BY KAREN BOSSICK

Arvin Ramgoolam, an emerging fiction writer and co-owner of Townie Books and Rumors Coffee and Tea House in Crested Butte, Colo., will take part in a two-week residency with the Community Library in early April.

Ramgoolam will be working on his novel “A New West” while here. He describes it as an unsettling of the West recentered around indigenous, brown, black and queer bodies of difference.

He will discuss his work during a free event at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 14, at The Community Library. Those who wish to attend can RSVP at https://comlib.org. The program will also stream on the Library’s Vimeo and be available to watch later.

Ramgoolam was born in Trinidad and Tobago and raised in Miami Beach. He is the 2020 One Story Adina Talve-Goodman Fellow, the 2021 Colorado Book Award Judge, the 2021 Duende-WORD BIPOC Bookseller Award Judge, and a 2022 MacDowell Fellow.

When not writing, Arvin is an environmental steward with High Country Conservation Advocates and a facilitator for the Literary Arts program at the Crested Butte Center for the Arts. His narratives can be found in AAWW’s The Margins, The Normal School, and the Jellyfish Review.

“I am looking forward to immersing myself in the community, hearing the conversations happening there, meeting writers, drinking coffee around town, and of course, skiing Sun Valley,” said Ramgoolam.

The Library is honored to offer Ramgoolam the time and space to work on the second draft of his novel, said Martha Williams, the Library’s director of programs and education.

“Arvin has described his work as ‘a realignment and examination of the myth of the Western white male and how the pervasive mythology of the West is digested,” she said. “At its core, A New West is a story about family and grief set in the desert southwest, but it includes fantastical elements and explores some of the most urgent topics of our time: climate change, land justice, immigration, water rights, and more.”