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April 2025

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April 1st through 25th
Poetry Contest

Each week in April, beginning April 1st, Jean will post a prompt for you to write or find a poem as we celebrate National Poetry Month!

Those who complete all 4 prompts will be entered into a drawing to read their poems at the Open Mic on April 26th, and have their poem featured in May’s newsletter!

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To Participate:

  • Sign up at this link

  • Make sure you are following us on Instagram or Facebook. If your account is private, accept our follow request (you can remove us after if you want to!)

  • Check for the prompt on Sundays (the first week will be on Tuesday)

  • Write or find a poem that responds to the prompt, take a picture of the poem, and post it to Instagram or Facebook by 5pm Friday of the same week.

  • In your post, be sure to tag the Narrow Gauge Book Cooperative on Facebook, or @narrowgaugebooks on Instagram. Include the hashtag #NGBCpoetrycontest

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April All month long
Featured Artist:
Evelyn Sprouse-Rowe

Evelyn Sprouse-Rowe is the April Artist of the Month at the Narrow Gauge Book Cooperative!

 

Join us for a come-and-go reception on April 4th from 4pm to 6pm to chat with Evelyn and see her art. 

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Internal and external energies influence and give rise to her art. The abstract qualities of her art come from intuition and a personal interpretation of beauty.

In many of her acrylic paintings, she exploits color, shape, form, and the subject matter.  That, she feels, makes a statement about expression, freedom, and joy in art making, while still staying aware of concrete realities in design and structural elements.

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Part of that statement is about beauty.  Finding beauty in many things, expressed in various ways, yet not neglecting the importance of the structure and design elements that she feels should be present in every successful art piece.

She hopes to show the importance of structure in liberated artistic forms, and that both are considerations and foundational to the departure point from which an artist creates.  The result: different styles of beautiful art with personal expression.

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The Narrow Gauge hopes you will join them for the artist reception on April 4th, and that you will enjoy Evelyn’s art all throughout April. 

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April 5th 6pm
An Evening with Margaret Loewen, MD

Margaret Loewen, MD, will be at the Narrow Gauge Book Cooperative on Saturday, April 5th at 6pm for a reading, Q&A, and signing for her book The Picture of Addiction: It Can Happen to Anyone.

Margaret J. Loewen MD has been working at Hope in the Valley, 1317 17th Street, Alamosa, Colorado since December of 2024. She is one of the medical providers caring for people with addictions at this residential facility. The model of care utilized is based on outcomes-based research, reflecting the local community’s commitment to its population.

Once the director of medical services for Maple City Health Care Center in Goshen, Indiana, Loewen retired from that position at the end of May, 2024. Prior to her position in Indiana, she was the medical director of the Emergency Department for Prowers Medical Center in Lamar, Colorado. Currently, she and her family have started a company called So Long Overdue LLC (solongoverdue.com) to inform the public regarding the disease of opioid use disorder. 

About the Book: In this book, Loewen writes as a physician and a mother to share her experience learning about opioids in a rural community as she began her medical practice. This class of medications, highly desired for pain, resulted in addiction for many. Over-prescribing, fueled an opioid epidemic. Once prescriptions were given less liberally, limiting legal opioid availability in her town, heroin arrived to fill the gap. The market that legal opioids created led to many more people developing opioid use disorder with illegal heroin.

 

Later, Loewen’s own son made a single bad decision and was exposed to heroin. As a result of her experiences doing everything a mother can to keep her son alive, she was shocked by the stigma and lack of effective and affordable care for people with this disease.

 

Through helping her son, she discovered that the treatment with the best track record in helping people achieve recovery is a medication called buprenorphine. When emergency departments provide the first dose when a person with opioid use disorder is in withdrawal, then refer to out-patient clinics plus community programs to provide jobs and housing, people with this disease can recover. She initiated inductions with buprenorphine in her ER and demonstrates how easily this can be done in every hospital.

 

Loewen and her son worked on writing this book together, as they both believe it is an important topic and that education about substance use disorder and effective treatments will have a major impact on recovery rates and will reduce the suffering caused by substance use disorders.

 

The Narrow Gauge Book Cooperative, and Dr. Loewen, look forward to seeing you at the reading!

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April 19th 6pm
The Spadefoot Storyslam Community

Each month, we host the Spadefoot Story Slam community, sharing stories based on a theme, selected at the previous month’s Slam. While inspired by the Moth Story Hour, our monthly meetings are not a contest, but instead are a way to come together and practice sharing, and deep listening. 

