Lecture Series: Craig Childs

Welcoming celebrated writers, artists, and thinkers to engage our community in thoughtful dialogue in the Center’s stunning Steddy Theater.

Discussion and reading with award-winning writer Craig Childs

In partnership with Townie Books, the Center is thrilled to host acclaimed writer Craig Childs.

Childs has published more than a dozen critically acclaimed books, including The Secret Knowledge of Water, Atlas of a Lost World, and his most recent Virga & Bone.

He is a contributing editor at Adventure Journal Quarterly and his work has appeared in the Atlantic, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times. He lives in southwest Colorado.

Rock art is created to communicate, to speak to future generations—or to gods, spirits, or ancestors. It has power that words from the mouth don’t carry.

In Tracing Time, writer and adventurer Craig Childs sits with that power, bearing witness to the rock art of the Colorado Plateau. He speaks to elders, scholars, and friends deeply familiar with the canyons, caves, and cliffs of the desert Southwest.

With each depiction in stone, he asks: How does this fit in with others around it, rock art fifty miles away, a hundred, a thousand? What have you seen before that is similar? What stories have you heard? A simple bit of rock art becomes greater than one small note pulled from a song. The whole desert begins to sing.

Arranged by rock art motifs—handprints, floating people, spirals, birth—Tracing Time sets these ancient communications in context, each one a portal to the open mouth of time. With a spirit of generosity, humility, and love of the arid, intricate landscapes of the desert Southwest, Childs invites readers to look and listen deeply.