JOANNA YONDER

Joanna Yonder is a writer, presenter and facilitator working to amplify the voices of the rural American West and the wild places that shape them. Her work has appeared in Fungi Magazine, the Climbing Zine, the Sage Green Journal, the 85for85 Anthology, and more. You can find her Southwest Colorado-focused nature column, This Wild Place, in the Telluride Times. Her most recent writings can be found at her website: wordswesterly.org.

As a writer, I’m building a body of work that celebrates rural voices. Living in small towns and isolated communities across the western Slope has honed my focus on how unique-and, often, underrepresented- rural communities can be, and I love writing about rural kinship and the special voices that exist in smaller and more remote communities. I’m also driven by connections between humans and nature, and frequently write about the cyclical ways of being that accompany relationship with the wild.

My chapter of service as Colorado’s San Miguel County Poet Laureate, from January 2021 through mid- 2025, was a tremendous gift. Through that role, I learned about the power of poetry to connect people and to help us express that which is otherwise inexpressible. I will always value poetry as a conduit of connection rather than a tool of academic aggrandizement. I’m grateful to the Rico Center for recently funding a new project, Rico Speaks, which will convene poets, songwriters and storytellers to share their local wit and wisdom with our community!