Laura Pritchett

Laura Pritchett is the author of Hell's Bottom, Colorado (Milkweed Editions, 2001), winner of the 2001 Milkweed National Fiction Prize and the 2002 PEN USA Award for Fiction. This collection of short stories was also a recommended title in "Book Sense 76," the publication of independent booksellers. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines, including The Sun, U.S. Catholic, and Elle, and will be included in upcoming issues of Colorado Review and divide. She has just finished her novel, Sky Bridge, and is now working on a book of essays about environmental issues and ranching in the West.

Pritchett received her B.A. and M.A. in English at Colorado State University, and is currently completing her Ph.D. in Contemporary American Literature at Purdue University. She has served as editor of a community newspaper in St. Paul, Minnesota, and worked as a freelance writer for several years. She is now living in Colorado, near the small cattle ranch where she was raised.

Of Hell's Bottom, critics have had this to say: Booklist writes, "Pritchett excels at juxtaposing the sensuous with the severe, the rapturous with the repugnant." Kirkus notes that the book "vividly conveys a world where decency and humanity are challenged repeatedly, and diminished, yet still manage to gain small, significant victories." Publisher's Weekly writes that "Pritchett's debut is an admirable, steely-eyed collection of stories and vignettes featuring a family of ranchers in mountain-shadowed Colorado… Pritchett, raised a rancher herself, writes beautifully about the hard work and casual cruelty of ranch life.... Fans of Annie Proulx's Close Range and Jon Billman's When We Were Wolves should enjoy this visceral, accomplished collection." The Rocky Mountain News says that the book "displays the talent of a brilliant, new writer."