photo by JR Ancheta

In the summer, I enjoy biking with family and friends and some of those friends take pedaling pretty seriously. They will often bike 50 to 100 miles without thinking twice about it. My guest today is writer Daryl Farmer. His book Bicycling Beyond the Divide recounts a 5,000 mile trek he made, not once, but twice. It is a lyrical and engaging narrative that explores the American West as well as the author’s emotional geography. It won the Barnes and Noble Discover Award.  Farmer also teaches creative writing at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and he has a recently published collection of short stories entitled Where We Land. The collection displays Farmer’s keen ear for dialogue, ability to conjure up arresting characters and deploy them in interesting stories.

Farmer recently received an Alaska Literary Award and an artist’s residency to write in Iceland. I asked him to begin our discussion by reading from his first book: Bicycling Beyond the Divide.