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Wednesday, September 27
 

9:00am MDT

Agent Pitch Sessions

Literary agent Julie Stevenson, of Massie & McQuilkin in New York, is eager to meet people for 10-minute, one-on-one sessions. The idea here is for participants to receive feedback and ask questions about pitches, pitch letters and the industry. Book-deals and agent-signings rarely happen in this type of environment - rather, Julie wants to offer guidance to writers, at all levels, interested in the process of publishing.

As an agent, she is drawn to fiction with unforgettable characters, an authorial command of voice, and a strong sense of narrative tension. She looks for work that explores the depths of human experience and the many facets of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, social class, and regional backgrounds. She's agented books that have won the Pulitzer Prize, the MWA Edgar Award, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence. She represents upmarket fiction, suspense and thrillers, memoir, narrative nonfiction, young adult and children's books."

 


Speakers
avatar for Julie Stevenson

Julie Stevenson

JULIE STEVENSON is a literary agent with Massie & McQuilkin, a premiere boutique agency in New York, which represents some of the most noted writers in American publishing. She represents literary and upmarket fiction, suspense and thrillers, memoir, narrative nonfiction, and young... Read More →


Wednesday September 27, 2017 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
A&E Conference Room

12:00pm MDT

Where is the Love? Craft Lecture with David Allan Cates
What makes us artists? What gives power to our work? This talk describes how stories are driven by our suffering and our mortality, and how these two certainties also power our artistic drive. 

Speakers
avatar for David Allan Cates

David Allan Cates

David Allan Cates is the author of five novels, and a chapbook of poetry, the Mysterious Location of Kyrgyzstan. His novels include Hunger in America, a New York Times Notable Book; X Out of Wonderland and Freeman Walker, both Montana Book Award Honor Books; and Ben Armstrong’s... Read More →


Wednesday September 27, 2017 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
E3 Convergence Gallery

1:15pm MDT

"Aboutness:" Leash Your Novel, Shape Your Writing, Pitch Your Book, with Sandra Scofield
"Aboutness:" Leash Your Novel, Shape Your Writing, Pitch Your Book
If you are writing, want to write, or have drafted a novel, you are thinking of all those pages. But the secret to a novel that flies is a novel you can talk about, a novel that can be compressed to the gem it is. Learn how to capture the essence of a story in a few clear declarative sentences. That's your way into the writing, and it's definitely your way into telling someone they really should read it.This is an opportunity to get valuable feedback on the very idea of your novel.

Speakers
avatar for Sandra Scofield

Sandra Scofield

Sandra Scofield is the author of 11 books: seven novels (including a National Book Award finalist); a memoir, Occasions of Sin; a book of essays about family, Mysteries of Love and Grief; a craft book, The Scene Book; and most recently, Swim: Stories of the Sixties. The Last Draft... Read More →


Wednesday September 27, 2017 1:15pm - 3:30pm MDT
A&E Conference Room

5:30pm MDT

The After: Poetry and Collaboration in the Sixth Extinction.
Seattle poet, Melinda Mueller, and Missoulan, Naomi Siegel, perform and discuss their recent collaboration, The After, (Entre Rios Books, 2016). A single long poem on the sixth extinction and the anthropocene, it blends science and poetry with the urgency of a heartbreak.  The performance will followed by a discussion of the artist’s strategies in creating art responding to the current environmental catastrophe and the role women are playing in writing testaments. 


Speakers
avatar for Melinda Mueller

Melinda Mueller

Melinda Mueller was born in Montana and raised in Spokane. She trained as a biologist and is on the science faculty at Seattle Academy of Arts & Sciences.  Author of six books of poetry, including just published Mary’s Dust. (Entre Ríos Books, 2017) Her book, What the Ice Gets... Read More →
avatar for Naomi Siegel

Naomi Siegel

Naomi Moon Siegel is a composer, trombonist, producer and music educator whose work is geared toward creating authentic expression and connection. In June 2016 she released her debut album Shoebox View – a ten-song travelogue featuring 13 musicians and cinematically combining folk... Read More →


Wednesday September 27, 2017 5:30pm - 7:00pm MDT
E3 Convergence Gallery

7:30pm MDT

Poetry Slam!
The Montana Book Festival is excited to partner with the E3 Gallery for a poetry slam,with hosts Joy Havin and Jared Burkhart! Bring your A game and compete with verbal prowess, or be one of our honored judges and make your opinion known... or just sit back and enjoy the show. No matter how you slice it, these slams are always a fun and unique evening, so don't miss!

You can come early and sign up at the door, or be prepared and reserve your reading slot ahead of time by contacting Lilli at e3gallery@e3gallerymissoula.com."

Speakers

Wednesday September 27, 2017 7:30pm - 8:30pm MDT
E3 Convergence Gallery

7:30pm MDT

Put Down Your Books, Kick off Your Shoes and Make New Friends on the Dance Floor

Come join the literati of Montana to kick off the Missoula Book Festival with a dance on Wednesday, Sept. 27 from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Missoula Senior Center. Mark Matthews, author of the series Swinging through American History, will lead dancers through the major epochs of our country's social dance. The frolic will begin with an hour of contra dances, with music provided by the Best Sellers Stringband, followed by an African-American cakewalk (winner takes the cake) and some traditional square dances. The second half of the evening will feature one-steps of the 1910s, the big apple of 1937, swing of the '40s, and a soul train line of the '70s. No partner or experience is necessary; all dances will be taught. Come make new friends and experience the joy of dancing with your community.






Speakers
avatar for Mark Matthews

Mark Matthews

Mark Matthews once composed a one-word Artist's Statement for a sculpture exhibit which read: PERSIST! That's basically what Mark has been doing for most of his adult life in order to create various types of art. Since graduating from Brandeis University in 1974, he has published... Read More →


Wednesday September 27, 2017 7:30pm - 10:00pm MDT
Missoula Senior Center
 
Thursday, September 28
 

9:00am MDT

Agent Pitch Sessions
Speakers
avatar for Julie Stevenson

Julie Stevenson

JULIE STEVENSON is a literary agent with Massie & McQuilkin, a premiere boutique agency in New York, which represents some of the most noted writers in American publishing. She represents literary and upmarket fiction, suspense and thrillers, memoir, narrative nonfiction, and young... Read More →


Thursday September 28, 2017 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
A&E Conference Room

9:30am MDT

Ekphrasis: Writing Out of Art, with Poet Joni Wallace

“I speak to these sculptures, wood prints, and paintings as I would to a friend over coffee or champagne.” –Ntozake Shange, Ridin’the Moon in Texas, 1987 

 Going back at least to the description in the Iliad of the shield of Achilles, poets have been writing to, from, and about art.  Join poet Joni Wallace at the Missoula Art Museum for this hands-on, generative workshop in ekphrasis. Each participant will generate new work inspired by the museum collection and receive constructive, considered feedback toward revision and continued practice. 


Speakers
avatar for Joni Wallace

Joni Wallace

Joni Wallace earned her MFA at the University of Montana and is the author of two books of poetry and a chapbook: Kingdom Come Radio Show (Barrow Street Press, 2016), finalist for the Colorado Prize, the Besmilr Brigham Award, Word Works’ Washington Prize, and AROHO’s To the Lighthouse... Read More →


Thursday September 28, 2017 9:30am - 12:30pm MDT
Missoula Art Museum

10:00am MDT

Dear Viewer: Text-Based Artwork From the MAM Collection

DEAR VIEWER is a concise survey of text-based artworks from the MAM Collection, including 12 new and never-before exhibited acquisitions. These works demonstrate a range of methods and motivations for integrating words and images, but—building on the legacies of 20th century movements from Dadaism to postmodernism—the artists share an interest in using alphabetic words or the concept of language to carry critical content of visual art. 

Sister Corita Kent and several folk artists, including Rev. Howard Finster, use prose to voice deeply personal, unequivocal spiritual experiences. Other artists confront the implicit and insidious authority of naming. George Longfish (Canadian, Seneca/Tuscarora) , and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish-Kootenai, Métis-Cree, Shoshone-Bannock) appropriate mass media symbols and pop culture labels to call out power structures and reclaim the narrative of identity.

 Other artists contrast the abstract nature of language with the physical experience of viewing or making art. Robert Rauschenberg and Robert DeWeese, parallel pioneers in Pop art and Montana modernism, evoke visceral feelings of anticipation and chance: Rauschenberg by layering found texts with multiple possible readings and DeWeese by pairing poetic longing with proud aggression. MaryAnn Bonjorni, influenced as much by the conceptual underpinnings of language as by landscape, uses heavy gestural marks and deceptively simple words to make humorous, if dark, observations on Western neighborliness. Nia Lee’s cross-stitch samplers combine her emerging language skills with exquisite embroidery techniques, documenting her transition as a Hmong refugee and new American.

 DEAR VIEWER also includes works that communicate through quietness or even muteness. Lillian Pitt (Yakama, Wasco, Warm Springs) draws on petroglyph imagery to honor ancient texts and authors unencumbered by written words. A selection from Paul Harris’s Shut-In Suite and a painting by Kerri Rosenstein use illegibility to underscore the contradictions, limitations, and frustrations of communication.

 

 



Speakers
avatar for Brandon Reintjes

Brandon Reintjes

Senior Curator at the Missoula Art Museum.


Thursday September 28, 2017 10:00am - 11:00am MDT
Missoula Art Museum

11:00am MDT

Swing through American History with Mark Matthews

Social dancing and popular music not only brought American communities together throughout the centuries, but also helped to build a nation by breaking down racial and class barriers. That's what Mark Matthews discovered while researching his series of books  Swinging through American History. European-based dancing such as the western square dance and New England contra dance helped strengthen the underpinnings of colonial and settlement societies, and more recently helped white Americans recover from the traumas of World War II. On the other hand, the degree to which white culture began to appropriate black music and dance mirrored the progress that our country made toward racial desegregation and integration. When white people started dancing like black people, they eventually started interacting with blacks at honky tonks and ballrooms—and even dancing with black partners. Mark will intersperse his outline of the history of social dancing in America with some readings about interesting dance communities throughout the ages including the 19th century transcendentalist Brook Farm commune and Harlem's Savoy Ballroom of the 1940s.



