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Interview: Arizona Author On Writing, Riding And Ranch Life

Julia Ritchey

Earlier this week we talked to a young cowboy poet on keeping traditional folk songs and stories alive. As we wrap up our coverage of the Western Folklife Center's annual gathering, Reno Public Radio's Julia Ritchey sat down with author and cattlewoman Amy Hale Auker of Prescott, Ariz., on defying the gender norms of cowboy culture.

Auker has published two novels and an award-winning collection of short essays. But when she’s not writing, she’s rearing cattle on a 50,000-acre ranch near Prescott, Arizona, with her husband Gale Steiger. She says the two vocations are highly complementary.

“They feed each other,” she says. “I write and I ride, and when we go move cows … about the time that I am really exhausted and tired of sleeping outside and waking up to a completely frozen coffee pot and building a fire, it’s time to go be in my office for a few weeks.”

Most of her writing, she says, is deeply rooted in the natural landscape. Her creative process includes writing three pages each morning and scribbling things down if she’s out on the open range.

She says being a cowboy has less to do with gender and more to do with work ethic. Being raised into a livestock family in Texas, Auker says she’s never had a problem inhabiting this predominantly masculine culture.

Credit AmyHaleAuker.com

  “Cowboy is a verb, it is not an outfit that you wear,” she says. “You don’t get to go to the western wear store and buy boots and a hat and all of a sudden have some ethic, or some personality or some character immediately. Cowboy is something that you do; it’s a skillset. It doesn’t matter about gender.”

That said, she wouldn’t mind seeing a few more females in her industry.

Auker works alongside her husband, a ranch foreman, who is also a singer and artist. She says it took a while for them to feel comfortable sharing their work with each other, but now they like to collaborate.

“Well, we’ve been together seven years, and that’s been the trickiest part of our relationship,” she says, “and we do critique each other and we are hard on each other. I bounce things off him before anybody else.”

She says before this year’s Cowboy Poetry Gathering, she ran a poem by him that she’d written, worried it may be too edgy. After she had recited it, she could see tears in his eyes.  

“And I knew, I nailed it that time, I can go with it!” she says. “He’s very honest.”

Listen to a song performed by Amy Hale Auker and her husband Gale Steiger at the Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering.

16_0205_amy_and_gale_singing.mp3
Amy Hale Auker and Gale Steiger singing at Elko's 32nd annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering.

Listen to Amy recite a poem by Linda Hussa called “Love Letters.”

amy_reading_love_letters.mp3
Amy Hale Auker reciting a poem during a session on love poems and songs at Elko's Cowboy Poetry Gathering.

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