VALLEY — Sandra Dallas, New York Times bestselling author, spent Saturday afternoon with 60 women from the San Luis Valley to share her thoughts and good humor about topics that interest her and how she approaches her writing. Her two dozen books, both fiction and nonfiction, focus on The West, women and their struggles for self-expression, quilts and local Colorado history. 

She does all her own research for her books, receiving inspiration from such timeless publications as “Colorado: A Guide to the Highest State,” published in 1945 by the Federal Writers’ Project of FDR’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) which employed writers and editors who otherwise had no work during the Great Depression. She spends countless hours reading primary sources such as women’s journals or diary entries which provide reports or accounts of life in The West. Novels, though, can enrich those hard facts by creating a setting, developing the characters, and providing a plot with a climax and resolution of the story. 

Writing, she says, is like driving at night with the headlights off because you never know where the story will take you. Her stories highlight women’s socioeconomic struggles such as those portrayed in The Persian Pickle Club, Fallen Women, The Last Midwife, and The Quilt that Walked to Golden. Sandra has two new books coming out in 2018 including The Patchwork Bride and Hardscrabble.

The San Luis Valley Quilt Guild was pleased to host Sandra who was welcomed by members of the Guild, Conejos Writers’ Circle, “Book Babes” Book Club, and the community.

Caption: Author Sandra Dallas signs books after the quilt guild meeting in the Valley. Courtesy photo