Speakers
avatar for Mark Matthews

Mark Matthews

Mark Matthews once composed a one-word Artist's Statement for a sculpture exhibit which read: PERSIST! That's basically what Mark has been doing for most of his adult life in order to create various types of art. Since graduating from Brandeis University in 1974, he has published... Read More →


Thursday September 28, 2017 11:00am - 11:45am MDT
Fact & Fiction

1:00pm MDT

Truth to Power Anthology

Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts presents a special collection of poetry, fiction and nonfiction edited by Rita Dove, Joy Harjo, and Pam Uschuk, meant to address the rise in the public rhetoric of hatred and fear, prompted by the 2016 presidential campaign and election.  Writers from diverse cultures, genders, ethnic backgrounds and races from all over the U.S. respond in poetry, fiction and nonfiction to social issues ranging from immigration, LGBT rights, women's rights, rights for people with disabilities, African American Rights, Indigenous American Rights and Latino rights, poverty, inequality, the attack on our natural environment and more.
Contributor Christin Rzasa will read and answer questions.


Speakers

Thursday September 28, 2017 1:00pm - 2:00pm MDT
Shakespeare & Co

1:00pm MDT

The Five Most Important Things: Self Publishing Workshop with Danica Winters

Five things you can do to sell your books

Whether you are traditionally published or self-published, you will have to build an audience. To some, that’s the most daunting part of becoming a writer. The owners of Self-Publishing Services LLC have developed tried-and-true ways for you to get your name out there and build a following. They’ll share five of them with you in this informative seminar.

Speakers
avatar for Danica Winters

Danica Winters

Danica Winters is a bestselling author who has won multiple awards for writing books that grip readers with their ability to drive emotion through suspense and occasionally a touch of magic. Most recently, Danica was the winner of the Paranormal Romance Guild’s Paranormal Romantic... Read More →


Thursday September 28, 2017 1:00pm - 3:00pm MDT
Missoula Art Museum

1:00pm MDT

Textcraft!
Local crafter/maker extrordinaire, Tina Halvorson of Tailfeathers, invites you to drop in to a maker space in the Goldberg Family Library to work on interactive or solo art projects repurposing found text from old books and magazines.   You'll leave with glue on your hands, and a smile on your face.  

Artists
avatar for Tina Halvorson

Tina Halvorson

Tina Halvorson is a regular on the Missoula crafter scene.  You may recognize her from the Made Fair, the People's Market, or from typing Valentine poetry in the streets!


Thursday September 28, 2017 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Missoula Art Museum

2:00pm MDT

Power, Resistance, and Literacy: Teaching Writing in Nontraditional Settings
Panelists speak about their expereinces teaching writing in nontraditional settings such a juvenile detention centers, drug rehab centers, and homeless shelters.

Speakers
avatar for Chauna Craig

Chauna Craig

Chauna Craig is the author of the story collection The Widow’s Guide to Edible Mushrooms (Press 53, 2017). Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Fourth Genre, Prairie Schooner, Seattle Review, Flash Fiction International, Crab Orchard Review and other literary magazines and... Read More →
avatar for Tami Haaland

Tami Haaland

Tami Haaland is the author of two books of poetry: When We Wake in the Night, and Breath in Every Room, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Prize. Her poems have appeared in a variety of periodicals and anthologies, including The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press) and Literature... Read More →
avatar for Sarah Kahn

Sarah Kahn

Sarah Kahn founded Free Verse, a nonprofit that teaches literature and creative writing in juvenile detention centers across Montana, in 2014. She has an MFA in Fiction and an MA in Literature from the University of Montana and is the Program Officer at Humanities Montana. 
avatar for Chelsia Rice

Chelsia Rice

Chelsia A Rice is an essayist with an MFA from the University of Idaho in Creative Writing. Her writing has been published in journals and anthologies, including about.com, Peripheral Surveys, and the Los Angeles Review. Recently her essay titled "Tough Enough to Float" was selected as a Notable Best American Essay for 2014. She is the founder of Helena Area Literary Arts, the Montana Grassroots Organizer at American Cancer Society, and an adjunct... Read More →
avatar for Joni Wallace

Joni Wallace

Joni Wallace earned her MFA at the University of Montana and is the author of two books of poetry and a chapbook: Kingdom Come Radio Show (Barrow Street Press, 2016), finalist for the Colorado Prize, the Besmilr Brigham Award, Word Works’ Washington Prize, and AROHO’s To the Lighthouse... Read More →


Thursday September 28, 2017 2:00pm - 3:15pm MDT
Missoula Art Museum

3:30pm MDT

Does Science plus Fiction equal Science Fiction?
What's the difference between Science Fiction, and fiction engenered by science?  This panel will make you feel, and probably look smarter, just by attending.

Speakers
avatar for Eric Scott Fischl

Eric Scott Fischl

Eric Scott Fischl writes novels of speculative historical fiction and the supernatural, including Dr. Potter's Medicine Show and the upcoming The Trials of Solomon Parker. He lives in Montana's Bitterroot mountains.
avatar for Leyna Krow

Leyna Krow

Leyna Krow is the author of the short story collection I'm Fine, But You Appear To Be Sinking (Featherproof Books, 2017). Her fiction has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, and other publications. She lives in Spokane, WA, with her husband and da... Read More →
avatar for Joni Wallace

Joni Wallace

Joni Wallace earned her MFA at the University of Montana and is the author of two books of poetry and a chapbook: Kingdom Come Radio Show (Barrow Street Press, 2016), finalist for the Colorado Prize, the Besmilr Brigham Award, Word Works’ Washington Prize, and AROHO’s To the Lighthouse... Read More →


Thursday September 28, 2017 3:30pm - 4:30pm MDT
Fact & Fiction

3:30pm MDT

Submittable and Warm Springs Productions: How Two Creative Start-Ups Make it Happen in Missoula
Submittable and Warms Springs Productions are two Montana-based companies that employ writers, deal in creative content, and are well established in the entertainment and publishing worlds. Submittable is a submission workflow management company that helps writers, artists, magazines, and arts organizations manage submissions and applications. Warms Springs Productions creates television shows and docu-dramas such as Fox's Legends and Lies and the History Channel's Mountain Men. How did they get their start? How have they continued to grow and thrive? What words of wisdom can they share with people interested in launching their own creative start-ups? In a town that values writers and writing, these companies are creating jobs for our best and brightest. 
 

Moderators
avatar for Julie Stevenson

Julie Stevenson

JULIE STEVENSON is a literary agent with Massie & McQuilkin, a premiere boutique agency in New York, which represents some of the most noted writers in American publishing. She represents literary and upmarket fiction, suspense and thrillers, memoir, narrative nonfiction, and young... Read More →

Speakers
avatar for Jason Broome

Jason Broome

Executive Producer / Showrunner for Legends & Lies on Fox News, Warm Springs Productions
Jason Broome is a veteran of the entertainment industry and has been writing and producing professionally for over 20 years.  From L.A.’s underground hip hop scene to third world prisons to Big Sky Country, Jason’s passion is simply finding and telling a good story.   
avatar for Ajax Broome

Ajax Broome

VP of Creative, Warm Springs Productions
With over 17 years of experience in the television industry, Ajax Broome, VP of Creative at Warms Springs Productions, has been responsible for editing, producing and developing a wide range of TV series that span from home renovation to scripted docudrama. Credits include - Duck... Read More →
avatar for Michael FitzGerald

Michael FitzGerald

Michael is the co-founder and CEO of Submittable and the author of the novel, Radiant Days. He's presently working on a second book called, StartDown. He has been the recipient of a Fishtrap Fellowship, an Idaho Commission on the Arts Literature Fellowship, and an ICA Quickfunds grant... Read More →
avatar for Chris Richardson

Chris Richardson

President, Warm Springs Productions
Chris Richardson is the president of Warm Springs Productions and has called Missoula, Montana his home for almost 25 years. He attended the University of Montana for many years while seeking a degree in Business and Television production. His love for camerawork has taken him all... Read More →
avatar for Asta So

Asta So

Chief of Staff, Submittable
Asta So is Chief of Staff at Submittable. She was born in Hong Kong and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she studied English literature and creative writing at Stanford University. She writes both fiction and nonfiction and received her MFA in creative writing from the... Read More →


Thursday September 28, 2017 3:30pm - 4:30pm MDT
Shakespeare & Co

3:30pm MDT

Classic Literary Texts in Archives and Special Collections

Ever wonder why certain books throughout history are categorized as classic literature and others aren’t? Join the Mansfield Library’s Archives and Special Collections and University of Montana faculty members as they discuss classic literary texts/authors throughout history and what makes them “classic”. Presenters include Ashby Kinch (Chaucer), Rob Browning (Milton), Elizabeth Hubble (women authors), and Prageeta Sharma (insiders and outsiders in the literary canon). Learn why these texts continue to intrigue us and why the stories they tell are timeless.

After the presentations, please join us for an exclusive tour of rare and unique literary texts held by Archives and Special Collections including a facsimile of Dante’s Inferno, a handwritten draft of Elizabeth Browning’s poem “Human Life’s Mysteries”, and an illustrated copy of Paradise Lost.

