In this 90-minute workshop\, participants will learn how to:
\n- Build tension by weaving hauntings into full and compelling backstories.
\n- Ground stories\, and phantoms\, with in their historical framework.
\n- Write with compassion\, giving sp ecters dignity and fullness beyond a mere set of tragic circumstances. Gho st stories should give the dead a voice without exploiting them.
\n< strong>ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND HER WORK:
\nBETSY GAINES QUAMME N is the author of American Zion and True West\, which w on the 2024 Reading the West Book Award. She examines the intersections of extremism\, public lands\, wildlife\, and western communities\, and her w riting has appeared in The New York Times\, New York Daily News\, and Hist ory News Network. She received a PhD in history from Montana State Univers ity\, an MS in environmental studies from University of Montana\, and a BA in English from Colorado College. She lives in Bozeman\, Montana\, with h er spouse\, writer David Quammen.
\n"While writing This Haunted Land\, I learned that creaks and cold spots are only the beginning of a ghost story. Mysterious perfume\, fleeting shadows\, strange footsteps\ , glowing orbs\, a stray giggle or whisper&mdash\;these phenomena are cert ainly worth consideration when they occur\, but they&rsquo\;re merely the beginning of the tale. A flickering light or the yank of a tress will grab our attention\, but the heart of a ghost story isn&rsquo\;t just things t hat go bump in the night\, but the backstories\, the compelling accounts o f folks who simply refuse to stay in their graves." - Betsy Gaines Quammen .
\nIn This Haunted Land\, Betsy Gaines Quammen investigate s some of America&rsquo\;s most enduring ghost stories and uncovers how gh ost stories can help us come to terms with our unsettled past. With curios ity\, a bit of skepticism\, and an open-hearted willingness to learn from the living and the dead\, Gaines Quammen takes readers on a riveting\, som etimes spooky journey into the haunted towns\, lands\, waters\, and parts of history that we too often ignore. From a once-booming uranium mine comm unity now entombed in Colorado&rsquo\;s Mesa County\, to America&rsquo\;s oldest fort on the east coast of Florida\, This Haunted Land inte rweaves memory\, mourning\, folklore\, and social anxiety &mdash\; and sho ws that politicized efforts to rewrite history can be defeated by listenin g to the specters of the past.
\nTHIS HAUNTED LAND: Reckoning with Ghosts and the Stories that Shape America (Torrey House Press\, September 2026)< /p>\nhttps://slcpl.libnet.info/event/16993618 URL;VALUE=URI:https://slcpl.libnet.info/event/16993618 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR