Tory Tuttle
Victoria (Tory) Tuttle, author of The Missing, died on February 26. I knew her for over forty years—we both were regulars in the weekly University of Colorado English Department graduate student softball game. She later hired on as an instructor in CU's composition program and let it be known that the job gave her time to write. That's what I was looking for. I applied, and we became colleagues for over twenty years.
Other than one long short story, based on losing her first child thirteen days after he was born, a manuscript as good as anything I'd ever read, I'd never read anything by her before I started Contingency Street Press. But here are some things I'd observed about Tory: she was quiet, patient, kind, generous, a good cook, and as self-effacing as a brilliant person could be. I also knew—from the academic labor battles at CU—that for all her reticence she had a courage that put to shame so many of her appeasing instructor colleagues in the face of resistance from program administrators (who, after all, had the authority to fire them). She was also genuinely modest. A month after I asked her to send me a book manuscript, I asked Tory how it was coming along. "I thought you were kidding," she said.
Kidding? As Kirkus said in its enthusiastic review of The Missing: "The sole downside to this superlative book is that it's too brief."
Here's where I'd like to say that her life was too brief. I don't know that it was, considering the pain she endured for almost her entire adult life, as described in the remarkable obituary, below, by her husband, the writer Paul Thomas Murphy (Shooting Victoria, Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane, Falling Rocket). I was privileged to be her friend and publisher.
—Don Eron
Victoria Bonner (Tory) Tuttle
January 20, 1949-February 26, 2026
Those of you who knew Tory Tuttle will realize that there was so much more to her, so much more that she did and that she gave to the world, than I can express here, where I can do little more than tell you about what she meant to me.
But first I should say something about Tory’s life before I met her. She was born in Middlebury, Connecticut, on January 20, 1949. That day happens to be Inauguration Day for the President of the United States, and so, throughout her life, something happened quadrennially to sweeten or, especially more recently, to sour her birthdays. She was the second daughter of seven—a pure sisterhood: no pesky brother in sight. Five of her sisters survived her, and since for some reason listing survivors is an essential part of any obituary, I’ll list them here, oldest to youngest: Robin Tuttle Maguire, Dinsmore Tuttle, Amelia Tuttle, Annie Laurie Tuttle, and Bettina Tuttle. (Most of them have husbands, which means there’s a subsidiary brotherhood of surviving in-laws I could list, but….). I imagine that like all families the Tuttle sisters had their ups and downs and ins and outs growing up, but I can say that as adults they have formed an amazingly tight-knit group, incredibly giving and mutually supportive, a joy to know, and a true fringe benefit to me when I married Tory.
Tory attended Middlebury public schools until sixth grade, and completed her grade-school education at St. Margaret’s School for Girls. She was one of the smart kids there, not a showoff (she was never one of those) but from the start a scholar, with a particular passion for literature, history, and (I believe) all things Russian. She became a voracious reader early on, and remained one until the very end. She often spoke to me of the profound effect certain teachers had upon her. And, God forgive me, if I had been a better listener I could have and I would have listed them here.
Two more figures important to Tory in her childhood deserve mention: the family horse, Clancy (whom she loved in spite of the fact that he broke her ankle), and the family gardener, Dominic Rinaldi. (This was when Tuttles had horses and gardeners.)
In 1966, Tory attended Vassar College, and there she found in her first roommate, Jenny Young, her best friend—for life. (She found, as well, a second best friend at Vassar in Patti Quinn). At the same time, she suffered her first great tragedy, when her sister Sarah, the third of the Tuttle sisters, developed ulcerative colitis, and died of it in January 1967. Harrowed by grief, Tory continued at Vassar for two more years, and then moved to Colorado, a place she had visited and loved, and enrolled at the University of Colorado. If she wasn’t already in love with the mountains she fell in love with them then. She joined the Students for a Democratic Society (this was the late sixties), and, I’m proud to say, she was at least once arrested, dragged into a van, and booked for her principles. She took a degree in English and decamped for the mountains, finding a home and a job at over 10,000 feet in the town of Fairplay, teaching first and second graders.