 



Speakers
avatar for Rob Browning

Rob Browning

Rob Browning is an adjunct assistant professor in the University of Montana’s Department of English specializing in the study of Milton, Shakespeare, early modern British literature, and science fiction. He has taught literature in British Columbia, the People’s Republic of China... Read More →
avatar for Elizabeth Hubble

Elizabeth Hubble

Elizabeth Hubble directs the University of Montana-Missoula’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, which offers a major, minor, and graduate certificate.  She received undergraduate degrees in French and history from the University of Montana in 1995 and her M.A. (1998... Read More →
avatar for Ashby Kinch

Ashby Kinch

Ashby Kinch is a professor in the University of Montana’s Department of English, who specializes in the literature of the medieval period, particularly the late medieval period. He is the author of Imago Mortis: Mediating Images of Death in Late Medieval Culture (2013) and “Intervisual... Read More →
avatar for Prageeta Sharma

Prageeta Sharma

Prageeta Sharma was born in Framingham, Massachusetts. Her collections of poetry include Bliss to Fill (2000), The Opening Question (2004), which won the Fence Modern Poets Prize, Infamous Landscapes (2007), and Undergloom (2013). Sharma’s honors and awards include a Howard Foundation... Read More →


Thursday September 28, 2017 3:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
Mansfield Library (University of Montana campus)

5:30pm MDT

Words with Wings: Missoula Writing Collaborative Student Poetry Reading

Join us to hear young poets ages 8 to 14 read poems about everything from eating carrots to slalom skiing, from making ziti to lake swimming. Munch on goldfish and gummy bears as MWC poets read poems they created during our 2017 Words With Wings Camp.


Speakers
avatar for Caroline Patterson

Caroline Patterson

Caroline Patterson grew up in Missoula, Montana, in the four-square Prairie-style house built by her great-grandfather in 1906 after he won a case against the Great Northern Railway. She lives there today with her husband and her two college-aged children. In 2006, she published the... Read More →


Thursday September 28, 2017 5:30pm - 6:30pm MDT
Fact & Fiction

6:00pm MDT

Erotic Fan Fiction: Folklore and Fairytales
$5 donation suggested at the door.

Moderators
avatar for Lynsey G.

Lynsey G.

Lynsey G. is a writerly type who has focused on the intersections of feminism, sexuality, and pornography for the past decade as a reviewer, interviewer, critic, documentary filmmaker, blogger, and now author of Watching Porn, an informative book about the adult entertainment i... Read More →

Speakers
avatar for Mara Panich-Crouch

Mara Panich-Crouch

Mara Panich-Crouch is a bookseller at Fact and Fiction in Missoula. She received her BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Purdue University and found her home Missoula in 2002 while pursuing post-graduate studies at The University of Montana. She writes book reviews... Read More →
avatar for Acton Seibel

Acton Seibel

Acton Seibel is a mechanic and certified triple threat, with his Sun, Moon, and Rising all in Gemini.  When he’s not getting his charts done he’s building small home furnishings, reading poetry, writing short stories, and watching 80’s horror films.  None of his writings are... Read More →
avatar for Karla Theilen

Karla Theilen

After she's through wrangling details for the Montana Book Festival, Director Karla Theilen moonlights as an RN and bartender to support her writing habit with dollars and stories.  She is currently in the home stretch of a memoir chronicling six summers on a fire lookout in Idaho's... Read More →
avatar for Chris La Tray

Chris La Tray

Chris La Tray is a Métis storyteller. His first book, One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays From the World At Large (2018, Riverfeet Press) won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award.His second book, a collection of haiku and haibun poetry called De... Read More →


Thursday September 28, 2017 6:00pm - 8:00pm MDT
Monk's Bar

8:30pm MDT

Pie and Whiskey! Hosted by Sam Ligon and Kate Lebo, sponsored by Shakespeare and Co. and Bernice's Bakery
Sam Ligon and Kate Lebo, creators of the Pie & Whiskey, return once again to Missoula to share their beloved event with a devoted Montana Book Festival crowd.   

This year, Sam and Kate and the Montana Book Festival have curated an amazing lineup of readers to include some of their hometown favorites along wtih some of ours (and a few very special guests!)  Local legend Judy Blunt lends her mad pie baking skills to the effort once again, turning out delicious homemade goodness in the kitchen with Kate and Sam.

Find out more about Pie & Whiskey and Sam and Kate's new book at:
http://www.pieandwhiskey.com

Sponsored by Shakespeare and Co. and Bernice's Bakery

Speakers
avatar for Kevin Canty

Kevin Canty

Kevin Canty is the author of four novels and three short story collections and has been published in The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, and the New York Times Magazine. He currently teaches at the University of Montana in Missoula.
avatar for Lynsey G.

Lynsey G.

Lynsey G. is a writerly type who has focused on the intersections of feminism, sexuality, and pornography for the past decade as a reviewer, interviewer, critic, documentary filmmaker, blogger, and now author of Watching Porn, an informative book about the adult entertainment i... Read More →
avatar for William Kittredge

William Kittredge

William Kittredge taught creative writing for 29 years at The University of Montana. He is the author of two collections of short fiction, The Van Gogh Fields and Other Stories (1979) and We Are Not In This Together (1984); a novel, The Willow Field (2006); a memoir, Hole in the Sky... Read More →
avatar for Leyna Krow

Leyna Krow

Leyna Krow is the author of the short story collection I'm Fine, But You Appear To Be Sinking (Featherproof Books, 2017). Her fiction has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, and other publications. She lives in Spokane, WA, with her husband and da... Read More →
avatar for Kate Lebo

Kate Lebo

Kate Lebo’s essays have been anthologized in Best American Essays 2015, This is the Place: Women Writing About Home, and Ghosts of Seattle Past. In October 2017, Sasquatch Books will release Pie & Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence of Butter and Booze, an anthology co-edited... Read More →
avatar for Sam Ligon

Sam Ligon

Samuel Ligon is the author of two novels—Among the Dead and Dreaming and Safe in Heaven Dead—and two collections of stories, Wonderland, illustrated by Stephen Knezovich, and Drift and Swerve. He is co-editor, with Kate Lebo, of Pie & Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence... Read More →
avatar for Tiffany Midge

Tiffany Midge

Tiffany Midge (Hunkpapa Lakota, enrolled Standing Rock) is a poetry editor for The Rumpus, and a humor columnist for Indian Country Media Network. Her poetry collection The Woman Who Married a Bear (University of New Mexico Press, 2016) won the Kenyon Review Earthworks Indigenous... Read More →
avatar for Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock is the author of the novels The Devil All the Time and The Heavenly Table, and the story collection Knockemstiff, for which he was awarded the 2009 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fellowship. He worked as a laborer at the Mead Paper Mill in Chillicothe, Ohio, from 1973... Read More →
avatar for Prageeta Sharma

Prageeta Sharma

Prageeta Sharma was born in Framingham, Massachusetts. Her collections of poetry include Bliss to Fill (2000), The Opening Question (2004), which won the Fence Modern Poets Prize, Infamous Landscapes (2007), and Undergloom (2013). Sharma’s honors and awards include a Howard Foundation... Read More →
avatar for Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, Some Luck and Early Warning, the first volumes of The Last Hundred Years trilogy. She is also the author of five works of nonfiction and a series of books... Read More →
avatar for Maya Jewell Zeller

Maya Jewell Zeller

Maya Jewell Zeller is the author of Alchemy for Cells & Other Beasts, a collaboration with visual artist Carrie DeBacker (Entre Rios Books, Fall 2017), Yesterday, the Bees (Floating Bridge Press, 2015), and Rust Fish (Lost Horse Press, 2011). Maya serves as Assistant Professor... Read More →

Volunteers
avatar for Judy Blunt

Judy Blunt

Judy Blunt spent more than thirty years on wheat and cattle ranches in northeastern Montana, before leaving in 1986 to attend the University of Montana. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is the recipient of a Jacob K. Javits Graduate Fellowship... Read More →


Thursday September 28, 2017 8:30pm - 10:30pm MDT
Union Club
 
Friday, September 29
 

9:30am MDT

Tour the Matchstick Castle!

Join Keir Graff as he reads from his new book "The Matchstick Castle," a wild and whimsical adventure not to be missed.  Kids of all ages can come along to Boring, Illinois, where Brian's summer vacation takes a turn that is, well, anything but boring!! 

Speakers
avatar for Keir Graff

Keir Graff

Keir Graff was born and raised in Missoula, where he attended Hellgate High School and, briefly, the University of Montana. The co-editor (with James Grady) of Montana Noir, he is also the author of four novels for adults (most recently, The Price of Liberty), two novels for middle-graders... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 9:30am - 10:30am MDT
Paxson Elementary School

10:00am MDT

Fiction Reading: Meghan Lamb & Jacob Appel
TBD

Speakers
avatar for Jacob M. Appel

Jacob M. Appel

Jacob M. Appel's first novel, The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up, won the Dundee International Book Award in 2012. His short story collection, Scouting for the Reaper, won the 2012 Hudson Prize and was published by Black Lawrence in November 2013. He is the author of five other collections... Read More →
avatar for Meghan Lamb

Meghan Lamb

Meghan Lamb is the recipient of an MFA in Fiction from Washington University and the 2018 Philip Roth Residence in Creative Writing. She is the author of the novel Silk Flowers (Birds of Lace, 2017), the poetry chapbook Letter to Theresa (dancing girl press, 2016), and the novella... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 10:00am - 11:00am MDT
Missoula Art Museum

10:00am MDT

Don't Go Home, Go Small
With the New York Publishing scene in upheaval and revision and with the growth of independent presses, writers have many more options than in the days when the Big Five ruled the publishing world. 

But where to start? With fiction and nonfiction, is it best to try the traditional route, finding agent and then letting the agent do the work of selling? Or should the intrepid writer set forth with query letter and sample pages and work directly with smaller publishers? Poets have long been published by smaller presses, but is publishing a chapbook a good idea? Many writers wonder about working directly with Amazon, either with their publishing arm Little A or their digital rights group. 

The members of this panel have a wide and varied background, published by many smaller publishers (indie and academic) as well as the “big five.” As poets, nonfiction writers, and novelists, we can offer a wide perspective on how to position yourself with a smaller press. 

With detailed handouts (including lists of indie publishers, web sites to find such, and how to’s in terms of working with small publishers), we will provide a working model that participants can emulate. 

For the panel, we will first talk about our roads to publication, focusing on the decisions we made that led to our recent books. We will introduce themselves and our recent books—and the stories that led to them. 

