Helen Williams decided at the age of 14 that she would be a writer, the result of her fiction story placing first in her high school English class. She has written throughout her life—short stories, books, articles, poetry, essays—and is always involved in numerous projects.

She also works at The Jackson County Star, the local newspaper based in Walden, Colorado, where she copy edits the paper, writes the local news column, writes occasional feature articles, takes ads, handles circulation, and waters the plants in the three-person Star office. Her feature on a retired local doctor won second place in the Best Series category in the Colorado Press Association’s annual competition.

Before moving back to her hometown of Walden in 2003, she worked for the Colorado legislature and, on and off for 16 years, for Colorado’s treasurer/governor Roy Romer. When Governor Romer left office in 1999, Helen put together a book of stories that reveal the real Roy Romer his colleagues and staff knew—driven, dedicated, hardworking, warm, affectionate, humorous, impatient and idiosyncratic. These are the stories former staffers tell each other over a beer and are too good to be lost. Roy Romer Is Alive and Well and Living in California is an indispensable book for everyone interested in Colorado politics and history.