“Words for the Wild,” a literary reading featuring regional writers from the journal Deep Wild: Writing from the Backcountry, will set up camp on Thursday, October 20, 6 p.m. at the Sublette County Library in Pinedale.

Featured presenters will be Stephanie Eardley, writer and ultra-marathon runner from Mountain View, whose essay “Just a Couple Miles: Mountain Ultra-Running” is featured in Deep Wild 2022; Stephen Lottridge of Jackson, whose story “Three White Pelicans” was published in Deep Wild 2021, and Rick Kempa of Grand Junction, Colorado, founding editor of Deep Wild Journal.

Deep Wild Journal is unique in the literary space with its mission “to provide a home for creative work inspired by journeys to places where there are no roads.” In the current issue, published this summer, 51 writers invite us to go skiing, mountaineering, canoeing, rock-climbing, snowshoeing, hunting, fishing, horseback riding, swimming, long-distance running, and, especially, hiking. 

Stephanie Eardley lives on a ranch in Southwest Wyoming and can most often be found along a game trail with her kids and a backpack full of books. Since being published in Deep Wild, her work has also appeared in Hippocampus Magazine. She has run two ultramarathons and is training in the mountains above her home for a fifty-miler in the Grand Canyon. Her latest passion is skydiving.

Stephen Lottridge, a retired clinical psychologist and former director of Southwest Counseling Services, resides in Jackson. He is the author of two books, Three White Pelicans (Deep Wild Press, 2021), a collection of stories about raising his two daughters in the wilds of Wyoming; and The Old Bison: Threads from the Fabric of a Western Life (Fulton Books, 2022). A third collection, The Book of Bauer: Stories from a Forgotten Town, is forthcoming from the University of Utah Press.   

Rick Kempa is the author of three books of poems, most recently Too Vast for Sleep from Littoral Press, and editor of two collections of writing about the Grand Canyon. He taught for 31 years at Western Wyoming College, retiring in 2018. Since then, he has devoted much of his time to launching Deep Wild Journal and to seeking out wild places of his own.

Deep Wild Journal is now taking submissions of essays, fiction, and poetry for its fifth issue, to be published next summer. More information about the submission process will be provided at the reading.

The Sublette County Library is located at 155 S. Tyler Ave. The event is free and will be followed by a book signing. Refreshments will be served.