Writing & Critiquing Since 1979
News & Updates: Bearlodge Writers Blog
We
Bearlodge Writers love the craft of writing and share a deep respect for
others of like mind.
Meeting in Sundance since 1979, BLW has expanded over the years to include writers from the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming.
Enjoying fellowship, we encourage friends in their writing endeavors, offer suggestions to help improve their works-in-progress, and share information and tips on the business of writing.
Governor Mead Appoints Patricia Frolander as Poet Laureate of Wyoming
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Matt Mead signed an Executive Order today naming Patricia Frolander as Poet Laureate of Wyoming. Frolander is Wyoming’s fifth Poet Laureate and is a rancher from Wyoming’s Black Hills.
At the signing ceremony today, Governor Mead noted that Frolander has won several awards for her work and been published in anthologies, literary reviews, magazines and newspapers. Governor Mead complimented Frolander for her book of poetry titled, Married Into It. “It’s great work and it resonates with me and should resonate with all of Wyoming because it speaks about Wyoming and speaks about our people.”
The Poet Laureate of Wyoming position is an honorary title and Frolander will serve without compensation. She can submit writings for occasions of her choice. Today, Frolander came to the Capitol with a group of fellow writers. She said receiving this distinction was a great honor. “It’s a privilege and I am excited to serve the State of Wyoming. I not only want to further poetry, but literature in general. I think this is a wonderful opportunity and I would like to thank everyone who accompanied me and all of those poets in Wyoming whom I dearly love.”
Governor Mead also expressed thanks to the Wyoming Arts Council and its board for the help in selecting a Poet Laureate.
Left to right: South Dakota photographer Roger Clements; Mike Shay, Wyoming Arts Council; authors Gaydell Collier, Jim Bowers, Jytte Bowers, Pat Frolander; Wyoming Governor Matt Mead; in front of the Governor - Morgan Callan Rogers; Rita Basom, Wyoming Arts Council; authors Jeanne Rogers and Mary Hawkins.
New Release: Just Beyond Harmony
Recently Gaydell Collier unearthed diaries and letters from the 1960s when she and her husband Roy embarked on The Grand Experiment: raising their four children in a primitive log cabin west of Laramie, Wyoming, to teach them values and self-reliance. Now 50 years later, she recalls the joy, the dreams, the humor, and the struggles of those years of growth for the kids, Roy, and most of all, Gaydell, herself.
Robert Roripaugh, former Wyoming Poet Laureate, says of the new release: "Gaydell Collier's delightful sense of humor never undermines her frankness and honesty, and she reminds us that isolation, wind, cold, and difficulties are the other side of the West's natural beauty, opportunity, open space, and freedom. Just Beyond Harmony belongs on a shelf alongside books like Elinore Pruitt Stewart's Letters of a Woman Homesteader, Hughie Call's Golden Fleece, and Ivan Doig's Heart Earth."
And from Jeanne Williams, award winning author of 69 books: "A warm, wonderful story, written with depth, humor, and faith."
With commitment, humor, optimism, and perhaps a touch of insanity, the Collier family struggles to earn their place in the Harmony community.
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- paperback, 256 pages, illustrations ($17.95) ISBN 978-0-93127-98-4
- OR hardcover limited edition (only 200 copies) signed & numbered ($35) ISBN 978-0-931271-97-7
- Available at bookstores or from High Plains Press at 1-800-552-7819 or www.highplainspress.com
New Release: Married Into It
New Release: Married Into It
What happens when a young urban woman marries into a fourth generation rural ranching family and must learn the traditions, customs, and lifestyle of the land, all under the scrutinizing eye of its close knit community? Author Patricia Frolander’s clear-eyed poems chronicle her forty-six years of challenges and triumphs, bruises and breakthroughs, as she moves from outsider to neighbor in Married Into It, the newly released poetry collection from High Plains Press.
Kent Meyers, award-winning author of The Work of Wolves, says of the new release: “Patricia Frolander writes of a place and way of life where disaster can be measured in seconds and where the most harrowing loss can emerge from the simplest of mistakes. Frolander understands just how indifferent the world is to human presence, but she makes of that understanding a quiet grandeur. Against indifference, these poems insist on redemptive beauty and the power of relationship.”
Readers will find themselves rooting for Frolander as she discovers her strength, wit, wisdom and heart in the Wyoming soil she tends, all the while nurturing a piece of land, and a life, she can call her own.
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Additional information, interviews, photos or review copies are available by contacting author Patricia Frolander pfrolander@rangeweb.net. Excerpts of her work can be also found at www.bearlodgewriters.com/patfrolander.html. To purchase your copy of Married Into It please visit www.highplainspress.com or call 1-800-552-7819.