In my house, we track how Wyoming is portrayed on TV. It’s become a bit of a joke. In the series “Yellowstone,” the murdered are told they’re being “taken to the train station” before they are killed and dumped in Wyoming. In “Outer Range,” an unruly portal into the universe opens on the Abbott ranch. In “The Last of Us,” Joel and Ellie dodge zombies as they cross an apocalyptic Wyoming to reach the fortified haven of Jackson. What is it, we wonder, that makes our state There Be Dragons territory for contemporary storytellers?

Part of the answer is obvious. As our border signs used to say, Wyoming is “like no place on earth.” But Nevada, Arizona, and Utah are wild, challenging locales too. Why is imagined Wyoming such a vortex for mayhem and violence?

When I first arrived in Laramie nearly 30 years ago, folks asked me why this state didn’t have its own literature. Montana was home to a raft of famous writers. Nebraska had Willa Cather. What was Wyoming’s problem? The question was new to me. No state I’d ever lived in craved a wholly separate culture. Here, however, being defined by difference seemed to be a prize.

Before long, C. J. Box and Craig Johnson introduced us to Joe Pickett and Walt Longmire. Annie Proulx published three tart story collections set in the state, including “Close Range.” Writers like Nina McConigley, David Romtvedt, Mark Spragg and Gretel Ehrlich expanded our sense of what a Wyoming story might be.

The state assembled, not just a literature, but a lively culture celebrated in galleries and cafes, museums and libraries. Was this effort unique? No. The push-pull between homegrown art and outside mythmaking is as old as storytelling itself. But the local efforts were refreshing — and important. A strong culture springs from strong community.

So, is it a problem if Hollywood outsiders, or anyone else, perceive Wyoming as literally off the map?

If violence is your preference, the answer may be no. Rip Wheeler of “Yellowstone” is an orphaned avenger who will do anything to preserve the Dutton empire. Wyoming is his graveyard, a place so ungoverned, so unknowable, he fills it with his ghosts at will. Royal Abbott of “Outer Range” runs a ranch that’s barely hanging on. His “way of life” is under siege. When he tries to use the seething hole in his pasture to help him keep what he has, desperation leads to tragedy.

In “The Last of Us,” Jackson is a town-sized commune, but this egalitarian utopia only functions because the community tightly controls who they let in. The self-righteousness of this fortified Jackson, where neighborliness ends at the city limits, is antithetical to Wyoming’s view of itself.

In each of these stories, someone wants something that belongs to someone else — and they are prepared to take it. The resulting plotlines are tumults of gunplay and grievance, dark tales freighted with notions of frontier conquest that we can’t seem to escape and may not want to.

Are Wyoming’s homegrown stories just as bloody? The body counts in Box and Johnson novels are high. But those writers are careful observers of community. The “bad guys” may be brought to justice, yet the issues at stake are nuanced and place-based. Proulx, who lived and wrote here for years, finds human pride more lethal than any revolver. For her, attempts to tame landscape and erase past cultures are rife with unintended consequences. The conquerors are always conquered, usually by themselves. McConigley, Romtvedt, Ehrlich, and others are less focused on who controls resources or territory. They are empathetic scribes who write of the possibilities, joyful or not, that come with change — because change in our small, isolated communities is inevitable.

What kinds of stories are Wyoming communities expressing to us right now? I’m working on an oral history in Albany County, and each interview highlights the patience, generosity and shared values that underpin consequential decisions about land and water use here.

No one talks about “taking” anything from anyone, whether they are ranchers or scientists, ditch riders or politicians. Everyone references “giving,” particularly of themselves. None of these folks are newcomers. They’ve been on Planet Wyoming more than a minute. A weaponized all-or-nothing fracas is not their style. They lean on honesty, trust, respect and relationships. They build coalitions, they tell me, “the old-fashioned Wyoming way.”

Which leads me to ask: Is anyone in Wyoming — except on the silver screen — really looking for ugly dustups? Are we truly the remnant of an annihilating frontier, fated to be characters in an unending outlaw story? Or, is the greater risk that we’ll stop nurturing local narratives and become little more than a battleground for the stylized grievances of others?

Alyson Hagy is a Professor at the University of Wyoming. She’s published eight works of fiction and lives in Laramie.

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