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Join us 4/19 at the Narrow Gauge Book Cooperative for your stories themed around Islands.

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Have you traveled to an island and have an adventurous story to share? Have you ever felt like you were on an island, isolated and alone in your belief? What stories of peace, calm, and sanity arise? 

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As always, we encourage creative interpretation of the theme! Stories should be true as remembered by you, and spoken from the heart, instead of read from the page. We look forward to seeing you!

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April 26th 6pm
Indie Bookstore Day

Every year, we look forward with eagerness to Independent Bookstore Day! We love indie bookstores, and not just because we are one. Indie bookstores have a unique personality that reflects the spirit of their community, and we are no exception. We wouldn't be us without you!

 

Come celebrate with us all day on April 26th with limited edition items specially designed for independent bookstores! 

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And, in the leadup to Indie Bookstore Day, your NGBC staff will be participating in Spirit Week!

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On April 25th, we're showing member and owner appreciation! Members and owners will receive a free used book for any purchase of $20 or more, OR a $5 coupon for any purchase of $50 or more.

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On April 26th, join us for a poetry reading and open mic!

 

We're excited to see you!

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April 26th 6pm
Poetry Night: Reading and Open MIc

Celebrate poetry month with us with readings from local poets followed by an open mic night!

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Beginning at 6pm we will hear from local poets Hanna Hays, Rachel Kellum, Maira Rodriguez, Bill Tite, and Mary Van Pelt.
 

Hanna Hays is a lover of literature from Alamosa, Colorado. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Western Colorado University and teaches English Language Arts at Center High School. A self-proclaimed writer of "dead dad poetry," Hanna uses writing as a way to process grief and to share her experiences with others, so that they may see themselves reflected in the work and maybe find some solace. Her poems have appeared in Twenty Bellows, Duck Head Journal, Southern Arizona Press' "Home for the Holidays" anthology, and Hysteria Heart Press' Heartthrob Zine.

 

Rachel Kellum lives with her family at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains where she has made a life teaching greenhouse gardening, visual and language arts to valley children, writing at Adams State University, and humanities and literature courses for Trinidad State College. For seven years running, she and a posse of local poets have put on the Crestone Poetry Festival. Kellum earned a BFA in Art from Millikin University and an MA in English from Colorado State. Her career began as an English and art instructor at Morgan Community College for eleven years, during which time she served six years as director of the MCC CACE Gallery of Fine Art and host of Open Mic Poetry Nights, featuring Colorado’s finest poets. A Pushcart Prize nominee and NFSPS award winning poet, her poetry has been featured in several online journals and print collections. She leads writing workshops, performs her poetry around Colorado and blogs at wordweeds.com. Her first book, ah, published by Liquid Light Press, was released in 2012. 

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Maira Rodriguez is a writer from Antonito Colorado. She holds an MFA from Western Colorado University,and she is the poetry editor for The Santa Fe Literary Review. Maira enjoys working with young children and when she's not working or writing she's going for walks, going to concerts, and spending time with her family. Maira's poetry is centered heavily on family, trauma, the power of place, and all things real and beautiful. She has previously been published in: High Desert Journal, The Santa Fe Literary Review, Sky Island Journal, Kansas City Voices, and Hysteria Heart Press 

 

Bill Tite has a background in art, design, photography and writing in commercial advertising and marketing agencies in the Detroit area of southeast Michigan. He has always been a story-teller. Six years ago, he writes, “I was adopted, welcomed, embraced by the Sangre de Cristos, San Juans, and the San Luis Valley, and they saved me.” Past, present and future environments (and creatures!) flow through him onto the page. For Bill, language is multi-sensory... words spring us far beyond visuals... aromas, sounds, tastes, touch, feelings, and movement... memories of the past AND the future. His most recent work is his first exploration into long-form creative non-fiction, Me Raven Mom available now at the Narrow Gauge Bookstore! Bill has been published in the Willow Creek Journal, Messages from the Hidden Lake, and the Conejos Writer’s Circle Book. He has self published blue and X04, both self published poetry chapbooks, and strange pilots, an illustrated children’s book for adults.
 

Mary Van Pelt gives voice to those who are marginalized.  She writes in the genres of creative nonfiction and non-rhyming poetry. With a Spanish language major she graduated from Adams State College when yellow sticky notes were first launched into the world.  Her newest title is Angela: Friendship at the Edge of an Abyss. Previously published works: Shaped by the Wind, Finding my Pieces, In Silence I Speak, and After the Murder. Her stories have also appeared in numerous local and regional anthologies.

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