Event Details
We host book club, author events, workshops, and the occasional open mic. Check our calendar and this page to see what's happening!
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February, All Month
Featured Artist:
Allison Cruse
Allison Cruse is a self-taught artist living in Alamosa. She works with water based mediums to paint, weave and sculpt in a slow process of creation. She paints with watercolor and ink, on canvas and paper, and also works with willow and pine to weave baskets and sculptures. She enjoys the connection to her materials, locally harvesting much of the willow she uses, and gathering pine needles from the trees of her native East Texas. She also incorporates handmade watercolors from small paint makers around the country in her paintings.
All mediums she uses are water based in some way, and inspire the flowing nature of her process. Water is used to carry the pigment in watercolor paints and liquid ink across the page and canvas. Willow grows along the water’s edge, and preparing it for weaving requires a slow soaking process. Pine needles also must be soaked and softened in water to shape them into her finished pieces.
There is much time involved in the harvest and preparation of materials, and the periods of soaking and drying that flow in between active creation. She embraces it all as a part of her creative process. Her art is slow art. From the time required for water to dry on the canvas to the lengthy month-long process of willow harvest, drying, and soaking, the slowness of her art encourages her to focus on the process and work with the materials, allowing them to move the way they want to move. Embracing slow art also encourages living with the seasons and in connection to the land, and working with our own inner seasons.
Cruse is inspired by patterns and rhythms in nature, color itself, and the human experience, particularly emotion and the expression joy and connection. She is inspired by the landscapes that are close to her heart, and the materials themselves. Some of her art is inspired by utility, such as her basketmaking, but ultimately life is the inspiration of her work, and she tries to live life creatively through all of her passions. She also enjoys gardening, playing music and cooking creatively, and the way each of these passions helps the others to grow as she flows through the seasons.

February 15th 6pm
Spadefoot Story Slam
Each month, we host the Spadefoot Story Slam community, sharing stories based on a theme, selected at the previous month’s Slam. While inspired by the Moth Story Hour, our monthly meetings are not a contest, but instead are a way to come together and practice sharing, and deep listening.
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Join us for the February's story slam on the 15th at 6pm with the theme of DESTINY. Prepare a story about something you feel was meant to be. Was it written in the stars? Foretold in a prophecy? A lucky break or a chance meeting leading to greatness? Or, missed connections meaning it just wasn't in the cards for you. What is your destiny? Tell us about a time you tried to avoid the inevitable, a moment of kismet, or a time everything seemed to be all mapped out.
As always, we encourage creative interpretation of the theme! Stories should be true as remembered by you, and spoken from the heart, instead of read from the page. We look forward to seeing you!
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February 21st 6pm
An Evening with Artists
Join us for a reading, Q&A, and signing with two fantastic artists, Belinda Garcia and Rita Moreno Prince. They will be joined by Oneyda Maestas, a cultural center event director, to introduce our artists in Spanish, and by Dr. Meliza Ramírez, Assistant Professor of Spanish at Adams State University, providing a reading in Spanish.
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Artist, author, and activist living in the San Luis Valley.
Belinda is a Xicana/ Indigenous human being. Her art, which exists in many mediums, reflects lived cultures and is a manifestation of healing. Her silk mural project, Somos Agua, is the basis for her book: an educational and interactive book designed for children and classrooms.
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Dancer, author, and activist, Rita grew up in west Denver. She is an Aztec dancer and business owner, selling handcrafted beaded jewelry. She is one of the founders of the youth drum and dance group, Medicine Warriors.
Her children’s book, The Chattering Calavera, was written to process grief after the loss of her son.

February 22nd 6pm
An Evening with
Holly Felmlee
Join us for a reading, Q&A, and signing for Holly Felmlee's latest book, A Modern Woman's Tao: Myriad Short Stories and Essays.
A Modern Woman’s Tao is a collection of experiences, real and fiction, that will introduce you to outlaws and heroes, caregivers and those struggling with addiction, loss of life and new beginnings.
Holly Y. Felmlee has written several books, has been a history and music teacher, non-profit manager, host of a public radio show made for children, and with her husband, a Peace Corps volunteer in Romania. She is a life-long resident of Colorado and now lives in the San Luis Valley with gigantic Mt. Blanca as a neighbor.
We're looking forward to seeing you!

March 5th 6pm
Indie Press Book Club
We're so excited to discuss this beautiful book in March! As a special treat, Laura Pritchett is joining us via Zoom for the first part of the discussion!
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About the Book:
When a wildfire bears down on a mountain community, residents are forced to gather for safety—resulting in a tangle of love and lust that pulls people from their isolation, friendships that form across political divides, and a new hope for rethinking the ways humans inhabit the burning planet. Playing with (Wild)fire is a literary landscape that is an experiment in form: an astrology report; a grant application-turned-love-story; a phone call from Mother Earth; an obituary for a wildfire; a burned mountain’s conversation with a lone woman and an injured bear.
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Every story captures how fire affects the human psyche and life, and how destruction can lead to renewal.
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About the Press:
Founded in 2010 and a nonprofit since 2015, Torrey House Press is the only nonprofit publishing house in the Intermountain West. With more than 70 titles to date, THP seeks to inform, expand, and reshape the dialogue on environmental justice and stewardship for the natural world by elevating diverse perspectives through the literary arts.
Torrey House Press publishes books at the intersection of the literary arts and environmental advocacy. THP authors explore the diversity of human experiences and relationships with place. THP books create conversations about issues that concern the American West, landscape, literature, and the future of our ever-changing planet, inspiring action toward a more just world.
THP believes that lively, contemporary literature is at the cutting edge of social change. They seek to inform, expand, and reshape the dialogue on environmental justice and stewardship for the natural world by elevating literary excellence from diverse voices.
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For more information on our book club, visit our book club page, here.