How a transgender-owned alpaca ranch in Colorado foretells the future of the rural queer West.
Profiles
A Seattle tattoo artist turns to essential work: transporting the dead
After her shop closed, Jessica Henry found a way to be of service during the pandemic helping others with life’s passing.
An Arizona border sheriff confronts the wall
President Trump’s pitch is ‘a sound bite, not a cogent public policy position.’
Filmmaker Jingjing Tian releases her inner cowboy
From movies to music, artists of color are claiming Western mythology.
As the influence of newsprint erodes, Westword prevails
Despite the state of the media, Westword Editor Patty Calhoun maintains hope.
The pioneer of ruin
Amid a desolate mess in Cisco, Utah, a young woman resurrects a home.
Pawnee comic Howie Echo-Hawk wants to see you squirm
Echo-Hawk’s ‘punishment comedy’ draws on his experiences as an Indigenous man living in Seattle.
A map of language charted by Navajo philosophy
Esther Belin is trying to shape a uniquely Navajo way of writing.
The border as a ‘weaponized’ landscape
Border Patrol agent-turned-author Francisco Cantú examines his experiences.
The Kumeyaay poet who’s disrupting nature poetry
Tommy Pico merges natural and personal history of the arid West from Brooklyn, New York.
A Navajo musician’s quest to spread jazz across the Nation
After gaining international fame, Delbert Anderson and his ensemble bring their music home.
In Glen Canyon, a fight against invasive grasses
A young researcher seeks to make the Southwest more resilient to climate change.
‘The blurring of the then and the now’
An author returns West, looking for unexpected intersections.
The fight for Bears Ears, on the road
Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk, Ute Mountain Ute member, takes the monument debate to Washington.
Meet Denise Juneau, who hopes to be the first Native American woman in Congress
Indian Country votes will help determine whether this seat flips to blue.
Meet the West’s oldest climate correspondent
Anna Mae Wright has spent seven decades recording the weather.
Meet the man helping the Park Service prepare for a hotter future
Patrick Gonzalez walks the walk when it comes to climate action.
Meet the new advocates for the West
A generation of young Western activists are using outdoor sports as a step towards conservation.
The grand plan to save the Yellowstone River
Can one man’s pie-in-the-sky idea save one of the West’s most iconic and underloved rivers?
#whereisjose: The man forging a new path in the outdoors
José González is tapping into Latinos’ passion for nature.