Inviting the Reader In with Pam Houston

​Together we will look at the opening paragraphs, stanzas and lines of a great variety of stories, memoirs, essays, novels and poems and talk about the specific and various ways a writer gets a reader to commit early and fully to the story (in whatever form) they have to tell.

​FAQs:

• ​​​I'm unable to join live. Will the event be recorded?
  Yes! The event will be recorded and shared with ticket-holders via email the following day.

• ​​​How can I participate during the event?
  You will be joining a Zoom Meeting for this event. We encourage you to have your camera on, but remain muted until prompted. We also recommend that you come prepared with writing materials!

• ​I live outside the U.S. Can I still join?
  Yes! We have many international members in Sustenance. We'd love to see you there no matter where you're tuning in from.

​BIO:

Pam Houston is the author of the short story collection Cowboys Are My Weakness, the memoir Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country, and seven other books of fiction and nonfiction. Her books have won multiple Western States, Mountains and Plains and Colorado Book Awards and her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, the O Henry Prize Anthology and Best American Short Stories of the Century.

​She teaches creative writing at The Institute of American Indian Arts and UC Davis, is cofounder and creative director of the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers and fiction editor at the environmental arts journal Terrain.org. She lives on a homestead at 9,000 feet near the headwaters of the Rio Grande. Her book of essays on kinship, Animals Taught Me Everything, will be published by Torrey House Press in October, 2026.