Free Press staff: Gail Binkly, David Feela, Art Goodtimes, Connie Gotsch, Katharhynn Heidelberg, Sonja Horoshko, Travis Kelly, Galen Larson, David Grant Long, Jim Mimiaga, Wendy Mimiaga, Kim Pappin, Suzanne Strazza Gail Binkly, editor of the Four Corners Free Press, has more than 25 years’ experience in journalism. She has won numerous awards for news, features, opinion columns and editorials from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Colorado Press Association. Before starting the Free Press with co-owner Wendy Mimiaga, she worked at the Cortez Sentinel/Montezuma Valley Journal for nine years as a reporter and for two years as managing editor of the renamed Cortez Journal. She also covered sports for three years for the Colorado Springs Gazette, and was an assistant professor of mass communications for nine years at the University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo. She is a freelance writer for High Country News and its Writers on the Range syndicate, and has a bi-monthly radio show on local news (with station manager Jeff Pope) at KSJD-FM. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio State University and a bachelor’s in mass communications from the University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo. She lives in Cortez with her husband, David Grant Long, and a menagerie of pets. David Feela is a poet, free-lance writer, writing instructor, book collector, and thrift-store pirate. His work has appeared in regional and national publications, including High Country News’s “Writers on the Range,” Mountain Gazette, and in he Denver Post as a “Colorado Voice.” He is a contributing editor and columnist for Inside/Outside Southwest and for the Four Corners Free Press. A poetry chapbook, “Thought Experiments” (Maverick Press), won the Southwest Poet Series. His web page can be viewed at www.geocities.com/feelasophy A poet, journalist and organic potato farmer, Art Goodtimes is serving his third term as a Green County Commissioner in Southwest Colorado’s San Miguel County. Former poetry editor for Earth First! Journal and founder of the Talking Gourd poetry tradition, Goodtimes has served as poet-in-residence for the annual Telluride Mushroom Festival for the past 25 years and makes his home near Norwood on Wright’s Mesa at the western edge of the San Juans.
Connie Gotsch is the author of the suspense/thriller e-novel “Snap Me a Future” and the mainstream/romance e-novel POD, “A Mouth Full of Shell,” both available from DLSIJpress.com. She has written three short plays: “A Peck of Dirt,” “Or Are You Cinderella—?,” and “New Delight.” She has a short story, “The Cook’s Tale,” in the e-anthology, “Insomniac Tales by Chaucer’s Women,” from DLSIJ Press. The book is also available POD. Connie has won first-place awards for full-length fiction for “A Mouth Full of Shell” and short story for “The Cook’s Tale” in the New Mexico Press Women’s Communication Contest. “Snap Me a Future” has won second place for Full-Length Fiction in the same competition. She won a first-place award for “The Cook’s Tale” and a second-place award for “A Mouth Full of Shell” in the National Federation of Press Women’s Communication Contest. Her one-act play, “Or Are you Cinderella—?” took third place in the San Juan College Biannual One-Act Play Writing Contest in Farmington, N.M. “A New Delight” was presented in New York’s Soho District by the Saturday Players, as part of “The Farmington Armada,” gathered by Charles Pike. Connie lives in Farmington with two furry kids, a setter-Lab named Benjamin and a mutt named Kiri. When she isn’t writing, she’s at KSJE, Public Radio for the Four Corners, serving as program director, host of the award-winning morning classical music show, “Roving with the Arts,” or producer of a segment for authors called “Write On Four Corners.” She also produces award-winning arts documentaries and arts interviews. Reach Connie where Imagination’s on Board at www.authorsden.com/conniegotsch or conniegotsch@authorsden.com Katharhynn Heidelberg, who lives and works in Montrose, has won awards from the Colorado Press Association and Society of Professional Journalists in news, features, and arts and entertainment. She also received an award from the Associated Press for column-writing. A Colorado native who grew up in Dove Creek and Cortez, she has a a bachelor’s degree in history from Fort Lewis College and a master’s in history from the the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She enjoys getting lost in the woods and is quite good at it. Sonja Horoshko is a visual artist and writer commenting on arts, architecture, community and cultural issues. She has lived in Cortez, Colo. — a border town to the Navajo Nation and Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Land — for 17 years and is now considered a local resident. Her writing is regularly published in regional print media. She is a member of the Denver Woman's Press Club, Colorado Press Association, Colorado Press Women, National Federation of Press Women and the Society of Professional Journalists from which she received a regional first place for news and feature writing on arts in 2009. She attended Bread Loaf Graduate School of English Literature on an Annenberg Rural Challenge Fellowship and has been an invited participant to the 53rd Conference on World Affairs. Sonja is the mother of three splendid sons.
