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Sappenfield’s ‘Lyrics for Rock Stars’ to be honored with Bookworm book launch

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July 30, 2020, 10:27 am

Local author Heather Mateus Sappenfield’s new book “Lyrics for Rock Stars” will be honored with a book launch celebration at Bookworm of Edwards at 5 p.m. on Monday, September 21. Here’s the press release:

Tracing the complex unfolding of generations throughout history, paying particular attention to women’s stories, and children who are often wise beyond their years, Heather Mateus Sappenfield brings dynamic characters to life in a bold collection of stories.

“Lyrics for Rock Stars” (V Press LC, Sept. 21, 2020) is a collection of seventeen stories―some historical, some contemporary — all set in the West. Involving skiers, ranchers, cyclists, suffragettes, tourists, super models, dead pigs, burro racers, religious beet farmers, immigrant miners, scorned lovers, penitent centenarians, and musicians, these stories are as varied as the region’s landscape.

Funny, poignant, and resonant, each tale explores how society’s values clash with our individual desires, and the ways we weave our lives through these opposing forces. This collection will make you cry. It will make you laugh out loud. Above all, it traces hope through the long unfolding of generations and time.

Each story is compelling in its own right, and together, they rise in harmonic commentary on the West’s past and present, on its women who populate both, each straining desperately to find her own song.

Sappenfield, the local three-time Pushcart-nominated author, will have her upcoming prize-winning short story collection honored with a book launch celebration at Bookworm of Edwards at 5 p.m. on Monday, September 21.

Sappenfield is an active and dedicated member of the Vail literary community, having served on the board for the library district for five years. Not only is Sappenfield dedicated to the Western literary community through local support, her upcoming fall title is also a love letter to the American West.


The stories in Heather’s collection have been written over a period of two decades and have been not only thoughtfully crafted to evoke the region, but to have the setting integrated along with the characters as a vital component to the storytelling.


“An exploration of the inner lives of marriage and mountain towns, the stories in Lyrics for Rock Stars rise like the foothills to meet the peaks…Sappenfield knows the modern West,” says Nicole Magistro, owner, Bookworm of Edwards & 2015 judge, Kirkus Prize for Fiction.

“In Lyrics for Rock Stars, Heather Mateus Sappenfield has drawn a map of the Colorado mountains and written a legend that describes the inner workings of its people’s hearts,” says Camille T. Dungy, author of Guidebook to Relative Strangers, National Book Critics Circle Awards Finalist and Guggenheim Fellowship Recipient.

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