Grab Your Hats and Saddle Your Horses
Published on October 13, 2026
By Hannah V.
If you haven’t heard by now, Siouxland Libraries will be hosting author Craig Johnson at the Downtown Library next week!
In preparation for the big event, we had a few burning questions to ask. Read what he had to say, put a few books on hold, and we hope to see you there!
In your experience visiting libraries, what do libraries offer communities that cannot be found anywhere else?
Society—a society not only of readers but of community which is so lacking these days. I hate sounding like a broken record here but all the technology we’ve invested our very existence in has done nothing to bring us together and seems to be pushing us further and further apart. Libraries are areas to celebrate the intelligence and learning that appear to be falling by the wayside, and I think we need that water-cooler exchange to remain human.
What role have libraries played in your life, both as a reader and now as an author?
I grew up in a family of readers, and our idea of hell was to be caught somewhere without something to read. I didn’t grow up affluent and if I wanted books, the library was where I went to get them! There’s a reason why Walt Longmire is haunted by literature—he was an English major at USC while playing on a Rose Bowl-winning championship team, his weapon from Vietnam is a Remington-Rand .45 manufactured by a typewriter company, and his office is an old Carnegie Library.
As an author, what does it mean to you to see your books on library shelves?
It’s a source of pride that I’m there, shoulder to shoulder with Harper Lee, John Steinbeck, Alexandre Dumas, Agatha Christie, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and George MacDonald Fraser. That’s some pretty good company to keep.
Have you based any locations in your books on real places you’ve connected with?
Just about all of them. I was having lunch with the Wyoming Office of Tourism, and they told me how much they loved the books, and I asked them why. They said it was because I used actual locations in the books and didn’t make it all up. Even though the books take place in a fictional county in Wyoming, you can follow the roads, trails and landmarks to visit Walt’s world.
If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, outside of your own work, what would it be?
What genre of books do you gravitate towards when reading?
None; there are really only two genres—good writing and bad writing. I’m like a crow swooping around all over the world of literature, picking up shiny things and bringing them home to the nest of my own novels.
Is there a book from your childhood that has stuck with you?
What was it like watching a character you created become a popular TV show?
Like coming downstairs one morning and having a houseplant start talking to you—wonderful, but slightly unsettling.
If you could have one person, real or fictional, join Sheriff Walt Longmire on the job, who would it be?
Sherlock Holmes. How do you not select the greatest detective of all time—even though I think it might be a challenge for Walt to tolerate a drug-addicted sociopath…
Read the books and authors mentioned here: