Denver is bursting with arts and culture, from internationally-recognized street murals and art museums to one of the most special concert venues in the world, to award-winning chefs installing new concepts known around the country. As Denver expands in size and scope, a new art form is springing up in the cultural scene: Denver is now becoming a haven for established and emerging authors.
While Covid had people of many professions fleeing San Francisco and New York City for more wide open spaces and outdoor living, writers like Joe Fassler, a journalist for The Atlantic and The New York Times, among other publications, and most recently, the author of the novel The Sky Was Ours, have found a cross-country move to be beneficial to a writing career. “In New York, there’s a culture of working so hard, you’re at parties talking about work. It’s an economic reality: Everyone has to hustle,” he says. “Once I moved to Denver, I was a little more comfortable. It gave me the headspace I needed to focus on my book in a way that had been hard in New York.”
Hermione Hoby, who is a two-time New York Times Editors’ Choice pick and author of Neon in Daylight and Virtue, found similar comfort when she made the move from New York to Boulder a few years ago. “I never thought I’d leave New York. I love that place ferociously, and however punishing it was to survive there financially, I thought that its energies, rhythms and state of relentless encounter were the necessary juice for my writing. I’d rather live in a tiny, cockroach-infested studio and be in the heat of it all, than live anywhere else. But then I met my husband [author and editor Benjamin Kunkel], a Coloradan, who was already living here,” she says. “Practically speaking, it turns out it’s good for creativity to be able to sleep through the night because there’s silence outside, and it’s also good to have the space to work in an actual office rather than a tiny desk jammed up beside your bed. Bonus: I share this office with zero cockroaches.”
However, the equation is more than “New York is too small and too hard + the Colorado Rockies are beautiful and inspiring, a lá John Muir.” Denver’s literary scene offers writers more of what they need. “There are a lot of transplants here, and it’s a smaller place,” says Joe. “And people seem to want to connect with other humans. In New York, everyone is at the very edge of what they can sustain professionally and personally; but here, people aren’t so maxed out. That translates into more energy for new projects, new hobbies, new pursuits.”
For Hermione, the “newness” offers a fresh perspective and a new take on her own writing. “I think it’s salutary to be somewhat removed from what ‘everyone’ is thinking and reading,” she says. “I think that’s kind of a writer’s job—to preserve some quality of outsiders and be wary of scenes. Scenes can homogenize thought, and that’s stultifying. The vagaries of publishing are absolutely none of a novelist’s business.”
The business of writing is very different from the act of writing creatively, as any writer will tell you. Andrew Altschul never lived in New York, but he did launch his career in San Francisco before relocating to Fort Collins with his son and wife, Pulitzer-finalist Vauhini Vara. Andrew is a fiction writer and a professor of creative writing at Colorado State University. “The literary scene in Fort Collins is centered around creative writing at CSU, and I have amazing colleagues who are incredible writers,” he says. “This has fed a lot of my need for community.”
Falling into a group of like-minded writers is often crucial for inspiration, peer review and a general sense of belonging. Andrew sees the community in Fort Collins expanding and anticipates it will make its way along the Front Range. “Many of my students have found a community they want to continue in. And I am adamant that nothing about being in New York or San Francisco is necessary to write well. More and more of our students are choosing to stay, and ten years from now, we could have a large, vibrant literary community in the Front Range.”
Hermione agrees. “Even if New York remains the center of American publishing, it’s by no means the center of American writing—great writing is everywhere,” she says. “A world in which most American book deals go to writers living in New York would be catastrophic for literary culture: I really hope that isn’t already the state of things.”
Joe anticipates that the Denver scene will continue to emerge because of the opportunity—and the desire. “I believe there is an opportunity to start new things. I think of Reading Den as an example,” he says. Joe, Hermione and Andrew have all been readers at Reading Den events. “You could start a new series in New York. But what it’s hard to do there, is create a thing that feels central to the experience of everyone in the community. Reading Den did that quickly because the community is small and cares enough. You can’t channel the collective in the same way in big places.”
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