Last spring, Stuart Suna, founder of the renowned Hamptons International Film Festival in New York, decided to launch a film festival in Jackson Hole in December 2023. A Jackson resident since 2019, Suna wants to contribute to the culture of the community, telling the Wyoming Truth that a film festival is a great way to “bring art and commerce together, to help stimulate local economy and artistic imagination.”

Nearly two decades after carrying the Olympic flame through Wyoming, Bennie Sue Ridgley continues to be a torch bearer for her community.

For all her time as a photographer, Shana Marie Duncan has faced one big challenge: she always felt compelled to ask permission before photographing people she saw in public.

As soon as a missing teen alert pings Amanda Waldron’s phone, she’s out the door. It doesn’t matter if it’s 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning or 10 p.m. on a weeknight. Waldron hits the streets, sometimes prowling dark alleys and under bridges in Casper to find and bring the teen home. In the past, she’s rescued a teenage boy from a known drug house and once pulled a 36-hour, around-the-clock surveillance to rescue a teenage girl who she suspected was being sex trafficked in Casper.

When students live too far from an art museum, one Laramie resident brings the art museum to them.

In a mural-covered van packed with prints, and with a heart for building community, Sarita Talusani Keller travels across the state as the University of Wyoming’s Ann Simpson Artmobile educator.

Making a living as a Wyoming rancher isn’t for the weak: from the face-freezing wind of calving season to the stomach-souring price of hay, not everyone is cut out for the challenge.

From the walls of Underscore Art and Jewelry, an upscale gallery in Whitefish, Montana, colorful works by contemporary Western artists beckon locals and tourists alike. The art is sophisticated, thoughtful — conveying ties to the region felt by its creators.

But perhaps unequaled in both authenticity and heritage, Wyoming artist Talissa Abeyta’s modern ledger paintings tell stories of her deep connection to the original inhabitants of the American West and her own connection to the land.

Rosie Berger believes in the power of connection. She wants to meet people and learn about them so she can introduce them to folks in her network—a win-win for both parties.

The fire station in Hoback is barely large enough to house half a dozen emergency vehicles, and responding volunteers must squeeze their way between bumpers to reach the small meeting room in the back.

Dr. Hallie Hasel’s work takes her from the halls of government to the backyard chicken coop. One day she might address Wyoming legislators about a livestock bill, and the next day she could speak to chicken farmers about the threat of avian influenza.

On October 14, parts of the western United States will experience a strange cosmic sight: an annular solar eclipse. The moon will pass in front of the sun, blocking most of its light and leaving a “ring of fire” in the sky. In April 2024, Earth will see a total solar eclipse whose path will cross the country.

Aura Sunada Newlin’s heritage is half Japanese, half Irish and all Wyoming..

She grew up in Riverton surrounded by the Wind River Indian Reservation, dreamed up her own degree program at the University of Wyoming and returned to the state after graduate school to sink her roots deeper into her native soil. Sunada Newlin’s heritage is in her blood and on her skin: a shoulder-blade tattoo features an Indian paintbrush (Wyoming’s state flower) and Japanese characters that say “mountain soul.”

In many ways, September Vhay was destined to be an artist. Her great-grandfather Guzton Borglum sculpted Mount Rushmore, and she grew up surrounded by his paintings and small-scale sculptures in her family’s Reno, Nevada, home. Her mother was a painter; her father is an architect and painter.

Rodeo queens are a combination of dazzle and dust, crowns and cowboy boots, and Sheridan’s Reata Cook is proud to join their ranks as Miss Rodeo Wyoming 2023.

Cook, 22, began her reign in January and has already logged about 2,000 miles on the road and many in the saddle. She attended the National Western Stock Show in Denver in January then went to the Black Hills Stock Show in South Dakota in February. Next it was off to the Silver Spurs Rodeo in Florida.

Kim Olson has given plenty of ride-alongs to people interested in learning about her job as a Wyoming Game and Fish game warden. Only one ended in her untimely “death.”

It’s not where you start—it’s where you finish. That’s a lesson Taylor-Ann Smith, 30, learned the hard way when she moved to Jackson from Montana and took up mountain biking.

In 2019, Smith, a graphic designer, bought an entry-level bike and went on group rides at Cache Creek trails. “I had no idea what I was doing,” she said. “What I thought was mountain biking when I first started was just flat trails.”

Casey Rislov spent many days riding horses and attending rodeos as a child growing up in Casper. But she never imagined she would create a children’s book series about a feisty female horsefly who did both.

For Rislov, education seemed the logical career path. Her father, Ronnie, taught drafting and engineering at Casper College; her mother, Randy, taught sixth grade at Fairdale Elementary. As a biology major at the University of Wyoming, Rislov flirted with becoming a physician assistant but ultimately earned a master’s degree in elementary education from Montana State University, which led her to the front of the classroom, where she read a lot of children’s books

When Hunter Old Elk moved to the East Coast for college, she felt a bone-deep longing to return home to the Mountain West.

“Something on a molecular level said, ‘You need to be back into the mountains,’” Old Elk recalled. Mount St. Mary’s University was located in Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., and the crowded urban environment and the fast-paced lifestyle were vastly different from her upbringing in Montana.

It’s not every day you get to apply your language skills to a newly discovered dinosaur species.

But middle school students in the Fremont County School District on the Wind River Reservation did just that, working with tribal elders last spring to come up with a Shoshone name for the species, which was unearthed outside Dubois. (The name can’t be revealed since research about the discovery hasn’t been released.)

Most classes end with a final written test, but Dorothy Tuthill’s students can expect a tent and a campfire instead. Tuthill’s students are participants in the Wyoming Naturalist Program, which prepares volunteers to become active conservationists who will protect the state’s natural resources.