Be a witness at the Cortez Public Library as Four Corners crime writers Chuck Greaves, Scott Graham and Paul Berkowitz lead a panel discussion, moderated by Anne Benson, at 6 p.m. Monday.
According to the library, you will find out how the three became accomplished writers of crime and mystery. Bring questions and delve into the mysteries of these three authors who live and write in the area.
Greaves wanted to write novels, but law school and 25 years of trial work in Los Angeles intervened. Since retiring from practice in 2006, he has written five crime novels, most recently Tom and Lucky (Bloomsbury), a Wall Street Journal “Best Books of 2015” selection and a finalist for the 2016 Harper Lee Prize. Greaves has been a finalist for most of the major awards in crime fiction, including the Shamus, Macavity, Lefty and Audie, as well as the New Mexico-Arizona, Oklahoma and Colorado Book Awards.
He is also a member of the National Book Critics Circle and writes the monthly “Prose and Cons” column for the Four Corners Free Press, sharing book review duties with Durango’s Scott Graham.
He and his wife, Lynda, own the Stark Raven Vineyard in McElmo Canyon.
Graham, winner of the National Outdoor Book Award, is the author of Canyon Sacrifice, Mountain Rampage and Yellowstone Standoff – books one through three in the National Park Mystery Series for Torrey House Press. Yosemite Fall, book four in the series, will be released in June. He also wrote the winner of the National Outdoor Book Award, Extreme Kids.
Like most visitors to America’s first national park, Graham was awestruck by Yellowstone as a child. His fascination with the park has continued in the years since, with numerous visits to Yellowstone’s geyser- and wildlife-filled front country and its incomparable wilderness.
He is an avid outdoorsman and amateur archaeologist who enjoys mountaineering, skiing, hunting, rock climbing and whitewater rafting with his wife and their two sons in Durango.
Berkowitz retired after a 33-year career in law enforcement, primarily with the National Park Service. Berkowitz was probably most distinguished by his role as a whistleblower, reporting, writing and testifying before a congressional subcommittee about government corruption. Some of those events and activities are chronicled in his award-winning book The Case of the Indian Trader: Billy Malone and the National Park Service Investigation at Hubbell Trading Post (University of New Mexico Press, 2011).
His most recent book, Legacy of the Yosemite Mafia, explores these issues further, presenting details of previously secret documents, witness statements and testimony to reveal the longstanding nature of problems in the park service and how the failure to confront these issues has compromised its ability to achieve its conservation mission.
Berkowitz is the winner of the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Best Regional Non-fiction (Mountain West), and the 2012 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Best Non-fiction.
If you go
What:
Crime Writers of the Four Corners
When:
6 p.m. Monday
Where:
Cortez Public Library, 202N. Park St., Cortez
More information:
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