel, The Snowblind Moon. He is the author of two more historical novels, South of the Border and The Committee of Vigilance. He created and wrote the documentary series Outlaws and Lawmen for the Discovery Channel. His first book of nonfiction, Reporting the War: Freedom of the Press from the American Revolution to the War on Terrorism, was published in 2007. He is currently working on a memoir about his years as Janis Joplin's road manager, and promises "Three more books by 2020."
