Laura Pritchett – författare

Newly widowed and unemployed, a woman in her mid-fifties sets off on a journey of trespassing and adventure through the American West and beyond in Three Keys, a witty, thought-provoking novel from the PEN USA Award–winning writer.“Filled with award-winner Pritchett’s electric prose and love of the natural world, Three Keys is irresistible.”—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Days of Wonder1Becoming invisible is painful . . . unless you know how to work it.Ammalie Brinks has just lost the three keys of her life’s purpose—her husband, her job, and her role as a mom, after her son went off to college. She’s also mystified to find herself in middle age: How exactly had that happened? The terrifying idea of becoming irrelevant, invisible, of letting her life slip away Into obscurity, has her driving distracted through Nebraska with a broken plastic fork in her tangled hair.But what Ammalie has found are three literal keys, saved in a drawer for years, from her and her husband’s past. They are the keys to homes that she hopes will be empty—and plans on spending time in. Embarking on an international and increasingly complicated journey (criminal behavior turns out to be challenging!), she seeks to find a life truly her own. And that middle-age business? As someone breaking the law, Ammalie finds there's a real benefit to being invisible when you’re working on becoming the striking, bold, and very much manifested self you want to be.Laura Pritchett, winner of the PEN USA Award for Fiction and the Colorado Book Award, offers a delightful exploration of the very serious business of living a full and honest life. Filled with love, heartbreak, and misdemeanors, Three Keys tackles the unavoidable sorrows and joys experienced during a second coming of age with the zest and vigor that it deserves.

Never mind the Ph.D. and middle-class trappings - Laura Pritchett is a Dumpster diver and proud of it. Ever since she was old enough to navigate the contents of a metal bin, she has reveled in the treasures found in other people's cast-offs.For Going Green, Pritchett has gathered the work of more than twenty writers to tell their personal stories of Dumpster diving, eating road kill, salvaging plastic from the beach, and forgoing another trip to the mall for the thrill of bargain hunting at yard sales and flea markets. These stories look not just at the many ways people glean but also at the larger, thornier issues dealing with what re-using - or not - says about our culture and priorities.The essayists speak to the joys of going beyond the norm to save old houses, old dishwater, old cultures, old Popsicle sticks, and old friendships - and turning them into something new. Some write about gleaning as a means of survival, while others see the practice as a rejection of consumerism or as a way of treading lightly on the earth.Brimming with practical and creative new ways to think about recycling, this collection invites you to dive in and find your own way of going green.

A young woman who offers to raise her teenage sister’s baby gets more than she bargained for in “a moving story about love, duty, and family” (Publishers Weekly).A supermarket clerk in a small dusty Colorado town, twenty-two-year-old Libby is full of dreams but lacks the means to pursue them. When her younger sister Tess becomes pregnant, Libby convinces her not to have an abortion by promising to raise the child herself. But then Tess takes off after the baby is born and Libby finds that her new role puts her dreams that much further away.Her already haphazard life becomes ever more chaotic. The baby’s father, a Christian rodeo rider, suddenly demands custody. Libby loses her job, her boyfriend abandons her, and her own mother harps on how stupid she was to make that promise to Tess. Worse, her sister’s reckless new life could put Libby herself in danger. Not just a story of a single mother overcoming obstacles, Sky Bridge is a complex novel from a PEN Award winner that leaves readers with a fresh understanding of what it means to inhabit a world in which dreams die, and are sometimes reborn.“In this spare yet haunting portrait of the American West, Pritchett’s powerful, poetic voice speaks with clarity, wisdom, and passion about country, family, and one young woman’s majestic spirit.” —Booklist“A superb writer.” —Library Journal

Death is a great and grand mystery, and the actual act of dying is the last physical act of our lives. We can do it well, like a graceful well-rehearsed piano solo—or we can do it like that first awkward dance with a middle-school crush. But if anything deserves our full attention, some preparation, or some renewed clarity, death might be it. In this light-hearted, irreverent exploration of the one thing that is certain in all lives, Making Friends with Death offers a look at all the uncertainty that precedes this final act. A compelling mix of practical how-to advice and personal narrative, this book encapsulates our greatest quest—to make peace with death. Pritchett offers up wisdom she has gleaned from all sorts of places, including a decade of traditional research and a lifetime of other related, but less formal, pursuits (digging up a dead body, watching her dog be necropsied on the lawn, hosting Death Cafés, and confronting the grim reaper himself). Making Friends with Death broaches the sacred and the scary with warmth, research, and humor. Interspersed with a variety of workbook-like exercises, this book will prove to be the go-to companion for anyone who would rather be able to greet death as an old friend, rather than a spooky stranger.