PINEDALE − Two Wyoming writers will be giving a reading focusing on the boom and bust culture of Wyoming on Wednesday, August 7 at 7 p.m. at the Sublette County Library.  Barbara Smith, the newly appointed poet laureate for Wyoming and Marcia Hensley, author of the memoir Away from it All: A Wyoming Love Story, will appear together and share their stories in a presentation titled: “Coping and Thriving in the American West Boom and Bust Culture.”

“We both lived through some tumultuous times during the boom in Sweetwater County,” Smith said, “And those experiences have found their way into much of our writing. The boom really challenged the community, resulting in a lot of upheaval and challenges to the culture of small-town Wyoming. We think that people in Pinedale certainly can relate to those changes and we hope that by sharing some of those pieces with our audience we will also generate a lively discussion after our reading.”

Both authors write about their own contemporary experiences which harken back and relate to those of the pioneers who came West looking for better lives and who experienced great cultural changes in their lives. Smith is the granddaughter of Norwegian homesteaders and her grandmother’s stories inform her writing. 

“Those pioneer stories often found their way into my poems about struggling and living in the boom times of the 1970’s,” Smith said. “In many ways they are the same.”

Smith was appointed Wyoming’s Poet Laureate by Governor Mark Gordon in October 2023. She is the ninth Poet Laureate in state history.  

“Barbara’s poetry captures the essence of Wyoming and is instantly relatable,” Gov. Gordon said. “Her work speaks to the incredible changes that have taken place in the state and across the West since the arrival of the first pioneers.”  

Smith is author of a collection of poetry, Putting a Name on It.

Former Farson resident Marcia Hensley’s recently published memoir Away From it All, combines the story of her personal journey of self-discovery with depictions of small-town and rural life in Wyoming. Like the stories of pioneers who fascinated her since childhood, Hensley’s story has been a westward journey.  While working in Yellowstone National Park in the summer of 1963 she fell in love with Wyoming, and when the opportunity presented itself years later, came to teach at Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs. There she fell ln love with Mike Hensley. 

The book follows their courtship and mutual love of the Wyoming landscape, history and lifestyle as their lives unfolded and they came to live in Eden Valley close to the Oregon Trail. 

Marjane Ambler, author of Yellowstone has Teeth, said Hensley’s “intimate story coveys the complexity of life on the modern frontier. It made me laugh and made me cry.”

“We will be reading some of our stories and poems which depict those experiences of dealing with the changes that come with the boom times and hope to generate a discussion with the members of the audience who also live through challenging changes to their way of life in the here and now,” Smith said. “Life in the modern frontier is complex and it’s important to be able to discuss and share perspectives, consider ways to preserve the culture while adapting to inevitable change, to give voice to our values.” 

Smith received the Governor’s Arts Award in 2006, the Neltje Blanchan award for Nature Writing, a Wyoming Arts Council Literary Fellowship and a writing residency at Ucross Foundation.  She has been published in a variety of collections, such as The Last Best Place, Deep West, Leaning into the Wind, Crazy Woman Creek and Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone, among others. Putting a Name on It also won the first-place award for poetry from the Wyoming Historical Society in 2023. 

Smith grew up in North Dakota and Montana among an extended family of Norwegian immigrants and others who made their way across the world, surviving and thriving together. After moving west to Montana and attending college there and in South Dakota, She began a 38-year teaching career at Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where she and her husband Leonard raised their family and continue to live. She retired in 2007 and currently teaches a memoir writing course in the community for the college.

Hensley graduated from the University of Tulsa and started her teaching career in Oklahoma, moving to Wyoming in 1983. In her first book, Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West, Hensley introduced readers to stories of pioneering women who came west on their own.  

Hensley is the recipient of the Wyoming Arts Council Neltje Blanchan Award for Writing inspired by nature. Her essays have been published in several anthologies as well as High Country News, WyoFile, and the syndicated column Writers on the Range. Her first book won awards from the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association as well as from Women Writing the West, Wyoming Writers, Wyoming Historical Society and ForeWord magazine.

Both Putting a Name on It and Away From it All were published by Deep Wild Books and will be available at the reading.