Laura Pritchett is the director of Western Colorado University’s MFA / Nature Writing Concentration program. She is an American author whose work is rooted in the natural world. She began her writing journey with the short story collection Hell’s Bottom, Colorado, which won the PEN USA Award for Fiction and the Milkweed National Fiction Prize. This was followed by the novels Sky Bridge, Stars Go Blue, Red Lightning, and The Blue Hour, which garnered numerous literary awards, including the High Plains Book Award and the WILLA. She is based in Colorado.

A letter Laura wrote to her students at the beginning of the pandemic inspired a segment in the Colorado Sun called “Write On, Colorado” where Colorado writers and writers-to-be were encouraged to send in essays about their experiences during the pandemic. As of last week, they had received over 70 submissions.

How has writing helped during the pandemic?

My agent jokes that I seem to write the best when under duress. Ever since this “Great Isolation” started, I am newly recharged on a novel I’ve been going back-and-forth with in a loose and haphazard fashion for years. Suddenly, it's coming together. I am revamping it to take place during COVID times, which actually fits the skeleton of the novel I’d drafted, and seems to be the plot twist I was waiting for (though I hate to have the real world experiencing such a plot twist!). It has been a productive time for me, probably because I write to process things. When I'm grieving, I write more. Maybe I’ve had trouble writing the past few years because I was simply too happy! Life got to a sweet spot: my kids are growing up well, I’m in a happy relationship, I bought a house and fixed it up. Also, maybe some people deal with stress by disassociating, and I need to enter a fictional world to process my emotions so I can re-associate with life in a more genuine way.

What was the inspiration for the “Write On, Colorado” project for the Colorado Sun?

A couple of weeks before COVID started, I wrote an essay that teaching has been more important than writing ever since that, uh, “bad election.” I have been struggling with the relevancy of art. Well, I don't question art; I question the relevancy of me spending time writing a novel when people were dying on the border. Teaching was the answer to this struggle, because it feels tangible --- sharing knowledge and hoping students will pick up the baton and help (especially in a nature writing program). Then the pandemic hit. And the Colorado Sun article started with a letter I sent those students, telling them I hoped they could write through this, about this, and look to art. I believe humans have always turned to art: writing and storytelling during difficult times is what we do. So, anyway, I sent a letter to my students, then the editor at Colorado Sun saw it, and then I revamped it for a general audience.

How have you seen your students adjust to the pandemic?

[It is] a powerful community. There is enough upheaval right now, lost jobs and plans not unfolding, and so having a stable community has been a sturdy solace-filled thing. Artists may have tools in the toolbox that others don’t—we are lucky in this way, I think. We have art, we have community, and we have the ability to thrive in introversion. The Sun article was geared towards including others in that sphere-- I wanted to send the word out to people who don’t consider themselves writers. They too can find solace in telling stories.

What parallels do you see between environmental degradation and the pandemic?

Art is one solace, Nature is the other. People want to get out right now—and who can blame them? It’s wild and miraculous out there, and these are wild and miraculous times. Spring manifests itself in unique and wondrous ways. Sure, there is something to the idea we haven’t been living with respectful and mindful awareness, and we’ve created conditions for the virus to spread easily, and perhaps the earth is fighting back, is responding, is asking us to keep changing and looking for new ways to do this whole thing, do it with a bit more grace.