Join Colorado Book Award Winners Cynthia Swanson & Ian Patterson for a night of feminism & women’s stories, both past & future. Swanson will be reading from her new short story collection, This Isn’t New: Women’s Historical Stories. Patterson will be sharing from his new Sci-Fi, Fruits of Our Labor.
About Cynthia Swanson:
Cynthia Swanson is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the psychological suspense novels The Bookseller, The Glass Forest, and Anyone But Her, as well as the short story collection This Isn't New: Women's Historical Stories. Cynthia was named 2025 Indie Author of the Year by the Indie Author Project, has received the Colorado Book Award (twice) and the WILLA Literary Award, won the Indie Author Project contest, and been a finalist for the High Plains Book Award, the WILLA Literary Award, and the CAL Award. She is also the editor of the award-winning anthology Denver Noir. She lives with her family in Denver.
About This Isn’t New:
An 1880s theologian. A 1940s high school principal and her suffragist mother. A 1970s, first-ever-anywhere (she's pretty sure) female take on Bozo the Clown.
In this collection, Cynthia Swanson explores the lives of nine women, including several ancillary figures from Swanson's beloved, bestselling novels. Covering more than a century of American history and landscapes, these stories examine recognizable struggles: gender presumptions, body image, reproductive choice, gaslighting, and abuse, among others. The women's lives differ from one another, but they share a singular trait: their sex dictates the expectations stamped onto them. Each woman, in her time, must fight for who she is against the forces working to constrain her.
This Isn't New asks: What can uniquely female history teach us about our own lives-and how can the power of story inform our choices going forward?
About Ian Patterson:
Ian Patterson is an award winning author of science fiction, horror, and poetry. His debut, Transference, won the Colorado Book Award for science fiction in 2025, and is part of a complete series called The Narrator Cycle. His work aims to critique capitalism, inequality, and environmental destruction by centering philosophical discussions in the trappings of fast-paced, genre-bending narratives. He believes all people should have bodily autonomy, equality, freedom, and that a more just future can be built on compassion and empathy. Fruits of Our Labor is his latest release, out now through Shiraki Press.
About Fruits of Our Labor:
A new world is emerging, one parthenogenetic birth at a time.
In a near-future America where women have just achieved asexual reproduction, Samara yearns for freedom from her dying relationship, and a child of her own—fully her own.
As parthenogenetic birth takes hold and the role of men in the survival of the species diminishes, protest and outcry sweep across the nation. Sierra, one of the first “partho babies”, is bullied relentlessly as she grows up and seeks her place in this new pressure cooker of changing gender roles and norms.
And in the aftermath of the “Days of Horror”, a period of violent backlash from displaced men, a professor of history looks back on the rise of PG birth in an attempt to understand the impact of this era of upheaval on the world.
Together, these three converging perspectives tell the story of a profound societal transformation that asks who gets to have autonomy, who gets to write the future, and who that future is for.