New columns and a comeback for the Aspen Times Weekly

The Thanksgiving Day edition of the Aspen Times Weekly will mark the return of the long-running news magazine to newsstands as a stand-alone product. The magazine is also welcoming several new columnists and features in this Nov. 25 issue while reviving pieces that had been on ice through the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

Publishing every Thursday, the magazine will be back on racks — and in hotel rooms, coffee shops, etc. — for a full seven days once again. It will also be inserted into the Thursday edition of The Aspen Times in much of the Roaring Fork Valley, thanks to feedback from readers who enjoyed having the magazine inside their paper.

And if you can’t make it to a newsstand, all Weekly columns and features along with an e-edition of every issue continues to be online at the ATW’s landing page on http://www.aspentimes.com.

Amid the public health crisis and attendant economic crisis, beginning with the April 9, 2020 issue, we brought the Weekly into the Thursday newspaper. Fittingly, the cover headline on that issue was “Living Through History,” teasing an incisive Kelsey Brunner photo essay about local doctors and nurses braving the early days of COVID-19 outbreaks. Since then, the Weekly has been leaner (as small as 12 pages some weeks) and didn’t have its higher quality paper and glossy cover, but continued to be the home for Aspen’s favorite local columnists, thoughtful news features, long-form profiles and trend stories.

As we relaunch, new Aspen Times Weekly columns include Ted Mahon’s “Stuck in the Rockies” focusing on outdoor recreation and adventure. “Stuck” here for 25 years, Mahon is renowned as a mountain guide, among the best ski instructors in the world (twice voted Best Ski Instructor in The Aspen Times “Best Of” poll) and with his wife, Christy, was selected as a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year.

Another new column addition is “Alpine Aesthetic,” from Katie Shapiro, covering design, fashion, wellness and local lifestyle trends. Shapiro, who also is a senior contributor at Forbes, will additionally continue penning her popular and groundbreaking Weekly “High Country” column about cannabis and will continue contributing regular travel features.

The Weekly’s new food columnist is Kaya Williams, who has distinguished herself on The Aspen Times and Snowmass Sun staff for covering all things Snowmass over the past year, as well as reporting on education and theater and writing commentary pieces. Williams also is an avid baker, home cook, devoted reader of cookbooks and a connoisseur of vegetarian cuisine, now making her first foray into food writing with “Foodstuff.” The Weekly will also showcase work by a stable of locally based food writers and guest columnists.

Longtime local Meg Simon is leading the Weekly’s new gear column, “Outfitted,” covering the latest in mountain gear from an Aspenite’s perspective. A freelance writer and graphic designer, Simon has had several bylines in the Weekly over the past year, writing cover stories on traveling to national parks during the pandemic and on new gear trends.

Led by Editor Andrew Travers, who also writes a weekly arts column, the Aspen Times Weekly is refreshing and bringing back magazine features including “Bar Talk,” from Aspen Times engagement editor Rose Anna Laudicina, covering the local cocktail scene, the “ATW Agenda” events preview page, the “Closing Encounter” feature photo page and the “Final Thought” book review and crossword page.

Along with these new and revived columns and features, the Weekly’s stalwart award-winning team of columnists includes Shannon Asher’s “Asher on Aspen,” Kelly J. Hayes covering the wine world in “Wine Ink,” May Selby documenting the Aspen social scene in “Mountain Mayhem,” Benjamin Welch and Times staffers trading barbs in the humor column “Switch Up” (formerly “Writing Switch”) and the Aspen Historical Society offering a dose of local history in “Legends & Legacies.”

This Aspen Times Weekly stable of columnists dug in through the pandemic and offered relevant, useful, frequently enlightening — and sometimes diverting — perspective on the crisis. They’ll continue telling the story of Aspen and reflecting local life, connecting this valleywide (and worldwide) community in good times and in bad.

In an editor’s note to readers when the Weekly cut back in April 2020, Travers wrote, “We look forward to telling the comeback story.” The Weekly’s relaunch is now part of that story.