​"Red Shuttleworth is one of the finest poets of the American West, past, present, and future. Some of us also know him as one of the finest, imaginative living playwrights writing for a challenged
​American theatre .”

-- Dr. Jerry L. Crawford, Dean Emeritus, The College of Fellows of the American Theatre, Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. 

Photo Courtesy of Ed Kashi/VII

Author: Red Shuttleworth

Poet and playwright, Red Shuttleworth is a recipient of a Western Heritage Wrangler Award for Poetry (from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum) and a three-time winner of the Spur Award (from Western Writers of America) for Poetry.  Shuttleworth was named “Best Living Western Poet” in 2007 by True West magazine.

Shuttleworth’s books and chapbooks include:

• Moaning Woman Wind (Lazy Ears Press, 1971)
• Sucking on Rattlesnake Bones (Texas Portfolio, 1976)
• Poems to the Memory of Benny Kid Paret  (Sparrow Press, 1978)
• Living and Sinning for Them  (Signpost Press, 1987)
• Western Movie (Signpost Press, 1990)
• Lucky 13 (University of Nevada Press, 1995)
• Western Settings (University of Nevada Press, 2000)
• Johnny Ringo (Riverhouse Lit, 2012)
• Ghosts & Birthdays (Humanitas Media Publishing, 2012)
• High Plains Fandango (Humanitas Media Publishing, 2015)
• Woe to the Land Shadowing (Blue Horse Press, 2015)
• Straight Ahead (Blue Horse Press, 2017)
• Rumors and Borders (Humanitas Media Publishing, 2017)

​Shuttleworth’s poetry and short plays have appeared in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Ontario Review, Prairie Schooner, San Pedro River Review, South Dakota Review, and Weber: The Contemporary West.

Shuttleworth’s plays have been presented widely, including at Sundance Playwrights Lab, Sun Valley Festival of New Western Drama, SUNY-Fredonia, and the Tony Award-winning Utah Shakespearean Festival. Shuttleworth holds an MFA in Theatre Arts: Playwriting from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where his mentors were Jerry L. Crawford, Julie Jensen, and Davey Marlin-Jones.  He also received an MA in Creative Writing: Poetry from San Francisco State where he studied under Kay Boyle and William Dickey.

High Plains Fandango

High Plains Fandango, described as a “tragi-comedy” by Dr. Jerry L. Crawford, Dean Emeritus, The College of Fellows of the American Theatre, Kennedy Center, and inspired by water scarcity being the world’s most critical future security issue, depicts the inhabitants of one small Nebraska town’s Faustian bargain amidst the impending business interests of attempted water privatization of the Ogallala aquifer. The State University of New York at Fredonia premiered the first production of High Plains Fandango on Friday, February 24, 2012.

Cover Photo
​Courtesy of Ed Kashi/VII

Cover art Courtesy of Ciara Shuttleworth

Read the Article about High Plains Fandango in the Huffington Post

Praise for Rumors and Borders - Roundup Review

Praise for High Plains Fandango

Red Shuttleworth is one of the finest poets of the American West, past, present, and future. Some of us also know him as one of the finest, imaginative living playwrights writing for a challenged American theatre. In Shuttleworth's daring and galvanizing, dark tragi-comedy, High Plains Fandango, he offers a perceptive and prophetic account of romance, life, and danger on the High Plains of Nebraska, a possible epicenter of our water-scarcity future. High Plains Fandango lives through brilliant language, complex characters, arresting storytelling, and all-too meaningful themes. Viva Red Shuttleworth!        

-- Dr. Jerry L. Crawford, Dean Emeritus, The College of Fellows of the American Theatre, Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.

Red Shuttleworth is the most urgent playwright I know. His language is taut, unencumbered with extraneous flourishes. His characters are direct; they take decisive action without regard for the consequences. His themes hit on contemporary issues, and hit hard. He has a great love for the neglected and downtrodden whose lives are being crushed from the outside. That's why I commissioned Red Shuttleworth's High Plains Fandango, so that my audiences could feel this urgency like a hoof to the mouth.

-- Tom Loughlin, Chair, Department of Theatre and Dance,  State University of New York at Fredonia