Award-winning author Laura Pritchett’s vision for her sixth novel didn’t come to her as a standard narrative. Instead, she wanted to represent all those affected by Colorado’s largest wildfire.

“Playing with (Wild)fire” is based on the Cameron Peak Fire which burned for nearly four months and ripped across over 208,000 acres of state, federal and private land.

The book, released in February by Torrey House Press, is experimental and edgy and told in polyphonic voices from multiple perspectives.

“Everyone in the town had to have a voice, including the firefighters and the fisheries’ biologists and the kids and the teenagers and the volunteers and the moose and the bear that were affected by the fire,” said Pritchett, who will visit Bend July 6.

The author watched from her home along the evacuation perimeter as a line of traffic fled the Front Range with trailers filled with goats and belongings; meanwhile, emergency response teams, helicopters and planes headed in the opposite direction to contain the destruction.

Pritchett dove into research for the book, interviewing people from all walks of life who were affected, from biologists to kids who hosted lemonade stands to raise money for the community.

Pritchett’s hope is those left in the wildfire’s wake feel seen.

“I feel like many of us in the West have been watching out for each other. Even though my fire was in Colorado, my heart was going out to all the fires that were going on in Oregon and Washington and California,” she said.

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Two levels of hope

Despite increasingly extreme weather events, Pritchett believes there’s reason to hope.

“I think there are two levels of hope; one is personal and one is planetary,” she said. “On a personal level, I think we can always have hope to make our lives fuller, reach out and connect with neighbors.”

On a planetary level, Pritchett said hope may be found by being realistic about what lies ahead.

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Upcoming author event in Bend

Pritchett partners with local author Marina Richie on Saturday, July 6, for an author event at Dudley’s Bookshop Cafe during which both will discuss their books.

Richie’s “Halcyon Journey” on the Belted Kingfisher blends memoir with natural history and earned the 2024 John Burroughs Medal for nature writing.

“We’ll just be celebrating both of our books and Mother Earth,” Pritchett said. “We both have a real love of nature. Mine happens to be fiction and hers is nonfiction, but we’re both lovers and observers of the natural world.”

An environmental ethic is an undercurrent that travels throughout Pritchett’s body of work, including her best-known novel “Stars Go Blue,” which has been optioned for TV rights.

She is also the recipient of the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the WILLA, the High Plains Book Award and several Colorado Book Awards, according to a press release.

Meet the authors

What: Author event with Laura Pritchett and Marina Richie

When: 4-5:30 p.m. July 6

Where: Dudley’s Bookshop Cafe, 135 NW Minnesota Ave., Bend

Cost: Free, RSVP requested

Contact: facebook.com/DudleysBookshopCafe, @dudleysbookshopbend, 541-749-2010