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Conference Highlights & Schedule | Sponsorship Opportunities | Keynote Speakers | Hotel Reservations | Bookstore
The 30th Anniversary Women Writing the West Conference was held at the Hilton Garden Inn, Denver Tech Center in Denver, Colorado on October 10-12, 2024. The theme, “Through A Woman’s Eyes,” honors the perspective of women—both women’s stories and women writers who write the stories of the West in all genres.
The 30th Anniversary Conference celebrated Women Writing the West, and our Founding Members.
Learn more about the Founding Members here.
Conference Highlights and Schedule
Meet the 2024 Conference Keynote Speakers
Opening Session Speaker
Gayle Gresham
Gayle Gresham is a freelance writer. Her magazine credits include Colorado Country Life, Today’s Christian Woman, and Country magazine. She is the 2023-2024 President of Women Writing the West.
A descendant of Colorado pioneers, she has researched and written about her family’s history in Colorado since she was in high school, starting with a paper about a great-great-uncle arrested for stealing cattle in 1883. This story has never let her go and she is writing a novel based on the true story.
Gayle and her husband, John, run a small cow-calf operation on the family farm in Elbert, Colorado along with their two children and their families. They enjoy camping, riding their 4-wheeler, and exploring the places where Gayle’s family lived in the mountains.
Opening Session Speaker
Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk
Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk was born and raised in southwestern Colorado and resides on the Ute Mountain Ute reservation. She is a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe of Towaoc. She attended school and graduated from Montezuma Cortez High School. She has spent 10 years in the information technology field, working for Chief Dull Knife College, the Southern Ute Indian and Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribes. In October of 2013, she was elected to serve as a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal council.
At an early age, Lopez-Whiteskunk began to advocate for land, air, water and animals, and strongly believes that the inner core of healing comes from the knowledge of our land and elders. She is a former Co-Chair for the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition, Co-Chair and Education Director for the Ute Indian Museum in Montrose.
Currently, she is seeking a Master’s of Environmental Management with Western Colorado University. She serves on the Telluride Institute Board, Advisory board for Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Torrey House Press Board, and Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
Lopez-Whiteskunk has traveled extensively throughout the country sharing the Ute culture through song, dance, presentations, and is honored to continue to protect, preserve and serve through education, creating a better understanding of our resources, culture and beliefs—a great foundation for a better tomorrow.
The WILLA Literary Award Banquet
Page Lambert
A founding member of Women Writing the West, and leader of creative adventures for twenty-seven years, Page Lambert’s writing is found inside monumental sculptures at the Denver Art Museum, online at Huffington Post, and in dozens of anthologies about the West. A contributing author to The Light Shines from the West: A Western Perspective on the Grown of America, Page is the author of the Wyoming memoir In Search of Kinship and the novel Shifting Stars.
Writing recognitions include nominations for two Pushcart Prizes, contributing author to the Willa award-winning anthology Writing Down the River, finalist for the Mountains & Plains Fiction Book Award, Fellowships for Literary Excellence from the Wyoming Arts Council, AROHO Orlando Nonfiction Award, and Writer’s Studio Best Fiction Award.
A member of the International League of Conservation Writers, Colorado Authors League, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Denver Women’s Press Club, Western Writers of America, and past advisor for the Rocky Mountain Land Library, Page writes the blog All Things Literary/All Things Natural from her mountain home west of Denver. Her agent is currently shopping her novel, Lake of Longing, and she is back at work on her second Wyoming memoir, New Moon on the Horizon. www.pagelambert.com
The DOWNING Journalism Award and The LAURA Short Fiction Award Luncheon
Rachel Gabel
Rachel Gabel is a longtime agriculture writer and the assistant editor of The Fence Post Magazine. She is also a farm broadcaster on Western Ag Network and the rural issues and agriculture columnist in Colorado Politics, the Denver Gazette, and Colorado Springs Gazette.
She writes exclusively about the agriculture industry and primarily about protein production. She lives in northeastern Colorado where she is a member of one of the 12,400 beef producing families in Colorado. She is the author of five ag-themed children’s books that have been used by Colorado Agriculture in the Classroom to teach students about agriculture. She is also the author of a collection of her popular #cowbios titled Light a Candle for Her, Girls.
Follow Rachel on Facebook @RachelWrites. She may be contacted at [email protected] or 970-768-0024.
Hilton Garden Inn, Denver Tech Center in Denver, Colorado
Bookstore
Thank you, Books Are Awesome, for conducting the Bookstore at the Conference
Volunteers
WWW extends a heartfelt thank you to the team of Volunteers who spent countless hours putting on this conference!
Email the Conference Chair for more details at [email protected].
Auction
To support The WILLA Literary Award Fund
Check back for ways to donate and bid!
Conference Brochure
Hotel Reservations
Hilton Garden Inn at the Denver Tech Center.
Contact
2024 Conference Chair,
[email protected]
CONFERENCE PRIVACY POLICY
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