Cathy Luchetti

Luchetti’s gave two lectures at the National Archives about Home on the Range and I Do! as well as the Library of Congress’ “Books and Beyond” inaugural lecture. She has lectured on CSPAN and was selected as one of San Francisco’s Library Laureates of 2005. She was invited to Laura Bush's White House Symposium on Women of the West in the Salute to American Authors Series and was honoree at the Sacramento Book Collectors’ Club Anniversary event. After a talk in Denver's Tattered Cover Bookstore, a representative from the National Storytelling Network invited her to be a keynote speaker at its 2002 conference in Denver. She also spoke at “Shooting the West VIII”, sponsored by Humboldt County, NV.

Luchetti (Colligan) grew up in Midland, Texas, the older of two children. Her father was an oil exploration geologist in the boom years of the Texas Permian Basin, and her mother taught math. After moving to Utah the family took frequent wilderness trips, which is where she became interested in discovering and telling more of the immense story of the American West. She graduated from the University of Utah with a BA in English in 1975. Ms Luchetti’s Old West ancestry is a factor in her lifelong interest in American frontier life. A great-great grandfather Frederick Waymire was an American farmer and politician who served in the Oregon Territorial Legislature and was a member of the Oregon Constitutional Convention, 1857. Waymire represented the farming contingent at the convention and was characterized as a “sort of Far West David Crockett.” Her maternal great-great-great grandfather, Henry Walker Crabb, was the second vintner in California's Napa Valley, a gold-seeker who came to California in the 1850s and who in 1874 founded the ToKalon vineyard—located between Yountville and St. Helena. Crabb had brought cuttings of “noble varietals” from France including Black Burgundy, similar to the Refosco of northern Italy.

Cathy Colligan Luchetti (born June 1945) is an American author whose photographic history books chronicle the American frontier through the stories of pioneer men, women, evangelists, as well as through themes of courtship, love, marriage, cooking, and children. The books are among the first to examine history through the voices of unsung overland travelers as well as through first person accounts by minorities. She is a winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award for Literary Excellence, the James Beard Award for Best Writing on American Food History, runner-up for the Willa Literary Award for Non-Fiction, winner of Gourmand World Cookbook Award, Perigueux, France, 1998, and the Los Angeles Times Best Books of 2001 designation. Luchetti's books generally have Western themes but she also writes about cooking, human affairs, and animals.