During these discussions and in a following Q and A we will cover the following ground: 
1) Why a smaller press? 
2) Money? Can you make any with a smaller press? 
3) Other types of remuneration (maybe even emotional) from small presses. 
4) Did we try for a New York publisher? 
5) Did we try for an agent? 
6) Will an agent work with a smaller press? 
7) What are the pros of working with a smaller press? 
8) What are the cons? 
9) If we could do it all over again, what different choices would we make? 
10) Tips on what to do leading up to and then after publication with a small press.

Speakers
avatar for Jessica Barksdale

Jessica Barksdale

Jessica Barksdale’s fourteenth novel, The Burning Hour, was published by Urban Farmhouse Press in April 2016.  Her novels include Her Daughter’s Eyes, The Matter of Grace, and When You Believe. A Pushcart Prize, Million Writers Award, and Best-of-the-Net nominee, her short... Read More →
avatar for David Allan Cates

David Allan Cates

David Allan Cates is the author of five novels, and a chapbook of poetry, the Mysterious Location of Kyrgyzstan. His novels include Hunger in America, a New York Times Notable Book; X Out of Wonderland and Freeman Walker, both Montana Book Award Honor Books; and Ben Armstrong’s... Read More →
avatar for Darien Gee

Darien Gee

Darien Gee is the author of the award-winning craft book, Writing the Hawai’i Memoir: Advice and Exercises to Help You Tell Your Story, published by Watermark Publishing. She has also published six novels (three under the pen name Mia King) with Penguin Random House, including Friendship... Read More →
avatar for Meagan MacVie

Meagan MacVie

 Meagan Macvie grew up in Alaska writing poems about injustice and hot boys. Her first novel, The Ocean in My Ears, is set in her hometown and was a 2016 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest finalist. Meagan’s short work has appeared in Narrative, Fugue and... Read More →
avatar for Warren Read

Warren Read

Warren Read is an assistant principal on Bainbridge Island, WA, and is the author of the 2008 memoir, The Lyncher in Me (Borealis Books). His fiction has appeared in Hot Metal Bridge, Mud Season Review, The Waccamaw Journal, Sliver of Stone, Switchback and The East Bay Review. In... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 10:00am - 11:15am MDT
Dana Gallery

10:00am MDT

Literary Journal Panel
Ever pick up a carefuly curated literary journal with gorgeous art on the cover and wonder just what in the heck goes on behind the scenes to make such a thing happen?  Working under deadlines, balancing creativity and passion with other life details, and surving on a shoestring budget are challenges faced by the people behind the curtain at literary journals and quarterlies.  Come on down to get the inside information from the people who make it happen.  

Speakers
avatar for Greg Brownderville

Greg Brownderville

Greg Brownderville is the author of A Horse with Holes in It (LSU Press, 2016), Deep Down in the Delta (Butler Center, 2012), and Gust (Northwestern University Press, 2011). At Southern Methodist University in Dallas, he serves as Associate Professor of English, Director of Creative... Read More →
avatar for Leyna Krow

Leyna Krow

Leyna Krow is the author of the short story collection I'm Fine, But You Appear To Be Sinking (Featherproof Books, 2017). Her fiction has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, and other publications. She lives in Spokane, WA, with her husband and da... Read More →
avatar for Jennifer Met

Jennifer Met

Jennifer Met lives in a small town in North Idaho with her husband and children. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a finalist for Nimrod's Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and winner of the Jovanovich Award. Her recent work is published in Gravel, Gulf Stream, Harpur Palate, Juked, Kestrel... Read More →
avatar for Wendy Oleson

Wendy Oleson

Wendy Oleson is the author of Our Daughter and Other Stories, which won the 2017 Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award (Map Literary). Her stories, poems, and hybrid texts appear in Cimarron Review, Calyx, Copper Nickel, Carve, and elsewhere. Wendy holds degrees from Amherst College (BA... Read More →
avatar for Joni Wallace

Joni Wallace

Joni Wallace earned her MFA at the University of Montana and is the author of two books of poetry and a chapbook: Kingdom Come Radio Show (Barrow Street Press, 2016), finalist for the Colorado Prize, the Besmilr Brigham Award, Word Works’ Washington Prize, and AROHO’s To the Lighthouse... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 10:00am - 11:15am MDT
Fact & Fiction

10:00am MDT

Words from a Small Montana Town
Speakers
avatar for Carol Blake

Carol Blake

Carol Blake wore many hats before moving to Montana from California twenty-five years ago. As a real estate broker in California and Montana for 35 years, she juggled property sales while cultivating a commercial avocado grove and flower plantation. Developing property has always... Read More →
avatar for Rita Collins

Rita Collins

Rita Collins obviously likes being on the road. She has lived in nine state and three countries. After years teaching everything from elementary students in a rural school to graduate students in a large urban university, she recently started a traveling bookstore. St. Rita's Amazing... Read More →
avatar for Jan Jarrell

Jan Jarrell

Jan JarrellJan Keessen Jarrell earned her Ph.D. in American Literature at the University of Chicago where she was the Norman Maclean scholar. She retired recently as Professor of English at Augustana College where she also wrote and narrated word histories for WVIK, the college's... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 10:00am - 11:15am MDT
Shakespeare & Co

10:00am MDT

Take a Swim wth Sandra Scofield
In her latest collection of stories, Swim: Stories of the Sixties, Sandra Scofield paints portraits of a displaced and disturbed woman as she flirts with danger in three exotic settings. Sandra is the author of seven novels, a memoir (Occasions of Sin), a collection of essays (Mysteries of Love and Grief) and a craft book (The Scene Book). The Last Draft: A Novelist's Guide to Revision will be out this fall. Sandra, who grew up in Texas, migrated across various regions of the country before settling in Oregon. She moved to Montana in 2005 and has taught in MFA programs and summer workshops. She also paints.



Speakers
avatar for Sandra Scofield

Sandra Scofield

Sandra Scofield is the author of 11 books: seven novels (including a National Book Award finalist); a memoir, Occasions of Sin; a book of essays about family, Mysteries of Love and Grief; a craft book, The Scene Book; and most recently, Swim: Stories of the Sixties. The Last Draft... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 10:00am - 11:30am MDT
Missoula Art Museum

11:30am MDT

Splitting Atoms, Weaving Words
Joni Wallace shares a poetic view of the Manhattan Project with readings from her new book Kingdom Come Radio Show.  Rob Carney leads us down roads paved with words reading selections from his most recent work, 88 Maps.  

Speakers
avatar for Rob Carney

Rob Carney

Rob Carney is the author of four previous books of poems, most recently 88 Maps (Lost Horse Press, 2015), which was named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, as well as the forthcoming collection The Book of Sharks (Black Lawrence Press). In 2014 he received the Robinson... Read More →
avatar for Joni Wallace

Joni Wallace

Joni Wallace earned her MFA at the University of Montana and is the author of two books of poetry and a chapbook: Kingdom Come Radio Show (Barrow Street Press, 2016), finalist for the Colorado Prize, the Besmilr Brigham Award, Word Works’ Washington Prize, and AROHO’s To the Lighthouse... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 11:30am - 12:30pm MDT
Shakespeare & Co

11:30am MDT

Act Like a Feminist Artist: A Guerrilla Girl Unmasks
Act Like a Feminist Artist: a Guerrilla Girl Unmasks. 
Ever wonder what it’s like to be a feminist masked avenger? Donna Kaz aka Aphra Behn, shares the story of her journey from survivor of domestic violence at the hands of a famous actor to radical activist and member of the Guerrilla Girls: feminists artists who never appear in public without wearing rubber gorilla masks and who go by the names of dead woman artists in order to shed light on sexism in the art world. As the Guerrilla Girl Aphra Behn, Kaz created comedic performance art, street theatre and visual works that addressed discrimination in the theater world and proved feminists are funny at the same time. “Act Like A Feminist Artist” discusses the posters, protests, fax blitzes, speak outs and street theatre actions of the Guerrilla Girls and includes readings from passages of Kaz’s new memoir, “UN/MASKED, Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour.” Get the inside scoop from a woman with two personas who takes off her mask and, by merging her identities, reveals all. 

Speakers
avatar for Lynsey G.

Lynsey G.

Lynsey G. is a writerly type who has focused on the intersections of feminism, sexuality, and pornography for the past decade as a reviewer, interviewer, critic, documentary filmmaker, blogger, and now author of Watching Porn, an informative book about the adult entertainment i... Read More →
avatar for Donna Kaz

Donna Kaz

Donna Kaz is a multigenre writer and a feminist activist based in New York City. She is a columnist for The Clyde Fitch Report and has written for MS Magazine, Trivia: Voices of Feminism, The Dramatist, Ful Art magazine, Girl Drive Blog, Lilith, The Sun, Gender Across Borders, Women... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 11:30am - 12:45pm MDT
Missoula Art Museum

11:30am MDT

Bold Women and Rebels of the West
Join three beloved Montana authors while they read from their new works celebrating the wild and courageous, sometimes unsung, heroes in the history of the American West.

Speakers
avatar for Beth Judy

Beth Judy

Beth Judy grew up in Chicago, graduated from Harvard College in 1983, and moved from Atlanta to Missoula in 1992, where she earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Montana. Researching and writing her book Bold Women in Montana History (spring 2017, Mountain Press... Read More →
avatar for Lorna Milne

Lorna Milne

Lorna Milne writes from Helena, Montana, where she lives on a small farm with her husband and a soccer-playing, fowl-herding sheep dog named Little Bear. Milne has published essays and short stories in periodicals such as Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, The Boston Globe Magazine... Read More →
avatar for Ken Robison

Ken Robison

Ken Robison is a historian and preservationist and a chronicler of neglected Western history at the Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton. He was born and educated in Montana, and after graduating from the University of Montana, served thirty years in Naval Intelligence... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 11:30am - 12:45pm MDT
Fact & Fiction

11:30am MDT

Under-Worldly Lament of a Horse with Holes In It: Three Poets, One Room

Poets Kristie Betts-Letter (Under-Worldly)  Cara Chamberlain ( Lament of the Antichrist in a Secular World and Other Poems) and Greg Brownderville (A Horse With Holes In It) paint a colorful poetic landscape with selections from each of their latest works.  


