Wallace Stegner, a major American novelist and conservationist, is interviewed by Etulain, a renowned Western scholar, in a series of discussions. Originally published in 1983 and entitled Conversations with Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature, this book is the ultimate Stegner interview. New foreword by Stewart Udall.

Wallace Stegner (1903-1993) was the author of many books of fiction and non-fiction, including the National Book Award-winning The Spectator Bird (1976) and Crossing to Safety. Angle of Repose won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971.

Richard W. Etulain specializes in the history and culture of the American West and modern US. His PhD is from the University of Oregon (1966). He taught at Idaho State University (1970-79) and from 1979 to 2001 at the University of New Mexico, where he directed the Center for the American West. He has lectured abroad in several countries. Etulain is the author or editor of more than 40 books, including: The American West: A Twentieth-Century History (coauthor, Nebraska, 1989), Writing Western History: Essays on Major Western Historians (1991; Nevada, 2002), Re-imagining the Modern American West: A Century of Fiction, History, and Art (Arizona, 1996), Portraits of Basques in the New World (coeditor, Nevada, 1999), Telling Western Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry (New Mexico, 1999), The Hollywood West (coeditor, Fulcrum, 2001), César Chávez: A Brief Biography with Documents (editor, Bedford Books, 2002), Wild Women of the Old West (coeditor, Fulcrum, 2003), Western Lives: A Biographical History of the American West (editor, New Mexico, 2004), and The American West: A Narrative History, forthcoming. Etulain’s essay “The American Literary West and Its Interpreters,” was selected the best essay in western history for 1976; his books have received numerous awards and recognition. Professor Etulain also edits five series of books in American and western history. Etulain was President of the Western Literature Association (1978-79) and the Western History Association (1998-99). In 2001, the University of New Mexico established a lectureship in his honor in western American literature and culture. Professor Etulain is completing a history of the American West and researching a book on Abraham Lincoln and the American West.