2023 AAUW Authors Day

This year’s Authors Day features three award-winning, and fascinating Colorado authors. Fiction and non-fiction; memoir, short-story, and mystery; these are books you’ll want to read, women you’ll want to meet, conversations you’ll want to hear!

Claire Boyles’ debut book of short-stories, Site Fidelity, is firmly rooted in the rural spaces and small towns of Colorado and Nevada. Her stories “evoke the bleakness and beauty of our threatened western landscapes in lean, lyrical prose…featuring unforgettable characters.” Claire is a writer, Mom and former sustainable farmer who lives and writes in Colorado. Site Fidelity won the 2022 High Plains Book Award for Short Story, a 2022 Whiting Award in fiction and was long-listed for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award, a Reading the West award and was one of Outside Magazine’s 20 Essential Works of Climate Fiction.

Susan Devan Harness’ memoir, Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption was the 2019 High Plains Book Award for Indigenous Writer and Creative Nonfiction. In Bitterroot, Susan traces her journey as a two-year old child removed from her birth family to explore an uneasy history of race, history, and brutal government American Indian policies. Susan is an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and. Kootenai Tribes. She speaks and writes nationally and internationally about trans-racial adoption and is a TED-talk veteran! She and her husband live in Fort Collins, near their two sons and their families.

Emily Littlejohn is the author of four Gemma Monroe mysteries, set in the fictional small town of Cedar Valley, Colorado, including her debut novel, Inherit the Bones. Her widely praised mysteries are two-time Colorado Book Award finalists featuring compelling writing, a stunning Colorado setting, and engaging characters. Emily is a southern California native but has called Colorado home for over a decade where she continues to be inspired by the beautiful mountains and open space. A former librarian, she spends her time writing, raising her family and working in city government in the Denver metro area.