Speakers
avatar for Greg Brownderville

Greg Brownderville

Greg Brownderville is the author of A Horse with Holes in It (LSU Press, 2016), Deep Down in the Delta (Butler Center, 2012), and Gust (Northwestern University Press, 2011). At Southern Methodist University in Dallas, he serves as Associate Professor of English, Director of Creative... Read More →
avatar for Cara Chamberlain

Cara Chamberlain

Cara Chamberlain is the author of three books of poetry, Hidden Things, The Divine Botany, and Lament of the Antichrist in a Secular World and Other Poems. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Nimrod, Boston Review, Passages North, Crab Orchard Review, and The Southern... Read More →
avatar for Kristie Betts Letter

Kristie Betts Letter

Kristie Betts Letter's poetry collection, Under-Worldly (Editorial L’Aleph 2017) examines what lies beneath with what Cowboy Jamboree describes as “fantastic images of the subterranean grit.” The Massachusetts Review, The North Dakota Quarterly, Washington Square, Passages North... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 11:30am - 12:45pm MDT
Missoula Art Museum

12:00pm MDT

Ballet at the Moose Lodge
Patterson explores what it is to grow up female in the American West. Her narratives reveal the lives of travelers, homemakers, radio show announcers, mothers, teachers, dancers, shop clerks, and the subterranean world of girls and explore the visible and invisible negotiations women make to navigate lives bound by the rugged western landscape. 

Speakers
avatar for Caroline Patterson

Caroline Patterson

Caroline Patterson grew up in Missoula, Montana, in the four-square Prairie-style house built by her great-grandfather in 1906 after he won a case against the Great Northern Railway. She lives there today with her husband and her two college-aged children. In 2006, she published the... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 12:00pm - 12:45pm MDT
Dana Gallery

1:00pm MDT

The Wonder of Birds
Jim Robbins has gone to the birds in his latest work: The Wonder of Birds: What They Tell Us about Ourselves, The World, and a Better Future. For more than 35 years Jim has written for The New York Times and numerous national magazines while covering environmental and science stories across the United States and around the globe. Jim's other books include The Man Who Planted Trees: A Story of Lost Groves, The Science of Trees, and A Plan to Save the Planet; Last Refuge: The Environmental Showdown in the American West; and A Symphony in the Brain: The Evolution of the New Brain Wave Biofeedback. He is also the co-author of The Open-Focus Brain and Dissolving Pain. Jim lives in Helena, Montana.

Speakers
avatar for Jim Robbins

Jim Robbins

Jim Robbins has written for The New York Times for more than thirty-five years. He has also written for numerous magazines, including Audubon, Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian, Scientific American, Vanity Fair, The Sunday Times, and Conservation. He has covered environmental... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 1:00pm - 2:00pm MDT
Shakespeare & Co

1:00pm MDT

Alchemous Beasts: A Poet and Two Fiction Writers Walk Into a Bar.
Join poet Maya Jewell Zeller and fiction writers Leyna Krow and Zach VandeZande as they
read works that explore the liminal spaces between human and beast, realism and surrealism. You'll leave feeling strange enough to don the head of an animal and wander the hills and shores of our shared laboratory of an earth.

Speakers
avatar for Leyna Krow

Leyna Krow

Leyna Krow is the author of the short story collection I'm Fine, But You Appear To Be Sinking (Featherproof Books, 2017). Her fiction has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, and other publications. She lives in Spokane, WA, with her husband and da... Read More →
avatar for Maya Jewell Zeller

Maya Jewell Zeller

Maya Jewell Zeller is the author of Alchemy for Cells & Other Beasts, a collaboration with visual artist Carrie DeBacker (Entre Rios Books, Fall 2017), Yesterday, the Bees (Floating Bridge Press, 2015), and Rust Fish (Lost Horse Press, 2011). Maya serves as Assistant Professor... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 1:00pm - 2:15pm MDT
Dana Gallery

1:00pm MDT

Frank Little and the IWW : ​The Blood That Stained an American Family
"The life and family legacy of a tireless labor organizer"

Franklin Henry Little (1878–1917), an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), fought in some of the early twentieth century’s most contentious labor and free-speech struggles. Following his lynching in Butte, Montana, his life and legacy became shrouded in tragedy and family secrets. In her new non-fiction Frank Little and the IWW, author Jane Little Botkin chronicles her great-granduncle’s fascinating life and reveals its connections to the history of American labor and the first Red Scare.

Speakers
avatar for Jane Little Botkin

Jane Little Botkin

Jane (Janie) Little Botkin is a retired teacher turned historical investigator and author.  After graduating from the University of Texas at El Paso with a BA in English, Botkin taught high school students for thirty years and supervised fifteen volumes of the student publication... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 1:00pm - 2:15pm MDT
Fact & Fiction

1:00pm MDT

Mining the Details of Disaster
Grab a pasty and your headlamp and join us as Kevin Canty and Milana Marsenich take us down into the mineshaft.  

Speakers
avatar for Kevin Canty

Kevin Canty

Kevin Canty is the author of four novels and three short story collections and has been published in The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, and the New York Times Magazine. He currently teaches at the University of Montana in Missoula.
avatar for Milana Marsenich

Milana Marsenich

Milana Marsenich lives in Northwest Montana near Flathead Lake at the base of the beautiful Mission Mountains. She enjoys quick access to the mountains and has spent many hours hiking the wilderness trails with friends and dogs. For the past 20 years she has worked as a mental health... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 1:00pm - 2:15pm MDT
Missoula Art Museum

2:30pm MDT

Historical writing/research panel
Speakers
avatar for Jane Little Botkin

Jane Little Botkin

Jane (Janie) Little Botkin is a retired teacher turned historical investigator and author.  After graduating from the University of Texas at El Paso with a BA in English, Botkin taught high school students for thirty years and supervised fifteen volumes of the student publication... Read More →
avatar for Beth Judy

Beth Judy

Beth Judy grew up in Chicago, graduated from Harvard College in 1983, and moved from Atlanta to Missoula in 1992, where she earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Montana. Researching and writing her book Bold Women in Montana History (spring 2017, Mountain Press... Read More →
avatar for Lorna Milne

Lorna Milne

Lorna Milne writes from Helena, Montana, where she lives on a small farm with her husband and a soccer-playing, fowl-herding sheep dog named Little Bear. Milne has published essays and short stories in periodicals such as Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, The Boston Globe Magazine... Read More →
avatar for Ken Robison

Ken Robison

Ken Robison is a historian and preservationist and a chronicler of neglected Western history at the Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton. He was born and educated in Montana, and after graduating from the University of Montana, served thirty years in Naval Intelligence... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 2:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Fact & Fiction

2:30pm MDT

Inlanders: A Reading & Publishing Panel with Fugue and Willow Springs
Speakers
avatar for R. Cassandra Bruner

R. Cassandra Bruner

R. Cassandra Bruner currently is an MFA poetry candidate at Eastern Washington University, where she works as the Managing Editor for Willow Springs Books and the Web Editor for Willow Springs magazine. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Axolotl and Vinyl. Before... Read More →
avatar for Sam Ligon

Sam Ligon

Samuel Ligon is the author of two novels—Among the Dead and Dreaming and Safe in Heaven Dead—and two collections of stories, Wonderland, illustrated by Stephen Knezovich, and Drift and Swerve. He is co-editor, with Kate Lebo, of Pie & Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence... Read More →
avatar for Chris Maccini

Chris Maccini

Christopher Maccini ​lives in his hometown, Spokane, WA where he is​ Managing Editor of Willow Springs and a student in the MFA at Eastern Washington University. His fiction has been published in Fugue. 
avatar for Cameron McGill

Cameron McGill

Cameron McGill is a third-year MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Idaho and the poetry editor of the journal Fugue. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Fogged Clarity, Poetry East, Measure, Aesthetica, and Grist, where his work was recently selected as runner-up... Read More →
avatar for Corey Oglesby

Corey Oglesby

Corey Oglesby is a third-year M.F.A. candidate in poetry at the University of Idaho. Originally from the Washington, D.C. area, his work has most recently appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal and Queen Mob's Teahouse. A 2017 Centrum Fellow, he currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief... Read More →
avatar for Lauren Westerfield

Lauren Westerfield

Lauren Westerfield is an essayist from the Northern California coast. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in [PANK], The Los Angeles Times, Redivider, and The Rumpus, where she has also served as an Assistant Essays Editor. Lauren is an M.F.A candidate in nonfiction at the University... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 2:30pm - 3:45pm MDT
Missoula Art Museum

2:30pm MDT

Family, Place and Tradition
Speakers
avatar for Chauna Craig

Chauna Craig

Chauna Craig is the author of the story collection The Widow’s Guide to Edible Mushrooms (Press 53, 2017). Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Fourth Genre, Prairie Schooner, Seattle Review, Flash Fiction International, Crab Orchard Review and other literary magazines and... Read More →
avatar for Donna Miscolta

Donna Miscolta

Donna Miscolta’s short story collection Hola and Goodbye was selected by Randall Kenan for the Doris Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman and publication by Carolina Wren Press in 2016. It won the 2017 Independent Publishers gold medal for Best Regional Fiction - West Pacific and... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 2:30pm - 3:45pm MDT
Dana Gallery

2:30pm MDT

Two Butte Writers Not Writing about Butte: Fiction Readings by David Abrams and Ted McDermott
Two Butte-based novelists will read from their new novels and discuss how their fiction contemplates group dynamics.
David Abrams drew from his experiences in the Iraq War when writing his debut novel, Fobbit, and again in his follow-up novel, Brave Deeds.  David served in the U.S. Army for twenty years and was deployed to Iraq in 2005 as part of a public affairs team. His stories have appeared in Esquire, Narrative, and other literary magazines.
Ted McDermott is the author of The Minor Outsider, a novel that chronicles the life of a self-absorbed young creative writer in Missoula. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in VICE, The Believer, The Portland Review, The Minus Times, and elsewhere. In 2009, he was nominated for the Essay Prize. Ted works as an editor and freelance reporter.

