Magic City Books and PEN America are proud to welcome Pulitzer Prize finalist and NYU professor Ted Conover for a free in-person event to celebrate the paperback release of his latest book, Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America's Edge on Wednesday October 2. This free event will take place at 7:00 pm at Fly Loft Tulsa, 117 N Boston Avenue (between 101 Archer and the Woody Guthrie Center, two and a half blocks west of Magic City Books).Cheap Land Colorado was named a best book of the year by the New Yorker and a notable work of nonfiction by the Washington Post.
"A profound book that reads like a novel and will have you laughing a little and thinking a lot. The pathos that emerges from behind the dusty homes of the San Luis Valley is unlike anything that most will ever see - there is an enormous amount of love and humanity and raw courage in these people who have the guts to turn away from what we've become. I hope every American reads this book." --James McBride, author of Deacon King Kong
Cheap Land Colorado and other books by Ted Conover are available at Magic City Books and will be for sale at the event on October 2. If you are unable to attend but would like to get a signed book, you can order online at: https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/cheap-land-colorado/2891.
About Cheap Land Colorado
From Pulitzer Prize finalist and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Newjack, a passage through an America lived wild and off the grid, where along with independence and stunning views come fierce winds, neighbors with criminal pasts, and minimal government and medical services
"In these dispatches, [Conover] invites readers to ride shotgun along an unraveling edge of the American West, where sepia-toned myths about making a fresh start collide with modern modes of alienation, volatility, and exile.... In a nation whose edges have come to define its center, this is essential reading."--Jessica Bruder, author of Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
In May 2017, Ted Conover went to Colorado to explore firsthand a rural way of life that is about living cheaply, on your own land--and keeping clear of the mainstream. The failed subdivisions of the enormous San Luis Valley make this possible. Five-acre lots on the high prairie can be had for five thousand dollars, sometimes less.
Conover volunteered for a local group trying to prevent homelessness during the bitter winters. He encountered an unexpected diversity: veterans with PTSD, families homeschooling, addicts young and old, gay people, people of color, lovers of guns and marijuana, people with social anxiety--most of them spurning charity and aiming, and sometimes failing, to be self-sufficient. And more than a few predicting they'll be the last ones standing when society collapses.
Conover bought his own five acres and immersed himself for parts of four years in the often contentious culture of the far margins. He found many who dislike the government but depend on its subsidies; who love their space but nevertheless find themselves in each other's business; who are generous but wary of thieves; who endure squalor but appreciate beauty. In their struggles to survive and get along, they tell us about an America riven by difference where the edges speak more and more loudly to the mainstream.
Ted Conover is the author most recently of Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America's Edge, named one of The New Yorker's best books of 2022. Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, an account of his ten months spent working as a corrections officer at New York's Sing Sing prison, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Conover's other books include Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes, Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants, Whiteout: Lost in Aspen, The Routes of Man, and Immersion: A Writer's Guide to Going Deep. He has written for publications including The New York Times Magazine, Outside, and Harper's. Twice his work has been an answer on "Jeopardy!" He is now professor at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
Event Venue
Flyloft, 117 N Boston Ave,Tulsa,OK,United States