Reading Den Series: February 25th

February 25: C William Langsfeld, Michele Battiste, Sarah Elizabeth Schantz, & Erica Reid

Join us on February 25 at Fort Greene for the next installment of the Reading Den series.

Reading Den is a curated monthly reading series that features notable published authors as well as emerging writers bursting onto Colorado’s literary scene. It is currently hosted at Fort Greene Bar.

The event is free and open to the public, and begins at 7pm. We are no longer requiring free registration for our events. Just show up and enjoy the readings and community.

C. William Langsfeld lives in a small town on Colorado’s Western Slope. His debut novel, “Salvation,” was named a Most Anticipated Debut Book of 2026 by Debutiful. It will be published on February 3, 2026.

Michele Battiste is the author of four poetry collections, including “Waiting for the Wreck to Burn,” which won the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press (2019). Her most recent collection, “The Elsewhere Oracle” (Black Lawrence Press), doubles as an oracle deck and tells the story of a mountain town lost to time. Michele lives in Lafayette, CO, where she works for The Nature Conservancy, raising money to save the planet. She loves space buns, parlor games, and the bear cam at Katmai National Park.

Sarah Elizabeth Schantz is a writer living in a Victorian bungalow in Old Town Longmont near the train tracks on the east side. Her first novel, “Fig,” debuted from Simon & Schuster in 2015 and was selected by NPR as A Best Read of the Year before winning a 2016 Colorado Book Award. Her award-winning short stories have been published by literary journals such as Midwestern Gothic, Third Coast, Hunger Mountain, Los Angeles Review, and more. She teaches creative writing as an adjunct for the MFA program at Naropa University, as faculty at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and through her own workshop series and author services, (W)rites of Passage. She has three cats—Tilly, the calico matriarch, Tinder, a gray rescue from Texas, and Ponyboy, a once feral Siamese kitten turned sweetheart from Casper, Wyoming.

Erica Reid is the author of “Ghost Man on Second,” winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize (Autumn House Press, 2024). Erica’s poems appear in Rattle, Cherry Tree, Colorado Review, and more, and she is the recipient of a 2026 Pushcart Prize.