Gail Binkly
Gail Binkly, editor of the Four Corners Free Press, has more than 25 years’ experience in journalism. She has won numerous awards for news, features, opinion columns, editorials, and arts criticism from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Colorado Press Association. Before starting the Free Press with co-owner Wendy Mimiaga, she worked at the Cortez Sentinel/Montezuma Valley Journal for nine years as a reporter and for two years as managing editor of the renamed Cortez Journal. She also covered sports for three years for the Colorado Springs Gazette, and was an assistant professor of mass communications for nine years at the University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo. She has been published in High Country News and its Writers on the Range syndicate, and for many years had a bi-monthly radio show on local news (with station manager Jeff Pope) at KSJD-FM Dryland Community Radio. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio State University with a specialization in investigative reporting and a bachelor’s in mass communications from the University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo. She lives in Cortez with her husband, David Grant Long, and a menagerie of pets.
David Feela
David Feela is a poet, free-lance writer, writing instructor, book collector, and thrift-store pirate. His work has appeared in regional and national publications, including High Country News’s “Writers on the Range,” Mountain Gazette, and in he Denver Post as a “Colorado Voice.” He is a contributing editor and columnist for Inside/Outside Southwest and for the Four Corners Free Press. A poetry chapbook, “Thought Experiments” (Maverick Press), won the Southwest Poet Series. His web page can be viewed at www.geocities.com/feelasophy
Art Goodtimes
A poet, journalist and organic potato farmer, Art Goodtimes is serving his third term as a Green County Commissioner in Southwest Colorado’s San Miguel County. Former poetry editor for Earth First! Journal and founder of the Talking Gourd poetry tradition, Goodtimes has served as poet-in-residence for the annual Telluride Mushroom Festival for the past 25 years and makes his home near Norwood on Wright’s Mesa at the western edge of the San Juans.
Scott Graham
Scott Graham is the National Outdoor Book Award-winning author of seven books, most recently Mountain Rampage (Torrey House Press), the second installment in the National Park Mystery Series. Visit him at scottfranklingraham.com.
Chuck Greaves
Chuck Greaves shares book review duties (“Prose & Cons”) here at the Free Press. He is the award-winning author of five novels, including the Jack MacTaggart mystery series (HUSH MONEY, GREEN-EYED LADY, and THE LAST HEIR, all from St. Martin’s Minotaur) and the historical/true-crime novels HARD TWISTED and TOM & LUCKY, both from Bloomsbury. Chuck has been a finalist for numerous national honors, including the Shamus, Rocky, Reviewer’s Choice, and Audie Awards, as well as the New Mexico/Arizona, Colorado, and Oklahoma Book Awards. He lives in Cortez. You can learn more by visiting www.chuckgreaves.com.
Katharhynn Heidelberg
Katharhynn Heidelberg, who lives and works in Montrose, has won numerous awards from the Colorado Press Association and Society of Professional Journalists in news, features, and arts and entertainment. She has also received an award from the Associated Press for column-writing. A Colorado native who grew up in Dove Creek and Cortez, she has a a bachelor’s degree in history from Fort Lewis College and a master’s in history from the the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She enjoys getting lost in the woods and is quite good at it.
Sonja Horoshko
Sonja Horoshko is a visual artist and writer commenting on arts, architecture, community and cultural issues. She has lived in Cortez, Colo. — a border town to the Navajo Nation and Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Land — for 17 years and is now considered a local resident. Her writing is regularly published in regional print media. She is a member of the Denver Woman’s Press Club, Colorado Press Association, Colorado Press Women, National Federation of Press Women and the Society of Professional Journalists from which she received a regional first place for news and feature writing on arts in 2009. She attended Bread Loaf Graduate School of English Literature on an Annenberg Rural Challenge Fellowship and has been an invited participant to the 53rd Conference on World Affairs. Sonja is the mother of three splendid sons.
Travis Kelly
Cartoonist Travis Kelly of Moab, Utah, was born and raised in Ft. Worth/Dallas, Texas – aka the Heart of Darkness. He escaped to the oasis of Austin for eight years, and was finally beknighted with a bachelor’s degree in art from the University of Texas. He sold his soul to the Devil for a stint in advertising, then escaped again to Tucson and the University of Arizona for an MFA. Now he resides behind enemy lines, in the reddest state of them all – Utah. But there’s also redrock wilderness in Moab, and plenty of remote nooks and crannies to hide a liberal insurgent from Police State pogroms. Like many cartoonists’, his portfolio is weak on oil and munitions stock, relegating him to the proletariat and prostitution: “Hey, sailor, need a logo or illustration? How about an all-night website?” He runs Travis Kelly Graphics.
Galen Larson
A true graduate of the School of Hard Knocks, Galen Larson left his home on a Minnesota farm at the age of 16 and never looked back. He hitchhiked throughout the 48 states, got rolled in Florida and went without food or lodging for three days, sleeping on the beach and drinking water to fill his stomach. He left Florida with a traveling carnival, became a gas-station attendant in New York City, worked as a bartender, then was drafted into the Army and sent to Korea. He became a cook in the evacuation hospital.
During a romance with a Korean woman, he learned a great deal about Korea and the impact the war was having on its populace. Ill-suited to the military, Galen was told by his commanding officer that he was the worst soldier he’d ever seen. He was honorably discharged and migrated to the Western United States, working as a cook or a bartender in various places. He later worked in power-line and pipeline construction, retired, and settled in Cortez with his beloved second wife, Willetta. They sold everything they had to buy 360 acres of beautiful canyon country west of Cortez. When Willetta became ill, they signed the land over to the Wildland Trust to be preserved forever. Now widowed, Galen lives on the land and is active in local progressive causes.
David Grant Long
A former hippie and vagabond who has lived all over the United States, David Grant Long is a veteran journalist who completed his bachelor’s degree work in mass communications at the University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo, then came to Cortez to write for the Cortez Sentinel/Montezuma Valley Journal. During his 11 years with the paper he won numerous awards in news, features, photos and columns from the Society of Professional Journalists and Colorado Press Association. He served as interim managing editor for one year for the Crested Butte Chronicle and Pilot and is now on the board of directors for the Four Corners Free Press along with his wife (Gail Binkly) and Wendy Mimiaga. David also served one term on the Cortez City Council.
Peter Miesler
A lifelong working man with a respectable mastery of two trades, culinary arts and carpentry, Peter Miesler comes to writing by way of a lifelong interest in learning about and trying to appreciate our Earth, its fantastic biosphere and history, along with the human drama. Now that the kids are grown and gone he is planning to devote more time to writing essays that convey “my understanding of this world I’ve been fascinated in all my life.”
Peter graduated from high school in 1973 and arrived in Silverton, Colo., in July 1979. Since those first six years as a Silvertonian, he has migrated around the Four Corners area, from the dry side south of the old Fort Lewis to Mancos, Hermosa and Bayfield.
Peter is active within the internet’s “global warming” dialogue, supplementing his citizenschallenge.blogspot.com with WhatsUpWithThatWatts.blogspot.com which focuses on deceptive contrarian arguments. He is also active in the struggle to save the Alberta Park watershed from being bulldozed with the NoVillageAtWolfCreek.blogspot.com information kiosk.
Wendy Mimiaga
Wendy Mimiaga has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Lynchburg, Va. She worked as a commodities broker for Payne-Webber in Atlanta, Ga., for five years and for Piper Jaffray in Durango for five years. She has also worked as a photographer for her entire adult life and teaches photography classes at the Cortez Cultural Center. She co-founded the Four Corners Free Press in 2003 and handles its business and advertising. She also works full-time for the Cortez Fire Protection District as an administrative aide. She served a term on the Dolores Town Board beginning in 2002.
Suzanne Strazza
Suzanne Strazza, a freelance writer in the Four Corners for many years, has written for the Four Corners Free Press since its inception. Suzanne wrote an ongoing column for Inside/Outside Magazine called “With the Kids” about getting into the outdoors with her two boys. She has also written for Paddler Magazine, the Mancos Times, the Outward Bound Gazette, and other publications. She has produced on-air essays for the local public radio program Rural Underground. Suzanne was a 2005 Artist-in-Residence at the Aspen Guard Station. She reads high-end literary publications such as People and Us and loves chick flicks. She lives in Mancos with her children.
