Meet Arvin Ram | Bookstore Owner and Mountain Words Festival Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Arvin Ram and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Arvin, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
I am someone who needs to feel that what they are doing everyday matters. My strengths are books and community and so whatever I can do to add to the literary identity of the place I live is deeply important to me as well as putting books in the hands of everyone from ages one to one-hundred.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
As a writer, I’m interested in people who are on the margins of marginalized groups. I am interested in the questions of public land and why we protect it? Who are we protecting it from? Who are we protecting it from. At a time when those lands are the easiest to grab when a new administration takes over, it bares the burden of the collective power of people to decide what happens and I think some artists have a responsibility to help people see possibility where there exists a blank space on the map, to paraphrase Aldo Leopold. I have been a writer for over 20 years and most of that time has been filled with rejection as most writing careers are. When I turned 40, I was on the precipice of calling it quits. I had no successes to look back on, my children were small, and I didn’t want to spend another decade moving around writing spaces (workshops namely) doubting if anything would ever come from my time as a writer. Writing helped me at a time in my life when things were shaky and uncertain, and in that, it was already a victory I could call my own.

However, the invisible hand of art, as Steve Almond calls it, put me in the the sights of One Story Magazine based in New York. I had applied shortly before my 40th birthday for the Adina Talve-Goodman Fellowship as a hail-mary, seeking an opening into the writing world. I was honored to be the 2020 recipient of the award and so it would seem, I could not quite leave the writing world yet. Since then, I began working on a novel tentatively titled, A New West that has been supported by some amazing organizations such as MacDowell, The Hemingway House in Ketchum, Idaho, Writing by Writers, and Green Box Arts.

Ultimately, this is the reason I helped found Mountain Words. To give support to writers with workshops and engage in conversation with writers from across the country. Writing is a dark, bumpy road and it’s up to writers to light the way for one another.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I am particular to my own spot, Rumors Coffee and Tea House and Townie Books. I started it back in 2009 with my wife, Danica as a third place for readers. So I am very proud that many visitors and residents of Crested Butte call it their own. Other than the bookshop, the outdoors is where you have to be in the heart of the Rockies. With near-unlimited trails and gorgeous alpine lakes, summer in my backyard is the stuff of core memories (as the kids say).

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
This shoutout is dedicated to my friend and festival partner, Brooke Macmillan. Brooke and I started the Mountain Words Festival in 2020 and it was a rollercoaster through the pandemic and the year after. Brooke was really the engine of the operation at the Crested Butte Center for the Arts and helped turn our community’s attention towards books in a way it had not done before, with a large scale event that celebrated books and readers. Brooke and I bootstrapped a festival that was a little out of the ordinary as far as book festivals go. Book festivals can be seen as stuffy or academic and we worked together to eschew those expectations with lively conversations with authors that could take unexpected turns.

Website: https://mtnwords.org

Instagram: @mtnwordsco

Image Credits
Nolan Blunck
Enrique Gautier