The University of Arizona Press

When: 4 p.m., Monday, March 20, 2023

Where: University of Central Florida, 4000 Central Florida Blvd., TCH 103, Orlando, Florida

Writers in the Sun, the English Department, and UCF Alumni welcome English alumnus Juan Martinez for a reading and book signing.

About the book:

After his parents are killed in a horrific roadside execution, Alvaro flees his home in Colombia and finds work as a line cook at the seedy hotel. Together with his sister, Carmen, he begins to make a new life in the desert, earning a promotion to management along with an irresistible offer to stay at the hotel rent-free. But as beloved photographs go missing, cockroaches seep from the walls, and grotesque strangers wander the corridors, the promise of the Alicia decays into nightmare. Alvaro discovers that the hotel is a small appendage of an enormous creature that feeds on guests and their secrets, one that will eventually bring him face-to-face with the memories he most wants to outrun.

About the author:

Juan Martinez is the author of Best Worst American, a story collection published by Small Beer Press and the winner of the Neukom Institute Award for Debut Speculative Fiction. He lives near Chicago and is an associate professor at Northwestern University. His work has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, including McSweeney’s, Huizache, Ecotone, Glimmer Train, Shenandoah, NPR’s Selected Shorts, Mississippi Review, NIGHTMARE, and elsewhere.

When: 2 p.m., Monday, March 20, this event has reached capacity

Where: Western National Parks Association, 12880 N Vistoso Village Dr, Oro Valley, AZ

In this free and open to the public event, Tom Zoellner shares stories from his book, Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona. He interweaves his hike along the Arizona Trail from Utah to Sonora with stories about the history and culture of the state. Will he find the Arizonac ranch for which the state is named? What does he learn about the Grand Canyon? Zoellner is a fifth generation Arizonan and author of eight nonfiction books including The Heartless Stone, Uranium, Train, A Safeway in Arizona and Island on Fire, which won the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award.

About the book:

Rim to River is the story of an extraordinary journey through redrock country, down canyons, up mesas, and across desert plains to the obscure valley in Mexico that gave the state its enigmatic name. The trek is interspersed with incisive essays that pick apart the distinctive cultural landscape of Arizona: the wine-colored pinnacles and complex spirituality of Navajoland, the mind-numbing stucco suburbs, desperate border crossings, legislative skullduggery, extreme politics, billion-dollar copper ventures, dehydrating rivers, retirement kingdoms, old-time foodways, ghosts of old wars, honky-tonk dreamers, murder mysteries, and magical Grand Canyon reveries.

Book excerpt:

Here it was at last. I would be hiking across the Kaibab Plateau, down and out of the Grand Canyon, past the cinder cone of Humphreys Peak, across Anderson Mesa, down the Mogollon Rim, through the Mazatzals and the Superstitions, across the Black Hills of Pinal County, and then up and over four major ranges in succession: the Catalinas, the Rincons, the Santa Ritas, and the Huachucas to the Mexican border and then—hopefully—the spot in the valley that poured forth silver for about a week and from which the state had taken its beguiling name.

When: 6 p.m., Friday, March 17, 2023

Where: Triangle L Ranch, 2805 North Triangle L Ranch Road, Oracle, Arizona

Tickets for dinner and talk: Triangle L Art Ranch, or at the door.

Celebrate Arizona with author Tom Zoellner at the Triangle L Art Ranch. Registration starts at 6 p.m., and includes a dinner of corned beef and cabbage, carrots, potatoes and wine.  Author presentation begins at 6:30 p.m. Tom will tell tales from his new book Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona.

In 2019, he hiked the Arizona Trail from Utah to Mexico. The trek is interspersed with incisive essays that pick apart the distinctive cultural landscape of Arizona: the wine-colored pinnacles and complex spirituality of Navajoland, the mind-numbing stucco suburbs, desperate border crossings, legislative skullduggery, extreme politics, billion-dollar copper ventures, dehydrating rivers, retirement kingdoms, old-time foodways, ghosts of old wars, honky-tonk dreamers, murder mysteries, and magical Grand Canyon reveries.

Book excerpt:

Here it was at last. I would be hiking across the Kaibab Plateau, down and out of the Grand Canyon, past the cinder cone of Humphreys Peak, across Anderson Mesa, down the Mogollon Rim, through the Mazatzals and the Superstitions, across the Black Hills of Pinal County, and then up and over four major ranges in succession: the Catalinas, the Rincons, the Santa Ritas, and the Huachucas to the Mexican border and then—hopefully—the spot in the valley that poured forth silver for about a week and from which the state had taken its beguiling name.

When: 3 p.m., Thursday, March 23, 2023

Where: Green Valley-Joyner Library, 601 N. La Canada Dr., Green Valley

In this free and open to the public event, Tom Zoellner shares stories from his book, Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona.

Not only is the book a quest for the origin of Arizona’s enigmatic name, but it’s also a probing look into the past: the roots of the state’s colorful politics, literary heritage, music, cuisine, geology, and complex mix of races and traditions—the whole dazzling combination of elements that make the 48th state a prism of the past and unique laboratory of the future.

Copies of Rim to River will be available for purchase.