Cartoonist Travis Kelly of Moab, Utah, was born and raised in Ft. Worth/Dallas, Texas – aka the Heart of Darkness. He escaped to the oasis of Austin for eight years, and was finally beknighted with a bachelor’s degree in art from the University of Texas. He sold his soul to the Devil for a stint in advertising, then escaped again to Tucson and the University of Arizona for an MFA. Now he resides behind enemy lines, in the reddest state of them all – Utah. But there’s also redrock wilderness in Moab, and plenty of remote nooks and crannies to hide a liberal insurgent from Police State pogroms. Like many cartoonists’, his portfolio is weak on oil and munitions stock, relegating him to the proletariat and prostitution: “Hey, sailor, need a logo or illustration? How about an all-night website?” He runs Travis Kelly Graphics.
A true graduate of the School of Hard Knocks, Galen Larson left his home on a Minnesota farm at the age of 16 and never looked back. He hitchhiked throughout the 48 states, got rolled in Florida and went without food or lodging for three days, sleeping on the beach and drinking water to fill his stomach. He left Florida with a traveling carnival, became a gas-station attendant in New York City, worked as a bartender, then was drafted into the Army and sent to Korea. He became a cook in the evacuation hospital. During a romance with a Korean woman, he learned a great deal about Korea and the impact the war was having on its populace. Ill-suited to the military, Galen was told by his commanding officer that he was the worst soldier he’d ever seen. He was honorably discharged and migrated to the Western United States, working as a cook or a bartender in various places. He later worked in power-line and pipeline construction, retired, and settled in Cortez with his beloved second wife, Willetta. They sold everything they had to buy 360 acres of beautiful canyon country west of Cortez. When Willetta became ill, they signed the land over to the Wildland Trust to be preserved forever. Now widowed, Galen lives on the land and is active in local progressive causes. A former hippie and vagabond who has lived all over the United States, David Grant Long is a veteran journalist who completed his bachelor’s degree work in mass communications at the University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo, then came to Cortez to write for the Cortez Sentinel/Montezuma Valley Journal. During his 11 years with the paper he won numerous awards in news, features, photos and columns from the Society of Professional Journalists and Colorado Press Association. He served as interim managing editor for one year for the Crested Butte Chronicle and Pilot and is now on the board of directors for the Four Corners Free Press along with his wife (Gail Binkly) and Wendy and Jim Mimiaga. David also served one term on the Cortez City Council. Jim Mimiaga has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Fort Lewis College. A former writer for the Cortez Journal, Southern Ute Drum and Inside/Outside magazine, he has won several awards in news and photography from the Society of Professional Journalists and Colorado Press Association. Jim is an avid (even obsessive) hiker, cyclist and river-rafter. Jim has been awarded a Ted Scripps Fellowship in environmental journalism from the University of Colorado and is therefore in Boulder for a year, working on a project about the impacts of uranium-mining on the Southwest. Jim’s better half, Wendy Mimiaga has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Lynchburg, Va. She worked as a commodities broker for Payne-Webber in Atlanta, Ga., for five years and for Piper Jaffray in Durango for five years. She has also worked as a photographer for her entire adult life and teaches photography classes at the Cortez Cultural Center. She co-founded the Four Corners Free Press in 2003 and handles its business and advertising. She was elected to the Dolores Town Board in 2002. Kim Pappin is an independent radio and print journalist who makes her home amongst friends in Montezuma, La Plata, Dolores and San Juan counties. Suzanne Strazza, a freelance writer in the Four Corners for many years, has written for the Four Corners Free Press since its inception. Suzanne wrote an ongoing column for Inside/Outside Magazine called “With the Kids” about getting into the outdoors with her two boys. She has also written for Paddler Magazine, the Mancos Times, the Outward Bound Gazette, and other publications. She has produced on-air essays for the local public radio program Rural Underground. Suzanne was a 2005 Artist-in-Residence at the Aspen Guard Station. She reads high-end literary publications such as People and Us and loves chick flicks. She lives in Mancos with her husband and children.
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