For: Adventure Seekers

“Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life” is New Yorker staff writer William Finnegan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir about his lifelong love of surfing, which started during his childhood in California and Hawaii and took him around the world, through Africa, Asia, Australia and the South Pacific, in a quest for perfect waves. Finnegan’s publisher calls “Barbarian Days” an “old-school adventure story, and intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting, little-understood art.”

Winter Words talk + book signing with William Finnegan: March 20

For: Fans of Historical Fiction

“A Piece of the World” by New York Times best-selling author Christina Baker Kline is the fictionalized story of Christina Olson, the real-life inspiration for artist Andrew Wyeth’s iconic 1948 painting “Christina’s World.” The novel weaves fact and fiction into a compelling tale of friendship, art and small-town life in coastal Maine.

Winter Words talk + book signing with Christina Baker Kline: February 20

For: Poetry Lovers

“Ordinary Light” by U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith is a coming-of-age memoir about race, faith and family. O, The Oprah Magazine called the book “an inspiring model for seeking the light in an ‘ordinary’ life—ask the tough questions, look in the hidden corners, allow yourself to understand and never stop searching for faith.”

Winter Words talk + book signing with Tracy K. Smith: January 23

For: Fans of Books on “Best of the Year” Lists

“The Ninth Hour” by National Book Award winner and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Alice McDermott is the story of an order of nuns and the people they serve in Irish-Catholic Brooklyn in the early 20^th century. “The Ninth Hour” was named one of the top 10 novels of 2017 by Time magazine and The Wall Street Journal, as well as one of NPR’s Best Books of 2017, among other accolades.

Winter Words talk + book signing with Alice McDermott: January 9

For: Readers Interested in the Immigrant Experience

“The House of Broken Angels” by the award-winning, best-selling Luis Alberto Urrea is the epic novel of a Mexican-American family in San Diego sharing stories of lives spent on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Author Richard Russo said Urrea’s book “has everything we demand of a great novel—sweep, ambition, generosity, myth, intimacy, and, above all, humanity.”

Winter Words talk + book signing with Luis Alberto Urrea: April 3

Read more about the Winter Words series. Passes and tickets are now on sale:

Wheeler Opera House Box Office | aspenshowtix.com | 970-920-5770

$25 Individual Tickets
$60 AW Member Series Pass 
$80 Non-Member Series Pass (Passes available for purchase through JAN. 8)