Join author Craig Childs for a reading and conversation about his new book, "Virga & Bone: Essays from Dry Places" at the Telluride Arts HQ Gallery, located at 135 W Pacific Ave, across from the Wilkinson Public Library. Between the Covers Bookstore & Cafe will be on-site for the signing and sales of this perfect Stocking Stuffer gift!

In "Virga & Bone: Essays from Dry Places," writer and adventurer Craig Childs dwells upon desert icons—human, animal, and otherwise—in these contemplative and visceral essays. From the author of "The Secret Knowledge of Water" and "Atlas of a Lost World" comes a deeply felt essay collection focusing upon a vivid series of desert icons—a half-blind bighorn ram, a sheet of virga over Monument Valley, solitude on the Green River, delving into the primacy of the land and the profound nature of the more-than-human.

REVIEWS
"Few writers can better express the strange vitality of desert landscapes than Childs (Atlas of a Lost World), as this brief but memorable trek through the American Southwest proves. The book’s eight essays reveal the desert as at once solid and ephemeral, a place where one can see 'the planet falling into pieces over and over' through the effects of wind and 'a circus of erosion.' Childs makes surprising, even paradoxical, observations throughout. Death Valley, he notes, soaks up every bit of water that falls, making it 'ironically, a reservoir.' In a small plane, Childs pursues virga, downpours from rain clouds that evaporate before hitting the desert floor. When he flies through one, he learns that it is 'as velveteen as it looks... I could have stayed inside its rain and barely gotten wet.' In an essay about the time he and a friend tried to sneak into Burning Man, he describes that, even while trying to hide in the desert’s immense expanse, 'there is no invisibility here.' The Southwestern panorama unfolding over the course of this beautiful book will stay with readers long after they close the pages."
— Publisher's Weekly (Starred review)

"It's like Childs was born out of pink sandstone, given a mouth to speak, and has continued to defend his mother ever since. You'll read this book in one night but you'll reflect on it for a lifetime."
— Anne Holman, The King's English Bookshop

BIO
Craig Childs has published more than a dozen books of adventure, wilderness, and science, including House of Rain and The Secret Knowledge of Water. His most recent is Virga & Bone: Essays from Dry Places. He has won the Orion Book Award, the Galen Rowell Art of Adventure Award, the Spirit of the West Award for his body of work, and thrice the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. He is a contributingeditor at Adventure Journal Quarterly, and his writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, and The New York Times, the latter calling him "a modern-day desert father." He has a B.A. in Journalism from CU Boulder with a minor in Women's Studies, and from Prescott College, an M.A. in Desert Studies. He has also worked as an adjunct professor for MFA programs in Alaska and New Hampshire.

An Arizona native, Childs grew up back and forth between there and Colorado, son of a mother hooked on outdoor adventure, and a dad who liked whiskey, guns, and Thoreau. He has worked as a gas station attendant, wilderness guide, professional musician, and a beer bottler, though now he is primarily a writer and a father. He lives off the grid just barely outside of Norwood, CO.