Speakers
avatar for David Abrams

David Abrams

David Abrams’ debut novel about the Iraq War, Fobbit, was named a New York Times Notable Book. He served in the U.S. Army for twenty years and was deployed to Iraq in 2005 as part of a public affairs team. His stories have appeared in Esquire, Narrative, and other literary maga... Read More →
avatar for Ted McDermott

Ted McDermott

Ted McDermott is the author of The Minor Outsider, a novel. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in VICE, The Believer, The Portland Review, The Minus Times, and elsewhere. In 2009, he was nominated for the Essay Prize. He lives in Butte, Montana, where he works as an editor and... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 2:30pm - 3:45pm MDT
Shakespeare & Co

3:00pm MDT

If Ash Falls Into a Cold Hearted River...Does it Make a Sound?
Find out for yourself when Keith McCafferty reads from his new book, Cold Hearted River, and Warren Read reads from his latest,  Ash Falls.

Speakers
avatar for Keith McCafferty

Keith McCafferty

Keith McCafferty is the Survival and Outdoor Skills editor of Field & Stream and the author of the Sean Stranahan mystery series, including The Royal Wulff Murders, The Gray Ghost Murders, Dead Man's Fancy, Crazy Mountain Kiss, which won the Western Writers of America 2016 Spur Award... Read More →
avatar for Warren Read

Warren Read

Warren Read is an assistant principal on Bainbridge Island, WA, and is the author of the 2008 memoir, The Lyncher in Me (Borealis Books). His fiction has appeared in Hot Metal Bridge, Mud Season Review, The Waccamaw Journal, Sliver of Stone, Switchback and The East Bay Review. In... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 3:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Fact & Fiction

3:00pm MDT

Yellowstone: Ansel Adams vs. Yogi Bear
John Clayton reads selections from Wonderlandscape, accompanied by a slide presentation.

Speakers
avatar for John Clayton

John Clayton

John Clayton is the author of Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Icon, published by Pegasus Books in August. His previous books include Stories from Montana’s Enduring Frontier and The Cowboy Girl: The Life of Caroline Lockhart, which was... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 3:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Missoula Art Museum

4:15pm MDT

Melissa Kwasny Book Release: Where Outside the Body is the Soul Today
After a busy afternoon, pull up a chair and take a load off while Melissa Kwasly reads from her brand new book, Where Outside the Body is the Soul Today.  

Speakers
avatar for Melissa Kwasny

Melissa Kwasny

Melissa Kwasny is the author of six books of poetry, including Where Outside the Body Is the Soul Today, selected by Linda Bierds for the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series (University of Washington Press 2017), Pictograph (Milkweed Editions 2015), and Reading Novalis in Montana (Milkweed... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 4:15pm - 5:00pm MDT
Dana Gallery

4:15pm MDT

CTRL-Shift: Prominent Poets on their Writing Practices at the Dawn of Personal Computing
From November 2013 to June 2014, Librarian and poet Devin Becker interviewed 11 prominent poets across the country on their writing practices with a particular focus on how their practice changed with the dawn of the personal computer in the 1980s and 1990s. The interviews ranged widely across subjects, eras, and technologies, covering such topics as the iPad usage of Louise Glück and Rae Armantrout, Bruce Beasley’s use of Google Translate to rewrite adolescent poetry, K. Silem Mohammad’s flarf practices, Stephanie Strickland’s online mashup of Melville and Dickinson, and Robert Pinsky’s authoring of an early 80s text-based computer game. 
There were a few overarching questions, however, that guided the interviews: How did the introduction and subsequent spread of digital environments impact the way these writers produced their work? What types of changes did they experience during the transition from paper-based working environments to digitally based ones? Did they see these new environments as mere extensions of their paper-based ones? Or did they experience the change as a fundamental break in their practices? Becker attempted to cover these and a series of other in each interview with a view towards presenting the answers together 

Speakers
avatar for Devin Becker

Devin Becker

Devin Becker is the Director of the Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning (CDIL) and the Head of Data & Digital Services at the University of Idaho Library, where he directs and maintains the library's digital initiatives program. Becker has published poetry and research articles... Read More →
avatar for Corey Oglesby

Corey Oglesby

Corey Oglesby is a third-year M.F.A. candidate in poetry at the University of Idaho. Originally from the Washington, D.C. area, his work has most recently appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal and Queen Mob's Teahouse. A 2017 Centrum Fellow, he currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief... Read More →
avatar for Lauren Westerfield

Lauren Westerfield

Lauren Westerfield is an essayist from the Northern California coast. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in [PANK], The Los Angeles Times, Redivider, and The Rumpus, where she has also served as an Assistant Essays Editor. Lauren is an M.F.A candidate in nonfiction at the University... Read More →
avatar for Robert Wrigley

Robert Wrigley

Robert Wrigley has published twelve books of poetry, most recently Box (Penguin Books, 2017), and Anatomy of Melancholy & Other Poems (Penguin Books, 2013). Among his awards are the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the Poets’ Prize, the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Prize, and the... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 4:15pm - 5:15pm MDT
Missoula Art Museum

4:15pm MDT

2017 Emerging Writers Contest Winners Reading
Come hear the writing that blew our judges's minds in the 2017 Emerging Writers Contest.  R. Cassandra Bruner reads poetry, Catherine Raven, nonfiction, and Patrick Vala-Haynes reads fiction. If these writers are "emerging," there's no telling what they're capable of in the future!  Grab a seat for a reading that will knock your socks off. 

Speakers
avatar for R. Cassandra Bruner

R. Cassandra Bruner

R. Cassandra Bruner currently is an MFA poetry candidate at Eastern Washington University, where she works as the Managing Editor for Willow Springs Books and the Web Editor for Willow Springs magazine. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Axolotl and Vinyl. Before... Read More →
avatar for Catherine Raven

Catherine Raven

Catherine Raven earned her BA in Botany/ Zoology at UM and served as a backcountry ranger during summer and fall at Mt. Rainier National Park. She graduated with a UM President's Recognition Award for Biological Sciences, and completed her Ph.D. in biology at Montana State University... Read More →
avatar for Patrick Vala-Haynes

Patrick Vala-Haynes

Patrick Vala-Haynes is a Sundance Screenwriting Fellow, fiction writer, essayist, and reluctant poet. He admits to knowing more about well-drilling, carpentry, dance, bicycles, cannons, and alfalfa than any man should. As a freelance Fight Director, he has choreographed sword fights and... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 4:15pm - 5:15pm MDT
Fact & Fiction

4:15pm MDT

Montana Noir Q & A
Get the inside story on the making of the Montana Noir anthology from several contributing writers and co-editors, James Grady and Keir Graff.

Speakers
avatar for David Abrams

David Abrams

David Abrams’ debut novel about the Iraq War, Fobbit, was named a New York Times Notable Book. He served in the U.S. Army for twenty years and was deployed to Iraq in 2005 as part of a public affairs team. His stories have appeared in Esquire, Narrative, and other literary maga... Read More →
avatar for Gwen Florio

Gwen Florio

Award-winning journalist Gwen Florio turned to fiction in 2013 with the publication of MONTANA, the first in her Lola Wicks mystery series. The fifth book in that series, UNDER THE SHADOWS, will be released in 2018, as well as a standalone novel set in Afghanistan, WOMEN OF STONE... Read More →
avatar for James Grady

James Grady

James Grady was born and raised in Shelby and graduated from the University of Montana. He was a research analyst for the state’s 1972 Constitutional Convention and a legislative aide to Montana’s U.S. Senator Lee Metcalf during Watergate. Grady’s first novel, Six Days Of The Condor... Read More →
avatar for Keir Graff

Keir Graff

Keir Graff was born and raised in Missoula, where he attended Hellgate High School and, briefly, the University of Montana. The co-editor (with James Grady) of Montana Noir, he is also the author of four novels for adults (most recently, The Price of Liberty), two novels for middle-graders... Read More →
avatar for Eric Heidle

Eric Heidle

Eric Heidle is a full-blooded Montanan-American living and working east of the divide as a creative director, writer, and photographer. In 2015 his story, “At Jackson Creek,” took first place in Montana Public Radio’s fiftieth-anniversary short fiction contest. Eric’s photography... Read More →
avatar for Sinder Larson

Sinder Larson

Sidner Larson is the former director of American Indian Studies at Iowa State University (2000–2015); an enrolled member of the Gros Ventre tribal community of Fort Belknap; and the author of Catch Colt,Captured In The Middle, and numerous academic articles and poems. He is... Read More →
avatar for Caroline Patterson

Caroline Patterson

Caroline Patterson grew up in Missoula, Montana, in the four-square Prairie-style house built by her great-grandfather in 1906 after he won a case against the Great Northern Railway. She lives there today with her husband and her two college-aged children. In 2006, she published the... Read More →
avatar for Yvonne Seng

Yvonne Seng

Yvonne Seng has lived in Montana for most of the twenty-first century—in Missoula, Ovando, and Helena, where she was curator for the Holter Museum of Art—all after having worked extensively in the Middle East. Born in Australia, her first book was the nonfiction Men In Black... Read More →
avatar for Carrie La Seur

Carrie La Seur

Carrie La Seur is a Billings-based environmental lawyer whose debut novel, The Home Place, was on the Indie Next List, won a High Plains Book Award, and was a finalist for a Strand Critics’ Circle Award. Her work has been published in Daily Beast; Grist; the Guardian;the Harvard Law and Poli... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 4:15pm - 5:30pm MDT
Shakespeare & Co

5:00pm MDT

Fête of the Fest! Author Reception
The ultimate book party!  Come share the finest in food, drink and spirited conversation with your favorite literary guests.   $15 at the door (free admission with festival button) includes one drink ticket, a delectable spread by the Good Food Store, and the best of times! 