Book excerpt:

Here it was at last. I would be hiking across the Kaibab Plateau, down and out of the Grand Canyon, past the cinder cone of Humphreys Peak, across Anderson Mesa, down the Mogollon Rim, through the Mazatzals and the Superstitions, across the Black Hills of Pinal County, and then up and over four major ranges in succession: the Catalinas, the Rincons, the Santa Ritas, and the Huachucas to the Mexican border and then—hopefully—the spot in the valley that poured forth silver for about a week and from which the state had taken its beguiling name.

When: Thursday, February 9th at 7:00 P.M. MST

Where: University of Arizona Campus, Harvill Building, Room 150

Luci Tapahonso, the first poet laureate of the Navajo Nation, will join us on the University of Arizona campus for a reading from her collection A Radiant Curve. Join us for an evening of poetry with Luci!

This reading is part of the American Indian Studies department’s Jack and Nancy Warneke AIS Speaker Series.

Learn more about the University of Arizona’s American Indian Studies program here.

Luci Tapahonso is an award-winning Diné poet and a professor emerita of creative writing at the University of New Mexico. In A Radiant Curve, Luci’s words draw us into a workaday world that, magically but never surprisingly, has room for the Diyin Dine’é (the Holy People), Old Salt Woman, and Dawn Boy. When she describes her grandson’s First Laugh Ceremony—explaining that it was originally performed for White Shell Girl, who grew up to be Changing Woman—her account enriches us and we long to hear more. Tapahonso weaves the Navajo language into her work like she weaves “the first four rows of black yarn” into a rug she is making “for my little grandson, who inherited my father’s name: Hastiin Tsétah Naaki Bísóí.” As readers, we find that we too are surrounded by silent comfort, held lovingly in the confident hands of an accomplished writer who has a great deal to tell us about life.

 

When: 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Where: Bright Side Bookshop, 18 N San Francisco St, Flagstaff, Arizona

Free registration: Eventbrite Tom Zoellner tickets 

Tom Zoellner will read from his new book Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona. He interweaves his hike along the Arizona Trail from Utah to Sonora with stories about the history and culture of the state. Zoellner is a fifth generation Arizonan and author of eight nonfiction books including The Heartless Stone, Uranium, Train, A Safeway in Arizona and Island on Fire, which won the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award.

About the book:

Rim to River is the story of an extraordinary journey through redrock country, down canyons, up mesas, and across desert plains to the obscure valley in Mexico that gave the state its enigmatic name. The trek is interspersed with incisive essays that pick apart the distinctive cultural landscape of Arizona: the wine-colored pinnacles and complex spirituality of Navajoland, the mind-numbing stucco suburbs, desperate border crossings, legislative skullduggery, extreme politics, billion-dollar copper ventures, dehydrating rivers, retirement kingdoms, old-time foodways, ghosts of old wars, honky-tonk dreamers, murder mysteries, and magical Grand Canyon reveries.

Book excerpt:

Here it was at last. I would be hiking across the Kaibab Plateau, down and out of the Grand Canyon, past the cinder cone of Humphreys Peak, across Anderson Mesa, down the Mogollon Rim, through the Mazatzals and the Superstitions, across the Black Hills of Pinal County, and then up and over four major ranges in succession: the Catalinas, the Rincons, the Santa Ritas, and the Huachucas to the Mexican border and then—hopefully—the spot in the valley that poured forth silver for about a week and from which the state had taken its beguiling name.

When: 6 p.m., Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Where: Changing Hands Bookstore, 300 W Camelback Rd, Phoenix, Arizona

In this free and open to the public event, Tom Zoellner shares stories from his book, Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona. He interweaves his hike along the Arizona Trail from Utah to Sonora with stories about the history and culture of the state. Will he find the Arizonac ranch for which the state is named? What does he learn about the Grand Canyon? Zoellner is a fifth generation Arizonan and author of eight nonfiction books including The Heartless Stone, Uranium, Train, A Safeway in Arizona and Island on Fire, which won the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award.

About the book:

Rim to River is the story of an extraordinary journey through redrock country, down canyons, up mesas, and across desert plains to the obscure valley in Mexico that gave the state its enigmatic name. The trek is interspersed with incisive essays that pick apart the distinctive cultural landscape of Arizona: the wine-colored pinnacles and complex spirituality of Navajoland, the mind-numbing stucco suburbs, desperate border crossings, legislative skullduggery, extreme politics, billion-dollar copper ventures, dehydrating rivers, retirement kingdoms, old-time foodways, ghosts of old wars, honky-tonk dreamers, murder mysteries, and magical Grand Canyon reveries.

Book excerpt:

Here it was at last. I would be hiking across the Kaibab Plateau, down and out of the Grand Canyon, past the cinder cone of Humphreys Peak, across Anderson Mesa, down the Mogollon Rim, through the Mazatzals and the Superstitions, across the Black Hills of Pinal County, and then up and over four major ranges in succession: the Catalinas, the Rincons, the Santa Ritas, and the Huachucas to the Mexican border and then—hopefully—the spot in the valley that poured forth silver for about a week and from which the state had taken its beguiling name.