Mark Leichliter
Mark Leichliter, as he is best known to those around Greeley and the
University of Northern Colorado, publishes under the pseudonym
Mark Hummel. His fiction and essays have appeared in a number
of literary magazines, including The Bloomsbury Review, Fugue,
Matter, Porcupine Literary Arts, Subtletea.com, and Talking River
Review. A faculty member at the University of Northern Colorado
for seventeen years, Leichliter taught fiction and essay writing, entry
level and advanced composition, and nonfiction courses focused
on writing about nature and the environment. A fervent defender
of wild places and deeply interested in sustainable living, he cotaught
Honors seminars focused on “a sense of place” and exploring
deep ecological mapping and taught a course on “Literature and
the Environment” for the Environmental Studies Program at
UNC. While at UNC he helped found the Rossenberry Writers’
Conference and served as its Director for the first six years of its
existence. The author of Lost and Found, a short story collection,
he has recently completed work on Water Cycle, a novel set in a
fictional Colorado Front Range canyon. Editors at the Puerto del
Sol have said of his work that he “renders well the multiple layers
of past tragedies and their bearing on present tensions,” and have
joined with The Southeast Review in labeling his work “gripping”
and capable of creating “strong emotional responses.” Married to
Patricia Leichliter and the father of three daughters, he lives near
Jackson Hole, Wyoming.