cyd chartier

Cyd Chartier was born in Topeka and grew up in small town and rural Kansas.

From a young age, Cyd was drawn to outdoor play, exploring with her four

siblings the fields, woods and cottonwood-lined creeks just beyond her own

backyard. In those places she developed a deep and enduring love of the natural

world.

During her adolescence, Cyd and her best friend wrote poetry and songs, made

up plays and stories, which they performed for anyone willing to watch, read or

listen. Later, when a beloved English teacher introduced her to the works of

Shakespeare, and Hawthorne, and Emily Dickinson, Cyd’s imagination expanded

well beyond her native Kansas.

When her parents unexpectedly joined a fundamentalist religious organization

during her high school years, upending her college plans, Cyd chose, like her

mother and grandmother, to become a nurse.

Years later, after marrying and moving west, Cyd received a BA in English from

the University of Colorado. Afterward, she made a series of promotional videos

for the Humane Society of The Pikes Peak Region. She then wrote, produced,

and directed the 2010 documentary, Return, a film depicting a German Jewish

WWII refugee’s 1969 return to his home country. The film screened in film

festivals across the United States and in Europe and won multiple awards,

including the World Cinema Award from The Amsterdam Film Festival. In 2021

Cyd received an MFA in Narrative Nonfiction from Regis University in Denver.

She is the author of multiple essays and a memoir, The Hallelujah Bus.

Cyd and her husband, the parents of two adult sons, live with their rescue cats in

Colorado Springs. She still finds strength and solace in nature, and can be found

hiking and skiing the Colorado Rocky Mountains when she’s not writing or

tending her garden.