Keith Liggett
My first published piece was a poem in the Northwestern University literary journal when I was 16. My first journalism appeared on the front page of the Breckenridge Journal, above the fold. Jim Bowden, a World Cup ski tech, popped through a speed trap on Buffalo Road in Summit County, Colorado. Clocked at 57 mph in a 25 mph zone, the officer was primarily concerned Jim rode a skateboard. Beyond the obvious speeding, they tossed in reckless driving, operating a toy on a public road and a host of other charges. The Journal asked me to cover the trial.
These two incidents foreshadowed a writing career with one foot in the literary and the other seeking a different angle within traditional journalism.
While living in Breckenridge, a start-up paper, the Quandry Times, offered me a slot as a weekly ski columnist with the proviso, “It has to be interesting and to all levels”. The column continued for some 20 years, moving to the Summit County Journal when the two papers merged and then becoming a self-syndicated column after I left Breckenridge in the early 90’s. At its peak, the column reached over 650,000 readers weekly primarily in Northwestern dailies (WA, OR, ID, MT and CO). For two seasons, I used the column as the basis for the first ski show on NWCableNews (2. 2 million households).
During this time I also provided coverage of western North American FIS events (World Cup, NorAm and national ski championships) to papers in the syndicate, as a stringer for Reuters and occasionally AP. My work was featured in the major ski magazines and I provided regular pieces to Skinet.com (not yet devolved to the industry PR vehicle it is today). My work has been published in well over 100 newspapers.
I remain very involved with the arts having served on the steering committee forming the Columbia Gorge Arts and Culture Council and then sitting on the Board for two terms (four years). The Council encompassed six counties in Oregon and Washington. I was one of the original board members of the Columbia Gorge Racing Association (cgra.org) and served six years on the board. Most recently, I sat for nine years as a board member of the Fernie Arts Council. I started, and for three years led, the Fernie Writers Conference bringing award winning writers to Fernie, BC to lead intensive MFA-style week-long writing workshops. The conference hosted over 100 participants the last two years. Since that time, I organized and coordinated writing conferences and winter cultural events at St. Eugene Resort, the Ktunaxa residental school which the Nation re-purposed into a premier destination resort. www.steugene.ca
In 2017, I was elected to the Board of the Federation of BC Writers and served as the Southeast Representative. In November 2018, I was elected Vice President. In August of 2019, I stepped up to the position of President which I held for a little over a year.
In late summer 2009, Whitecap Books published Island Lake Lodge: the cookbook. The book received the Gourmand Award for the “Best Cookbook Photography: Canada, 2009 and after only two months went into a second printing and became a Canadian bestseller. A collection of poetry, like socks in the dryer, was published in the fall of 2013. The Fernie Originals, a collection of essays about life in Fernie and profiles of Fernie restaurants was published in 2015. The Whitefish Review published the poem, spring, the rituals, in the Spring 2019 issue.
In July of 2006, I moved from the States to Fernie, BC. I spend most of my time in Canada. I try to ski 100 plus days a year. In 1989 I passed my Level 3—PSIA, Rocky Mountain. I taught for many years at Breckenridge, then Mt. Hood Meadows. After I moved to Canada, I taught at Fernie Alpine Resort until the start of the pandemic. In the summer, I spend part of each day on a mountain bike, try to fly fish at least every other day and hike or climb several times a week. In the course of a year, there are a handful of days I do not spend some substantial portion of the day outside in a mountain activity.
Education:
Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA.Major–Philosophy. Minor–American Intellectual History
Graduate work in Creative Writing at Univ. Colorado—Boulder and Denver Univ..
Workshops with William Kittredge (fiction), Ed Dorn (poetry), Mary Oliver (poetry)
Dual citizen: United States and Canada.
Literary Representation: Bob Mecoy, 460 West 24th Street, Suite 3E, NY, NY 10011.
Contact:
Keith Liggett
206 B Lake Ave
Silverton, BC V0G 1M0
Canada
Also blog at www.fernie.com/offcamber (more often)
For a partial view of my journalism access www.newspapers.com and search Keith Liggett