It was in Fairplay that she developed the same illness that had killed her sister. Colitis did not take Tory as quickly, but it did bring her a lifetime of pain. That pain was certainly strong enough to drag her down and ruin her life—but it did not; Tory refused to let it defeat her, or define her. She held onto her natural kindness and gentleness. She continued to believe she could find joy in life and continued to seek it, and continued to share it with others. Seeking, finding and giving happiness in this imperfect world is a mission we all undertake, of course—but most of us do it without fighting the monster in her belly that Tory dealt with every day. There was a profound heroism in her quest to live and to love, I believe: much to admire in her spirit. And I did admire it daily, and will admire it until the end.
Colitis forced Tory away from the mountains and back to her family in Connecticut. After surgery and lengthy hospitalization, and after picking up an MA in Education, she returned to Colorado, bought a home in the foothills outside of Boulder and began again to teach elementary school in nearby Adams County. Before long, though, she returned to the University of Colorado to pursue a Masters with a focus on creative writing. Soon I would be at CU, too, a fellow graduate student in the English Department. And so, we met.
And so a couple years later, we married. By that point we both had our degrees, and I had somehow found a professorship in deepest rural Alabama, and Tory had actually agreed to follow me there. She was pregnant, then, and on November 26, 1989, she gave birth to our first son, Thomas Dominic Murphy. Thirteen days later he died.
This was the second great tragedy of Tory’s life, and the first of mine. I found distraction in my work, but Tory was paralyzed by the loss, paralyzed to the point that moving back to Colorado became a necessity rather than a choice. We returned to Colorado and spent a year in Fort Collins before moving back to the mountains outside Boulder. We both resumed our teaching at CU’s Writing Program. In 1992 our daughter Miranda was born. In 1996 our second son Daniel followed. For some years, Tory devoted herself to raising them, finding time as well to write stories—stories that for some years she kept to herself. Tory and I did a lot of traveling over the years, generally planning those trips around Tory’s two great passions: for tennis (watching, not playing) and for opera.
In 2023, all of those stories that Tory had written came out of hiding when Don Eron, our friend and former colleague, and now publisher at Contingency Street Press, published them in a collection titled The Missing. So now they are out there, and—trust me—they are well worth reading. Her story “112 Months,” in particular, is in my opinion a masterpiece: one of the most moving stories I have ever read.
Last May Tory experienced severe pains caused by the internal scars inflicted by decades of abdominal surgery, forcing yet one more surgery. Though she was given only a 40% chance of surviving this one, she survived, but after that her life was one of slow, inexorable decline, filled with doctors’ appointments, therapists’ visits, and hospitalizations. And yet she still found joy in living, and I found joy just in being with her. Her weakness extended to her throat; she found it harder and harder to swallow, until one evening she realized that she could not swallow at all. She returned to the hospital and then went into hospice, where the medications given to her for the pain sent her into a sleep from which she never awoke. On the morning of February 26, as I held her hand, she died.
She was my harbor, my solace, my center and my mission. She was so good.
There will be no service for Tory, but, as she requested, there will be a celebration of her life sometime within the next few months.
Instead of sending flowers, you might do what Tory often did and find a way to give some money to someone who needs it more than you.
Interview With Don Eron, Author of Killer Kowalski Takes the Mat
NewInBooks, November 7, 2025
What’s the story behind the story? What inspired you to write Killer Kowalski Takes the Mat?
I knew I was going to write this novel from the time that some of the events occurred. I had been a voracious reader since turning nine, always wanted to be a writer, and thought it would make a moving story–and one that hadn’t been told very often. Still, it took several decades and about eight other novels before I got to it. In my defense, one of the novels—which, in one version, was longer than a thousand pages—I consider to be an ancestor of Killer Kowalski.
If you had to pick theme songs for the main characters of Killer Kowalski Takes the Mat, what would they be?
Biggie can sing “Where Do the Children Play?” and sound almost like Cat Stevens, as long as he sings along with the record. Had it existed at the time, I think he’d like “Superman’s Song,” by Crash Test Dummies. I’m pretty sure Gloria Serpentino would love “Pink Pony Club.”
What’s your favorite genre to read? Is it the same as your favorite genre to write?
I write (and read) character-driven literary fiction. I’d also read anything by Michael Connelly and was once addicted to Raymond Chandler and his better descendants. A reviewer once compared me (sort of) to Bellow and Roth. I’m not sure if it was intended as praise, but I took it that way.
What books are on your TBR pile right now?
My perennials are All the King’s Men and Endless Love, to my mind two of the great novels of the 20th century, both of which I read about ten times when I was in my twenties, and would read aloud from to warm up before writing. I’m curious if I’d have the patience to read them now.
What scene in your book was your favorite to write?
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader, Robert Frost famously said. But aside from the emotional scenes, I really enjoyed writing the early scenes where Biggie and Gloria were feeling each other out over the phone, Biggie often misunderstanding (amusingly, I hope), but obviously enthralled.
Do you have any quirky writing habits? (lucky mugs, cats on laps, etc.)
I used to read out loud before I’d write, from books I wish I’d written, imagining I was before a large, adoring audience. I thought that helped sharpen my ear quite a bit.
Do you have a motto, quote, or philosophy you live by?
Apropos of a coming-of-age novel, I’ve always been taken by something Iris Gaines says in Bernard Malamud’s first novel, The Natural: “I believe we have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with, and the life we live after that.”
If you could choose one thing for readers to remember after reading your book, what would it be?
Sometimes the people who will matter most to you are the people you’d least expect. Also, trying is better than not trying. Also, at the risk of sounding even more hackneyed and clichéd, it really is the journey that counts. And doing the right thing is its own reward. Finally, wrestling is a singularly demanding sport that deserves to be much more popular.
An Origin Story, Twelve Years Late
Don Eron
It might be an exaggeration to say that Contingency Street Press owes its existence to Steve Moncada Street, but not much of one.
Steve was much better known than I was in the contingent academic labor movement. We became good friends in the way that professional colleagues from different parts of the country become good friends. At first, we connected over the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor listserv, where Steve was an eloquent, persistent advocate for proposals I advanced along with my partner-in-crime at the time, Suzanne Hudson. As a frequent contributor to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and numerous other periodicals, Steve probably had a larger platform than any other activist, and he was quick to credit Suzanne and me when he could. Eventually we met him in person at a COCAL conference in San Diego (2008), where he was the person we most wanted to meet, then in 2010 in Quebec City. Steve and I discovered we had a lot in common—we were roughly the same age, both the sons of professors, both had literary ambitions, MFAs and a common frame of literary reference, and we had similar takes on just about everything, particularly about academic labor issues. We also found each other extremely amusing! In fact, I’m pretty sure Steve would laugh if he read this. He’d get it!
Although I considered Steve to be one of my best friends, I only saw him five times. At the COCAL conference in Quebec City, Suzanne told Steve "We feel like we've known you for a long time," and invited him to visit us in Boulder. The next summer he visited twice, coming and going from a "bicycle classic" in Vail, and I remember he was surprised that he’d had trouble tackling the hills. Shortly after he drove back to Buffalo, Steve began experiencing an acute shortage of breath, and found out that his melanoma from a dozen years before had reappeared in his lungs. We began emailing even more frequently, and Suzanne and I took to calling Steve regularly for updates and to check in. Odd as this feels to write, I think Steve really enjoyed our friendship over the last year of his life, in part, maybe, because Suzanne had breast cancer several years before and I’d lost a sister to cancer —we were comfortable, in other words, talking about the disease—and in part because I direly needed his help with my quixotic attempt to turn the academic labor movement on its head by running for 2nd Vice President of the AAUP, the 100-year-old organization that defines the standards for the academic profession. In most of my emails I asked Steve, or thanked him, for favors. ("I don't like asking people for favors," I wrote to him in one email. "I don't seem to mind asking you, obviously, but other people.") I still regret that Steve spent so much energy in the last year of his life advocating for my professional ambitions.
Suzanne inherited a timeshare. In the summer of 2012, she traded up and got a place in Puerto Vallarta with an extra bedroom. We invited Steve for a week in Mexico. It was uncertain if he’d be able to make it—side effects from his latest treatment. But he showed up, and I thought he was in fine shape—physically changed from the treatments (he no longer resembled the renegade biker he could have passed as four years before), but interacting with plenty of verve and energy. He arose early every morning for long walks along the ocean. He was far more present than I was, working on his Spanish, taking notes about the local culture, treating everybody he encountered with consideration and patience (with the possible exception of the guy at the timeshare presentation), sea kayaking, reading Richard Yates and Carlos Fuentes, discussing contingent projects. Discussing literary ambitions. One evening I asked him what I'd meant to ask since before we'd planned the trip. "If things go south, would you like me to publish some of your manuscripts? As ebooks?"
I'm not sure why I said "ebooks." I'd never read an ebook. I assume I thought digital publication would be cheaper and easier than print.
He didn't answer immediately. "Can I think about it?"
The next day Steve told me he'd appreciate it if I would publish those manuscripts, should it be necessary.
"Send me the pdfs when you can," I said. I'm not sure why I specified "pdfs." They wouldn't have been very useful, if he'd ever sent them.
The next week, back in Buffalo, Steve had a scan that revealed the malignant cells had entered his brain. He underwent two weeks of radiation therapy (while teaching an intensive summer session) and had his eye on a new Phase One trial. When I last talked to Steve, nine days before his death, he was lucid and had his sense of humor, though he complained of failing vision, and, worst insult of all to a writer, he had trouble coming up with words.
I'm not a complete moron. After almost 40 years of writing novels, it didn't escape my attention that I'd never landed an agent (other than an artist girlfriend who was generous enough to give it a whirl) or publisher. As somebody who considered himself to be really, really good—as I'm sure Steve thought he was really, really good—I didn't want my best work to achieve life only as files in my computer, or as manuscripts stored in my basement. Since early middle age I’d resolved that if I didn't make it by 60, I'd self-publish. When I reached 60, I revised that to 70. When I hit my mid-sixties, I knew that I'd better start now. I'd call it Contingency Street Press (a name that didn't pass muster with most people I test-sampled it with). The "contingency" would be for its existential implications, as well as a recognition of my years as an activist. The "street" would be because I liked how it sounded, but also because I'd had a friend named Steve Street, who was far more generous to me than I ever was to him. A decade before I'd promised him, in his last days, that I would publish some of his manuscripts, and I hadn't lifted a finger since to make that happen.
I'd consoled myself that we'd just run out of time—he'd never sent the pdfs!—but knew that was a canard. After Steve died I’d corresponded with his brother, Mark, and knew Mark would do anything to facilitate his brilliant, tireless, self-deprecating brother's legacy, including scouring Steve's computer and emailing some files.
Mark's a documentary filmmaker, as is his wife, Lynne Sachs. In 2022, Lynne headlined a documentary film festival at the University of Colorado, Boulder. At the reception before her presentation, I introduced myself. I'd met her before, not long after Steve's death. She acted like she remembered, though she's gracious enough I'm sure she'd act that way even if she didn't. I told her I was starting a literary micro press, that I wanted to publish a book of Steve's. Lynne burst into tears.
It may not say much for me or my accomplishments, but the validation I felt in that moment redeemed a lot of my regrets.
There were surprising moments ahead. I'd read Steve's academic labor articles. He was the best there was at the genre (that's why he was so prominent). He'd also directed me toward some book reviews he'd published in Rain Taxi. We'd never really exchanged manuscripts, but I'd seen a couple of his published stories and I'm sure I said nice things about them. Obviously, I knew he'd be good, but I wasn't expecting this. Steve Moncada Street's abilities as a fiction writer are astonishing, as the reviews and blurbs for Balloon Theater that you can find elsewhere on this site, or a casual perusal of any single random page (as if reading just a single page of Balloon Theater is possible), will attest. A wondrous thing about literature: it's always present tense.
Here's a picture of Steve and me that Suzanne took in Puerto Vallarta in 2012, looking out on the Sea of Cortez, contemplating contingency . . .
