About Beth Paulson

Beth lives in the San Juan Mountains of Ouray County, Colorado where she leads writing and creativity workshops and writes a monthly feature column for the Ouray Plaindealer. Beth taught college writing for over twenty years at California State University Los Angeles.

In her writing Beth tries to connect her close observations of the natural world to the questions of the human condition and spirit. In her words, "I try to keep my mind/ on this calling,/ the only way I know/ to save the earth."

Beth's published books include The Truth about Thunder (2001) and The Company of Trees (2004) from Ponderosa Press as well as a collection of essays, Uniquely Ouray: Reflections of Life in a Mountain County (2007).

Her poems have been included in Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West (Houghton Mifflin, 2004) and What Wildness is This: Women Write about the Southwest (University of Texas Press, 2007). Two of her poems also appears in IMPROV: An Anthology of Colorado Poets (Green Fuse Press, 2008) and is forthcoming in Poets of the American West (Many Voices Press).

Beth's new collection of poems, Wild Raspberries, was published in April 2009 by Plain View Press.

Beth has received several prizes for her poems, including most recently two 2008 Mark Fischer prizes. Her poem, "Hollyhocks," was nominated for the 2007 Pushcart Prize and her poem, "The Color of Snow," was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize. Beth's poem "Moon Directions" was awarded an Honorable Mention Prize by Passager magazine for their Summer 2010 issue.

Beth's poems have been published or are forthcoming in: The Climbing Art, Idaho Connections, Clark Street Review, Trestle Creek Review, Herb Network, Buffalo Bones, Mountain Gazette, Hard Row to Hoe, Sunstone, The Kerf, Welcome Home, Writing on the Edge, Tapestries, Mad Blood, Blueline, Shemom, Blind Man's Rainbow, Voicings from the High Country, Advocate, Sweet Annie and Sweet Pea Review, Red Owl, Tributaries, Aethlon, Ruah, Innisfree, The Oak, HeartLodge, Slow Trains, Pegasus, Terrain, damselfly, The Lyric, Aurorean, Poetry of the Spirit, Still Crazy, Iris Magazine, Plainsong, Red Rock Review, Poetry Saves, New Mexico Review of Poetry and Passager.