The (Three) Keys to Life: A Conversation with Writer and Environmentalist Laura Pritchett
"What she’s really 'breaking into' is herself"
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Good morning fellow scribes and welcome to new subscribers,
Award-winning writer Laura Pritchett has long been known for her deep connection to the natural world and her bracing, sometimes funny, always sympathetic insights into the complexities of the human condition. In her latest novel, Three Keys, she explores what I’d call the margins—both physical and psychological—where many of us quietly carry out our lives as we move into and past middle age.
With its themes of renewal and reinvention (and re-seeing—as in learning to look differently at one’s life and the world), Three Keys is an addictive, alternately poignant and high-spirited novel that ranges across the American West and New Zealand.
Laura and I met more than a decade ago when we were teaching for Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program, and ever since, I’ve followed her personal and professional trajectory with admiration. She’s great, friends and fellow scribes, and writes fiction and nonfiction with equal fluidity and fluency.
I hope you’ll pick up her books, which include novels, nonfiction, and a story collection. Along with Three Keys, she’s published the novels Playing with (Wild)Fire, Stars Go Blue, and Red Lightning, the anthology (as editor) Going Green: True Tales from Gleaners, Scavengers, and Dumpster Divers, the short story collection, Hell’s Bottom, Colorado, the nonfiction guide Making Friends With Death: A Field Guide for Your Impending Last Breath (To Be Read, Ideally, Before It's Imminent!), among other titles.
And here is our recent interview:
Christine/Bookish: I love the "three keys" that inform your novel, which pertain to more than one set of three keys in your main character Ammalie Brinks' life—would you talk about this a bit?
Laura Pritchett: Ammalie has three literal keys on her key chain – and she plans to use them to break into three isolated homes she knows of (but don’t worry, she’s a very polite criminal!). She also has the “three keys” of her life—her son, her best friend, and her sister. Yet, she’s lost the “three keys” of what she thought were her life’s purpose—her job, her husband, and her role as mother, as her son has launched.
On the journey, she encounters three new keys—people who help her grow—because what she’s really “breaking into” is herself. As she discovers, this task is quite serious; it takes a lot of hard work. It is not easy to learn to distinguish between our ego and what exists beyond – and that is the real key!
CS: What spurred you to write this novel and take on the subjects, as noted or alluded to above, of middle age, the loss of a spouse, children reaching adulthood, among other topics?
LP: Like me, Ammalie is going through the transformation into middle age—and confronting the accompanying second-part-of-life situation. For one thing, there’s the invisibility of middle age women, and it’s true that our culture does a fine job of trying to erase older women—an impulse that must be met with resistance, of course.
I was also writing this during the pandemic, and thus was often thinking about the ways we adapted to isolation, our newfound awareness of the fragility of all we’d taken for granted, and how the outdoors can serve as a safe haven.
So all these themes—remoteness, invisibility, middle age, self-sufficiency, adventuring, the glory of nature, and the responsibility of caretaking of our planet—came together in Three Keys. Ammalie is not me, exactly, but much of what she is struggling with is familiar. Ammalie ultimately discovers that by breaking into other people’s lives, she can find her own. I suppose I’m always on my own path of finding myself, too. Aren’t we all?
CS: The three homes in three different settings (on 2 continents) that are unlocked by the three keys Ammalie uses are located in the wilds of New Zealand, Arizona, and Colorado. I know you live in Colorado, where you also grew up, so you know that setting well, but what kind of research (and travel) did you do in NZ and AZ?
LP: I’ve spent most of my life in Colorado, but have done extensive exploring in Arizona and New Zealand. Like Ammalie, I wanted to learn about the ecology of all these places—and the social and environmental justice issues that crop up in them. I did a “water drop” in Arizona, for example. I also lived with my kids in New Zealand for a semester and have been at two writing residencies there at a place called Earthskin, which is dedicated to fostering writers who champion Mother Earth. So, yup, I picked my three favorite places on earth!
CS: You write nonfiction as well as novels and short stories (and you direct the nature writing-focused MFA program at Western Colorado University—no dull moments in your days, I have to think). Do you alternate between fiction and nonfiction manuscripts with regularity or is it more that you write in one genre or the other based on instinct and curiosity?
I rotate back and forth happily. I just finished a magazine piece on sandhill cranes this past week. I don’t mind genre shifting at all – but there is one constant, which is the subject matter – celebrating Mother Earth.
CS: What are you working on now?
LP: Now that the spring semester is over, I plan to return to one of several projects—I have a draft of a novel and a memoir sitting around, and I should give them some attention. Writing is the key to my sanity and joy! And my literary community—so thank you for having me here!
Opening to Three Keys:
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An example of Laura’s nonfiction: An op-ed she wrote for the Los Angeles Times last summer on the U.S.-Mexico border can be accessed here.
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Laura Pritchett’s fiction is rooted in the natural world—and celebrates the people who live close to it. She’s the author of seven novels, two nonfiction books, and editor of three anthologies, and her work has been the recipient of the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the WILLA, the High Plains Book Award, and several Colorado Book Awards. She’s also a freelance writer with publications in the LA Times, The New York Times, Orion, Terrain, Creative Nonfiction, and more. She developed and directs the MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University. www.laurapritchett.com
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Postscript: I’ll be leading a writing retreat in Bordeaux/Blaye, France again next spring, April 26-May 2, 2026, for Foreword Retreats. Please drop me a note (sneedchristine@gmail.com) if you’re interested. I can’t overstate how much I enjoyed the retreat that ended on May 24 in Blaye. Everything was truly topnotch—the company, the food, the lodging.
The image of combing her hair with her fork will stay with me just from this short excerpt!
Thank you so much for this, Christine! You are such a literary citizen!