When the four authors of Growing Up Aspen: Adventures of the Unsupervised were planning their book release discussion and reading at Explore Booksellers in June, they thought they’d sell 20 books. Instead, it was Explore’s biggest book event, with more than 100 people overflowing the second-floor community room and dozens signing up for copies of the self-published story collection that Andy Collen, Dean Jackson, Chris Pomeroy, and Lo Semple wrote about their formative years in the valley in the 1970s and ’80s.  

“Aspen nostalgia is the sex that sells,” says Semple, whose contribution to the book is 33 of his Aspen Daily News columns—which tie the authors’ youthful experiences with today’s Aspen. And while the book presents four distinctive points of view about growing up in a resort town with celebrities and worldly visitors, it’s also a classic tale of small-town life in America.

The latchkey-kid culture referenced in the subtitle, this sense of being raised collectively by a tight-knit community, is the draw for people who really know Aspen as well. 

Find it locally at Explore Booksellers and Carl’s.