From late January through early February, Aspen Winter Words will return to the Valley. The annual author series this year includes a special focus on memory and connection. All three 2026 events are held in memory of Wally Obermeyer, who passed away from cancer in May of 2025 at the age of 68. Obermeyer was an avid supporter of Aspen Words and audience members of the first 2026 event will receive complimentary copies of his own memoir, “Lift.”
The series kicks off at 6pm on Wednesday, Jan. 28, at the Aspen Institute’s Paepcke Auditorium. Susan Orlean has been a staff writer for The New Yorker for over three decades. She also served as a contributing editor for both Rolling Stone and Vogue magazines, and is the author of novels including “Saturday Night,” “Rin Tin Tin” and “The Orchid Thief.” The latter, published in 1998, was made into the film “Adaptation” with Meryl Streep playing Orlean. Her Winter Words evening will focus on her new memoir “Joyride,” which covers her journalism career and life from 1978 onward.
Orlean’s regular work started in Boston in 1982 as a staff writer for the Boston Phoenix. Five years later, she earned her first contribution to The New Yorker. It would take another five years before she became a staff writer at the magazine. “The Orchid Thief” is not Orlean’s only work to be adapted to film. In 1998, she wrote an article on female surfers in Maui for Women’s Outside. That article was the basis for the 2002 film “Blue Crush” starring Kate Bosworth.
“Joyride” is “the story of my stories,” said Orlean. It chronicles many of her unique assignments and articles, but also considers the writing process and Orlean’s insights on time management, interviewing and even writing catchy first sentences.
The following week, on Feb. 4, novelist Lily King will appear at Paepcke Auditorium. King has published six novels and a collection of short stories and is known for the humor and emotional depth of her work. Her most recent, “Heart the Lover,” is a prequel and sequel to the 2020 “Writers & Lovers” which won the New England Society Book Award and was named to numerous top-10 lists. “Heart the Lover” starts with a college-era love triangle and then rejoins the characters decades later. It became a New York Times bestseller upon release this October.
The final Winter Words event takes place at TACAW at 6pm on Feb. 11. Tara Roberts is a National Geographic explorer-in-residence. She worked as an editor for many magazines including CosmoGirl and EBONY, and gained further renown in the past six years for her work scuba diving and documenting locations of and stories surrounding sunken slave ships. Her memoir “Written in the Waters” tells the story of this work, as she and a group of other Black scuba divers document the global slave trade through their diving.
Roberts also documented the work in a six-part National Geographic podcast, “Into the Depths,” which covered details of the group forming and training in addition to the dives, research and documentation. At least 12.5 million Africans were forced to cross the ocean during the centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Dives took the group to locations including Thailand, Mozambique, South Africa, Senegal, Costa Rica and St. Croix. During the project, Roberts also explored her own roots and notions of home, and the intersections of that social research and personal learning went into “Written in the Waters.” Her writing has been compared to Cheryl Strayed and Jesmyn Ward.
All three Aspen Winter Words events will be live-streamed. The virtual season pass to watch the live-stream costs $35, while a ticket to attend each evening in-person costs $35. The 2026 season title sponsors are Michael and Lisa Cader, Beth and Josh Mondry, Helen Obermeyer, Garfield & Hecht. Additional sponsors include the City of Aspen, Aspen One, The Aspen Times, TACAW, Explore Books, Alpenglow Books and Gifts and Les Dames d’Aspen, Ltd. For tickets, visit www.aspenwords.org/winter-words