Telluride Fire Festival: Storytelling with Craig Childs, 1/19

Telluride Fire Festival: Storytelling with Craig Childs, 1/19

The New Year is off to a flaming start as the 3rd annual Telluride Fire Festival, officially Friday, January 20 – Sunday, January 22, ignites Thursday, January 19. The event opens with a reception featuring Burning Man photographer Scott London. Craig Childs is the featured speaker, Thursday, 6:30, Oak Street Gondola Plaza. There are also free fire performances at Mountain Lodge, followed by three nights of free fire art installations and fire dancing in Telluride starting Friday, January 20. To volunteer for Fire Fest, go here.To purchase Fire Ball tickets, go here. Link here for all ticketed events and workshops and for further information. Link here to Fire Fest’s FAQ page. 

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Craig Childs is an author and explorer now living in Norwood, Colorado. He has published more than a dozen critically acclaimed books, including “House of Rain” and “The Secret Knowledge of Water.” His most recent opus, “Apocalyptic Planet,” won the Orion Book Award. Childs has also won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award two times. And his work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Men’s Journal, and Outside.

“Childs’s feats of asceticism are nothing if not awe inspiring: he’s a modern-day desert father,” wrote The New York Times.

Craig Childs has been described as “a born storyteller” by the New York Sun.

The Los Angeles Times equates his writing to “pure oxygen,” which “stings like a slap in the face.”

An occasional commentator for NPR’s Morning Edition, Childs also teaches writing at University of Alaska in Anchorage.

Craig Childs, always firey (at least his wrods) featured at Telluride Fire Fest.

Craig Childs, always fiery (at least his words are) featured at Telluride Fire Fest on Thursday.

According to his website, Craig Childs

“…writes about the relationship between humans, animals, landscape, and time. His stories come from visceral, personal experience, whether in the company of illicit artifact dealers or in deep wilderness. Childs has published more than a dozen critically acclaimed books, including his most recent book, Apocalyptic Planet, which won the Orion Book Award and the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Men’s Journal, and Outside. An occasional commentator for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Childs lives in Western Colorado and teaches writing for both University of Alaska in Anchorage and Southern New Hampshire University.

The New York Times says “Childs’s feats of asceticism are nothing if not awe inspiring: he’s a modern-day desert father.” He has been called a born storyteller by the New York Sun, and the LA Times says his writing is like pure oxygen, and “stings like a slap in the face.” He has won several key awards including the 2013 Orion Book Award, the 2011 Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award, 2008 Rowell Art of Adventure Award, and twice he has won the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, first in 2007 and then 2013.

Childs is an Arizona native, and he grew up back and forth between there and Colorado, son of a mother hooked on outdoor adventure, and a dad who liked whiskey, guns, and Thoreau. He has worked as a gas station attendant, wilderness guide, professional musician, and a beer bottler, though now he is primarily a writer. He lives off the grid in Western Colorado.

I travel the interstitial places, cracks in the sidewalk…”

Continue reading here.

Join author and explorer Craig Childs in an open-air storytelling around the fire at the Oak Street Gondola Plaza. Craig traveled with a tribe of minstrels, including Timmy O’Neil, walking for six days across the Black Rock Desert to reach Burning Man from the backside. This is the story of their wild journey. Flagstaff AZ-based musicians, The Scatterlithics, might accompany the spoken word performance. Some of them were on the trek…

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