Literary Legends: Meet the People Behind the Prose

By Jesse James McTigue

Telluride has always attracted fascinating characters. Some dazzle us with their skill on the slopes or their mastery in the studio, while others capture our attention through words — sharing stories of life in the box canyon or adventures far beyond it. Among the many writers, poets, and wordsmiths who call Telluride and Mountain Village home, we’ve highlighted three renowned voices. Each brings a unique perspective and a personal connection to this place, and prose you’ll want to read for yourself.

Rob Schultheis - War Journalist
It may seem improbable that Rob Schultheis, a journalist who spent more than a decade covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, did much of that work from his home in Telluride — but it’s true, at least in part.

The son of a CIA emissary, Schultheis spent much of his childhood between Arlington, Virginia, and overseas posts in Hong Kong, Philippines, Japan and China. Yet when college approached, he headed to the University of Colorado Boulder and earned a degree in cultural anthropology.

He continued in academia, pursuing a doctorate degree focused on Tibetan refugees. This allowed for multiple extended trips to Nepal, and an overland trip from Kathmandu to Europe, where he lingered in Afghanistan. He felt a visceral connection to the place. 

“There was a warmth in Afghanistan I was open to,” Schultheis says. “It was a homecoming for me.” 

In 1973, he ditched his doctorate thesis, found Telluride and pivoted to freelance travel writing. Geographically, Telluride fulfilled him, but travel writing left him feeling empty.

“The writing was fine,” he says, “but it wasn’t important.” 

In the late 1970s to late 80s, as Russia invaded and occupied Afghanistan, the country came back into his awareness. Schultheis collaborated with his cousin, Robin Moyer, an award-winning combat photographer, and secured an assignment in Afghanistan for Time Magazine. 

“Initially, I was a coward, foolishly afraid of covering wars,” he says. “But when I came back here, I couldn’t wait to go back to Afghanistan.”

For the next 25 years, Schultheis would go back and forth between Telluride and Afghanistan 30 times, writing for various publications and inspiring his book, “Night Letters: Inside Wartime Afghanistan.”

“I wrote for 15 different magazines,” he says. “I fell in love with Afghan culture.”

In 2004, he returned to the region, this time to Baghdad, Iraq as an embedded journalist with the U.S. Army Civil Affairs, helping to rebuild a Baghdad neighborhood. It was the subject for his 2005 book, “Waging Peace: A Special Operations Team’s Battle To Rebuild Iraq.”

Schultheis now spends most of his time at home in Telluride with his wife, Nancy Craft. He is currently working on a book about a spy family and nefarious U.S. foreign affairs, and finishing a collection of poems.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer - Poet
“I came to Telluride for love,” Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer says.

Wahtola Trommer’s alias is “Word Woman,” thus her words often have multiple meanings. 

In 1993, during her first road trip to Telluride, she met Eric Trommer, a young, handsome man who took her on a hike to a quaint chalet he was building at the top of Lift 6. The chalet (which is now Alpino Vino) would become her home and he’d become her husband. 

But Wahtola Trommer was also madly in love with poetry, and would chase it in Telluride long after marrying Trommer. 

It helped that one of the first people she met was Art Goodtimes, the first Western Slope Poet Laureate and founder of the Talking Gourds, a poetry program. She gave him one of her poems and vividly remembers his response: 

“I wonder what would happen if you relaxed,” he said. 

Which she did, over the next three decades. Wahtola Trommer engaged in every literary opportunity Telluride offered.

“What I love about Telluride is that you can do what you want to do,” she says.

In 1999, she published her first book, “If You Listen: Poems & Photographs of the San Juan Mountains,” for which she partnered with local photographer Eileen Benjamin. The book went through five printings and sold 10,000 copies.  

In 2006, she accepted a challenge to write a poem a day for 30 days, then never stopped. 

“I shifted from wanting to write something good every day to writing something true every day,” she says. “And that changed everything.”

She calls her daily poems “A Hundred Falling Veils,” and sends them to a mailing list with 10,000 subscribers. She’s published over a dozen books, is widely anthologized, hosts a podcast and has become a sought-after teacher.

“I never thought I could just be a poet,” she says. “That’s basically riding on a unicorn, and here it is. I’m riding on a unicorn.”

Rob Story - Ski Journalist
In July 2025, freelance writer Jack O’Brien wrote a piece for Powder Magazine online titled, “Ski Writing Isn’t Capturing Skiing Anymore. Can We Change That?” In it, he lamented that OG ski writers like Rob Story, who penned features that struck at the heart of the sport, have been replaced with the "glorification of gear and listicles.” 

The mention is a testament to Story’s impact as a ski journalist and proof that soulful, longform, outdoor writing is still relevant. 

But Story wasn’t always a big name in the ski world. He grew up in Kansas with ski-focused ambition; when asked in sixth grade what he wanted to be, he answered, “A ski instructor.” 

Story attended Northwestern University, which did not get him any closer to his childhood dream, but did earn him a journalism degree and an internship at Outside Magazine. He showed his chops as a writer, and as the most experienced skier on staff, he was charged with leading the magazine’s ski coverage. 

“I’m a lucky son of a gun,” he says, reflecting on how that internship launched a journalism career that would include a series of editorial positions at “Powder Magazine” and “Bike Magazine,” and a lifetime of travel to remote ski and bike destinations. It also allowed him to move to Telluride in 1998 as a very connected freelance writer. 

Over the next two decades, his prose found its way into national magazines, but his musings about the events and idiosyncrasies in Telluride became his brand, fueling content for weekly columns and feature pieces in local publications. No topic was off limits — porta potties, chocolate labs, Hula-Hoops, Palisade peaches and, of course, skiing. 

In 2023, Story collected his favorite pieces and published them in a book: “Telluride Storyz: Tales and rants from the dive bars, powder stashes, singletracks, alleyways, music fests, and funerals of the San Juans.”