Friday September 29, 2017 5:00pm - 6:30pm MDT
Dana Gallery

7:30pm MDT

Gala Reading: Jane Smiley and Donald Ray Pollock, with special thanks to Shakespeare and Co.
Speakers
avatar for Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock is the author of the novels The Devil All the Time and The Heavenly Table, and the story collection Knockemstiff, for which he was awarded the 2009 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fellowship. He worked as a laborer at the Mead Paper Mill in Chillicothe, Ohio, from 1973... Read More →
avatar for Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, Some Luck and Early Warning, the first volumes of The Last Hundred Years trilogy. She is also the author of five works of nonfiction and a series of books... Read More →


Friday September 29, 2017 7:30pm - 9:30pm MDT
Holiday Inn
 
Saturday, September 30
 

9:00am MDT

9:30am MDT

Rocky Mountain Mystery Writers Talk Contemporary Crime and Mystery Fiction
Speakers
avatar for Leslie Budewitz

Leslie Budewitz

Leslie Budewitz blends her passion for food, great mysteries, and the Northwest in the Seattle Spice Shop Mysteries and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in Jewel Bay, Montana. The 2015-16 president of Sisters in Crime and first author to win Agatha Awards for both fiction... Read More →
avatar for Christine Carbo

Christine Carbo

Christine Carbo is the author of The Wild Inside, Mortal Fall and The Weight of Night. She is a recipient of the Womens' National Book Association Pinckley Prize, the Silver Falchion Award and a two-time finalist for the High Plains Book Award. After getting an MA in English and linguistics... Read More →
avatar for Gwen Florio

Gwen Florio

Award-winning journalist Gwen Florio turned to fiction in 2013 with the publication of MONTANA, the first in her Lola Wicks mystery series. The fifth book in that series, UNDER THE SHADOWS, will be released in 2018, as well as a standalone novel set in Afghanistan, WOMEN OF STONE... Read More →
avatar for Mark Stevens

Mark Stevens

Mark Stevens is the son of two librarians. By law, he was required to grow up loving books. And writing. He is the 2016 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Writer of the Year. He writes the Allison Coil Mystery Series—Antler Dust, Buried by the Roan, Trapline and Lake of Fire. The... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 9:30am - 11:00am MDT
Dana Gallery

9:30am MDT

Kate Davis Bird Program
Speakers
avatar for Kate Davis

Kate Davis

Kate Davis began the non-profit education organization Raptors of the Rockies thirty years ago and keeps over a dozen falcons, hawks, eagles, and owls at her home in the Bitterroot Valley. Programs number 1660 for over 131,000 participants, young and old alike. She is the author and... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 9:30am - 11:00am MDT
Fact & Fiction

10:00am MDT

The Consequences of Really Bad Decisions: Fiction Readings by Eric Scott Fischl and Sean McDaniel
Eric Scott Fischl's novel The Trials of Solomon Parker utilizes speculative historical fiction and the supernatural to tell the story of an old, broken man deep in debt to some evil characters in Butte, Montana, in 1916 and his encounter with "the gods of the People." Eric, who resides in the Bitterroot Mountains, has also written Dr. Potter's Medicine Show.

Sean McDaniel's debut novel Criminal Zoo follows the life of a serial killer from his abused childhood to his capture and incarceration in a government-run torture facility. Sean resides in Billings where he works as a fitness trainer. 

Speakers
avatar for Eric Scott Fischl

Eric Scott Fischl

Eric Scott Fischl writes novels of speculative historical fiction and the supernatural, including Dr. Potter's Medicine Show and the upcoming The Trials of Solomon Parker. He lives in Montana's Bitterroot mountains.
avatar for Sean McDaniel

Sean McDaniel

Sean McDaniel, son of a Marine Corps captain, was born in Durango, Colorado. While he releases his inner demons on paper, in real life he scoops up a spider and releases it unscathed outdoors. Sean believes that, in writing, everything is fair game. His motto: Read at your own risk... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 10:00am - 11:00am MDT
The Public House

10:00am MDT

Jane Smiley reads for Junior Bookworms (and the Young at Heart)
An all-ages event with Pulitzer-winning author Jane Smiley. Jane will discuss The Horses of Oak Valley Ranch (her five-book series of novels for young readers), as well as her first children's picture book Twenty Yawns

Speakers
avatar for Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, Some Luck and Early Warning, the first volumes of The Last Hundred Years trilogy. She is also the author of five works of nonfiction and a series of books... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 10:00am - 11:30am MDT
Shakespeare & Co

10:45am MDT

A Snapshot of the Auxillary
No fewer than nine former students of the late Richard Hugo and Madeline DeFrees are publishing new books in 2017: Tom Aslin, David Axelrod, Candace Black, Laurie Blauner, Patricia Clark, Tom Mitchell, Walter Pavlich, Rick Robbins, Lex Runiman, and Robert Wrigley. More than half of these same writers are Lost Horse or Lynx House Press poets. All of the writers here, too, have remained deeply committed to a poetics learned in Missoula: rhythmical complexity, clarity, and humor, while giving voice to the voiceless or marginalized. We propose a reading in gratitude to Missoula, a city that has imprinted itself on our lives and has influenced our work for a generation or more.

Speakers
avatar for Tom Aslin

Tom Aslin

Thomas Aslin's books include a chapbook, Sweet Smoke, and two full length collections, A Moon Over Wings and Salvage.
avatar for David Axelrod

David Axelrod

David Axelrod is the author of eight collections of poetry, the most recent, The Open Hand (Lost Horse Press, 2017). He is editor of Sensational Nightingales: The Collected Poetry of Walter Pavlich (Lynx House Press, 2017), and a collection of essays, Troubled Intimacies (OSU Press... Read More →
avatar for Candace Black

Candace Black

Candace Black lives in south-central Minnesota and teaches creative writing at Minnesota State University Mankato.  She has published two books of poetry—The Volunteer (New Rivers Press, 2003), Whereabouts (Snake Nation Press, 2017)—and a chapbook, Casa Marina (RopeWalk... Read More →
avatar for Tom Mitchell

Tom Mitchell

Thomas Mitchell's  full-length book of poetry, The Way Summer Ends (Lost Horse Press, 2016)
avatar for Rick Robbins

Rick Robbins

Richard Robbins's Body Turn to Rain: New & Selected Poems was published by Spokane’s Lynx House Press in May.
avatar for Lex Runciman

Lex Runciman

Lex Runciman has published six books of poems, including most recently Salt Moons: Poems 1981-2016 from Salmon Poetry (Ireland).  An earlier volume, The Admirations, won the Oregon Book Award. 


Saturday September 30, 2017 10:45am - 11:45am MDT
Dana Gallery

11:00am MDT

100,000 Poets for Change
RAIN CONTINGENCY PLAN!  In the event of rain, this event will be held at:

Kulture Kava Lounge
110 E. Pine Street

100TPC is an international grassroots educational organization focusing on the arts, especially poetry, music, and the literary arts. It was founded in 2011 and focuses on a worldwide event each September.

This year's event will take place Sept. 30. Missoula poets, musicians, and artists will join others around the world in a demonstration and celebration to promote peace, sustainability and justice.



Saturday September 30, 2017 11:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Missoula Art Museum Art Park

11:15am MDT

The Whizpops
Educational songs for kids and grown-ups who still act like kids. 

Speakers
avatar for The Whizpops

The Whizpops

The Whizpops are an award-winning band of teaching artists and musicians from Missoula, Montana, with a track record of releasing award-winning science-based music. This talented bunch rocks venues large and small, delighting audiences of all ages. “Their lyrics are for young children... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 11:15am - 12:15pm MDT
The Public House

11:15am MDT

Women Fiction Writers' Panel
Hear five prose writers discuss their work: Chauna Craig (The Widow's Guide to Edible Mushrooms) Jamie Harrison (The Widow Nash), Caroline Patterson (Ballet at the Moose Lodge), Alexandra Teague (The Principles Behind Flotation), and Milana Marsenich (Copper Sky). In short stories and novels, contemporary and historical, these five writers have explored the lives of women: women who reinvent themselves to escape emotional damage; women who negotiated the tricky waters of small towns, girls who bear witness to strained family dynamics. 

Speakers
avatar for Chauna Craig

Chauna Craig

Chauna Craig is the author of the story collection The Widow’s Guide to Edible Mushrooms (Press 53, 2017). Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Fourth Genre, Prairie Schooner, Seattle Review, Flash Fiction International, Crab Orchard Review and other literary magazines and... Read More →
avatar for Jamie Harrison

Jamie Harrison

Jamie Harrison, the author of The Widow Nash (Counterpoint), has lived in Montana with her family for thirty years and has worked as a caterer, a gardener, and an editor. She is the author of four previous novels known as the Blue Deer mysteries.
avatar for Milana Marsenich

Milana Marsenich

Milana Marsenich lives in Northwest Montana near Flathead Lake at the base of the beautiful Mission Mountains. She enjoys quick access to the mountains and has spent many hours hiking the wilderness trails with friends and dogs. For the past 20 years she has worked as a mental health... Read More →
avatar for Caroline Patterson

Caroline Patterson

Caroline Patterson grew up in Missoula, Montana, in the four-square Prairie-style house built by her great-grandfather in 1906 after he won a case against the Great Northern Railway. She lives there today with her husband and her two college-aged children. In 2006, she published the... Read More →
avatar for Alexandra Teague

Alexandra Teague

Alexandra Teague is the author of the novel The Principles Behind Flotation (Skyhorse, 2017), which is described in a Booklist starred review as a debut novel that “masterfully chronicles the friction, contradictions, and emotional tsunamis of being an intelligent 14-year-old... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 11:15am - 12:15pm MDT
Fact & Fiction

12:00pm MDT

Celebrating 30 Years of The Last Best Place: Making It Happen- Presented by The Montana Center for the Book
Margaret Kingsland, Bill Kittredge, Annick Smith, Bill Bevis, Mary Clearman Blew, Bill Lang, and Lois Welch engage in conversation and answer questions about the making of the "Big Book."

