Undeniable truths
AS DEMONSTRATIONS CONTINUE across the country in support of Black lives and against police brutality, national bestseller lists have seen an increase of titles on anti-racism and white privilege. The Western United States, meanwhile, has no shortage of writers with much to contribute to ongoing conversations on race, inequality and other issues of national concern. Denver, for example, saw some of the earliest Black Lives Matter protests against the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, underscoring the nationwide problem of police violence and racism. High Country News recently caught up with four Front Range writers through the Lighthouse Writers Workshop, a nonprofit that supports Denver’s writing community. Each of them contributes to literature from the West in distinct, important ways.
Khadijah Queen is a poet and critic who grew up in Los Angeles and now teaches writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Regis University. Her work, which includes I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men and What I Had On and Black Peculiar, explores issues of power, history, culture, sex and gender, among many other themes, with sophisticated nuance and detail.
R. Alan Brooks is a Denver-based writer who teaches at Regis University. His graphic novel, e, imagines the moral failings of humans and mythical beings alike, while exploring the conflict between love and malice. He also writes a weekly comic strip for the , called , in which an elderly white woman wakes from a coma and must rely on her
