![]() ![]() That research was my hardest ever, but also paid an enduring dividend. Then I moved to New York and wrote Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, an account of immersion in a world that is tough and dangerous and–if a person’s not careful–soul-shrinking. Coyotes, my second book, recounts a year of work and travel with these migrants.Ī smart guy I met in New York introduced me at a party as a writer who “made a living sleeping on the ground,” which got me worried and led me to Aspen and Whiteout, a very different sort of first-person ethnography. A transcendent moment occurred in a freight yard in Bakersfield, California, where, as I spoke with a guy my age named Enrique Jarra, it dawned on me that Mexican migrants were the true, modern-day incarnation of the classic American hobo. "My first book ( Rolling Nowhere), began as research for a senior anthropology thesis. Read the interview with Ted Conover in the 2023 Ski Edition of Steamboat Magazine. He is a professor at, and the former director of, New York University’s Arthur L. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and National Geographic. For his latest critically-acclaimed book released last fall, Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America’s Edge, Conover returned to his home state, living off and on for four years in the San Luis Valley in an effort to better understand the divisions that have increasingly riven the American social and political consciousness. It’s a ride I didn’t want to end.” – The Washington PostĬonover’s career in immersive journalism has taken him from a nuanced exploration of local culture for his 1991 title Whiteout: Lost in Aspen to a year-long stint as a prison guard resulting in Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. To read Cheap Land Colorado is to take a drive through a disquieting, beguiling landscape with an openhearted guide, windows down, snacks in the cooler, no GPS. With his thorough and compassionate reportage, Conover conjures a vivid, mysterious subculture populated by men and women with riveting stories to tell. One of Conover’s strengths as a writer is that he is willing to let his subjects ‘say their piece.’ He is wonderfully open to people’s understanding of themselves, even when he sees the world very differently. Nothing motivates the journalist Ted Conover like a no-trespassing sign. ![]() 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. 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. And more than a few predicting they’ll be the last ones standing when society collapses.Ĭonover bought his own five acres and immersed himself for parts of four years in the often contentious culture of the far margins. 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. Five-acre lots on the high prairie can be had for five thousand dollars, sometimes less.Ĭonover volunteered for a local group trying to prevent homelessness during the bitter winters. The failed subdivisions of the enormous San Luis Valley make this possible. 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. Books are available so everyone is able to check out a copy, read it and participate in the community conversations.īorrow Cheap Land Colorado from Bud Werner Memorial Library.īuy a copy of Cheap Land Colorado from Steamboat Springs' independent bookstore, Off the Beaten Path. The Library now has ample copies of Cheap Land Colorado circulating locally in our collection (including digital, audio and print copies). This winter and spring, the Yampa Valley community is invited to read and discuss the critically acclaimed nonfiction book Cheap Land Colorado by Pulitzer Prize-finalist and National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author Ted Conover.Ĭheap Land Colorado is 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. ![]() Each year Bud Werner Memorial Library presents a community read in Steamboat Springs. ![]()
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