Speakers
avatar for Bill Bevis

Bill Bevis

William (Bill) BevisB ill Bevis is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Montana in Missoula, retired since 2003. He has published books on the poetry of Wallace Stevens—Mind of Winter: Wallace Stevens, Meditation, and Literature (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh... Read More →
avatar for Mary Clearman Blew

Mary Clearman Blew

Mary Clearman Blew grew up on a small cattle ranch in Montana, on the site of her great-grandfather’s 1882 homestead. Her memoir "All But the Waltz: Essays on a Montana Family," won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, as did her short story collection, "Runaway." A novel, "Jackalope... Read More →
avatar for Margatet Kingsland

Margatet Kingsland

Margaret Kingsland was the Executive Director of the Montana Committee for the Humanities from 1973-1995. She does freelance editing, curating, and humanities presentations, in addition her work for civil rights and social justice.
avatar for William Kittredge

William Kittredge

William Kittredge taught creative writing for 29 years at The University of Montana. He is the author of two collections of short fiction, The Van Gogh Fields and Other Stories (1979) and We Are Not In This Together (1984); a novel, The Willow Field (2006); a memoir, Hole in the Sky... Read More →
avatar for Bill Lang

Bill Lang

William L. Lang is a professor of history at Portland State University, where he teaches environmental and public history. He is author or editor of seven books on Pacific Northwest history, including Great River of the West: Essays on the Columbia River and Two Centuries of Lewis... Read More →
avatar for Annick Smith

Annick Smith

Annick Smith Annick Smith is a writer and filmmaker from western Montana. Born in Paris, she grew up in Chicago, lived in Seattle, and has settled in Montana for over fifty years. She was a filmmaker first, producing the prize-winning feature "Heartland" and was a co-producer of... Read More →
avatar for Lois Welch

Lois Welch

Lois Welch taught comparative literature at UM  from 1966-2001,  directing the Creative Writing Program for eight years, chairing the English department for three. After marrying James Welch in 1968, theirs was a busy literary life; after his death in 2003, she remains active as... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 12:00pm - 1:15pm MDT
Downtown Dance Collective

12:00pm MDT

Letters Like the Day: On Reading Georgia O'Keefe, plus The Close-Up meets the Long View: a Hybrid reading of Flash Fiction and Memoir
Letters Like the Day: On Reading Georgia O’Keeffe is a collection of lyric essays that take inspiration from the letters of American modernist, Georgia O’Keeffe.  Moving between memoir, archival work, and site visits, the essays consider how an artist— both visual and literary—can capture the ineffable experience of being in this world—what O’Keeffe would often call “It.”
 

Speakers
avatar for Wendy Oleson

Wendy Oleson

Wendy Oleson is the author of Our Daughter and Other Stories, which won the 2017 Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award (Map Literary). Her stories, poems, and hybrid texts appear in Cimarron Review, Calyx, Copper Nickel, Carve, and elsewhere. Wendy holds degrees from Amherst College (BA... Read More →
avatar for Jennifer Sinor

Jennifer Sinor

Jennifer Sinor is the author of three books, most recently Letters Like the Day: On Reading Georgia O’Keeffe (New Mexico 2017) and Ordinary Trauma: A Memoir (Utah 2017). Her essays have appeared in numerous places including The American Scholar, UTNE, Seneca Review, and Gulf Coast... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 12:00pm - 1:15pm MDT
Dana Gallery

12:30pm MDT

Embracing the Unhappy Ending: Why Sad Stories Matter.
Speakers
avatar for Donna Miscolta

Donna Miscolta

Donna Miscolta’s short story collection Hola and Goodbye was selected by Randall Kenan for the Doris Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman and publication by Carolina Wren Press in 2016. It won the 2017 Independent Publishers gold medal for Best Regional Fiction - West Pacific and... Read More →
avatar for Wendy Oleson

Wendy Oleson

Wendy Oleson is the author of Our Daughter and Other Stories, which won the 2017 Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award (Map Literary). Her stories, poems, and hybrid texts appear in Cimarron Review, Calyx, Copper Nickel, Carve, and elsewhere. Wendy holds degrees from Amherst College (BA... Read More →
avatar for Erin Pringle

Erin Pringle

Erin Pringle grew up in rural Illinois and is the author of two short story collections, The Whole World at Once (West Virginia University Press/Vandalia Press 2017) and The Floating Order (Two Ravens Press, 2009). Her work has been four-times nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2007... Read More →
avatar for Melissa Stephenson

Melissa Stephenson

Melissa Stephenson earned her B.A. in English from The University of Montana and her M.F.A. in Fiction from Texas State University. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The Rumpus, The Washington Post, ZYZZYVA, and Fourth Genre. Her memoir, Driven, is forthcoming... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 12:30pm - 1:30pm MDT
Fact & Fiction

1:00pm MDT

Hillbilly Gothic: Getting the Dirt on Pollock
A personal interview with Donald Ray Pollock reveals his former life as a millworker and truck driver in Southern Ohio and how these, and other life experiences, shape his fiction.

Speakers
avatar for Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock is the author of the novels The Devil All the Time and The Heavenly Table, and the story collection Knockemstiff, for which he was awarded the 2009 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fellowship. He worked as a laborer at the Mead Paper Mill in Chillicothe, Ohio, from 1973... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 1:00pm - 2:00pm MDT
Shakespeare & Co

1:00pm MDT

Solving Mysteries and Panning for Gold--Readings by David Carpenter, P.R. Oliver, Timothy Brown
P.R. Oliver, a graduate of the University of Montana School of Law, currently works as an attorney in Billings, Montana. An army brat born in California and raised in Virginia, P.R. also attended Washington and Lee University and received degrees from Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia. Before attending law school, P.R. spent twelve years in the computer business in a variety of capacities and lived or worked in various locales--which provided plenty of background when writing his new mystery Citizens Ununited: A Novel. In the mystery, heroine Alexandra Pipe, a former Montana rodeo star, uncovers evidence of a sinister plot by a super PAC hidden in computer files while working for a defense contractor. Once the super PAC gets wind of her investigation, they take out a contract on her.

Timothy Brown extensively drew from life and work experience when writing his novel Maya Hope. For many years, he has worked as an orthopaedic surgeon and medical missionary for Operation Blessing, Mercy Ships, and Hope Force International. His work has taken him throughout Latin America, Asia and the Caribean. Maya Hope (2016), his first novel, narrates the adventures of Dr. Nicklaus Hart in the backwater villages of Guatamala as he discovers something dreadfully wrong with the health of the local populations that he cannot explain or figure out. Timothy backs up his "what-if" scenario with layers of believable science and human nature. The second of the Nicklaus Hart series, The Tree of Life, is scheduled for release later this fall. Timothy now resides in Western Montana. 

David Carpenter sets many of his stories in the wilderness of the north country far. A native of Saskatoon,Saskatchewan, David's latest novel--The Gold--spins the yarn of an Englishman who emigrates to Canada to prospect for gold in the 1930s. David's previous release, The Education of Augie Merasty, placed 4th on Canada's National Posts's annual "99 Best Books of the Year." David has also won the prestigious Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence, a BURT Award for Indigenous cullture, and the Prime of Life Achievement Award from the University of Saskatchewan.

Speakers
avatar for Timothy Browne

Timothy Browne

Timothy Browne is an orthopaedic surgeon and medical missionary who has served around the world with Operation Blessing, Mercy Ships, and Hope Force International. Browne has ministered in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Brazil, Ukraine, Borneo, Malaysia, Singapore... Read More →
avatar for David Carpenter

David Carpenter

David Carpenter began writing as a translator and critic, but in the mid-1980s he turned to writing fiction. He is the author of four novels, three collections of short fiction, one book of poems, and three works of literary nonfiction.  His most recent books have won more... Read More →
avatar for P.R. Oliver

P.R. Oliver

A graduate of the University of Montana School of Law, P.R. Oliver is an attorney in Billings, Montana. Oliver, an army brat born in California and raised in Virginia, attended Washington and Lee University and received degrees from Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia. Before... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 1:00pm - 2:15pm MDT
The Public House

1:30pm MDT

Bill Kittredge Lifetime Achievement Panel
The University of Montana Creative Writing Program celebrates the life achievements of Professor Emeritus William “Bill” Kittredge. Bill taught in the program for 30 years and has a visiting writer position named after him. He is the author of two collections of short fiction, The Van Gogh Fields and Other Stories (1979) and We Are Not In This Together (1984); a novel, The Willow Field (2006); a memoir, Hole in the Sky (1992); and three collections of essays, Owning It All (1987), Who Owns the West (1996) and The Next Rodeo: New and Selected Essays (2006). He has received a Stegner Fellowship, two NEA Fellowships, the Los Angeles Times Award for Lifetime Achievement, the National Humanities Award (presented by Bill Clinton in the Rose Garden in 1994), Montana Governor’s Award for the Arts, Montana Governor’s Award for the Humanities, and numerous other awards. He was co-editor with Annick Smith of The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology and co-producer of A River Runs Through It. He has published essays and articles in over 50 magazines, including Atlantic, Harper's, Esquire, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

Karin Schalm, the Creative Writing Program Coordinator, is making a short film about Bill Kittredge’s life. She says, “Bill would like to be remembered most for his teaching. He taught so many successful writers at UM over the years – Jon Jackson, Pete Fromm, Kim Barnes, Judy Blunt, Andrew Sean Greer… the list goes on and on. We are delighted to be celebrating Bill and all of his achievements at the Montana Book Festival.”

The panel participants will discuss their literary and personal histories with Bill. Robert Stubblefield shares Eastern Oregon roots and has developed a lifelong friendship with Bill. Debra Earling, Director of Creative Writing, was the youngest writer to be selected for "The Last Best Place Anthology" and can discuss, along with Deirdre McNamer and Kim Zupan, Bill’s literary importance to writers of the West. Shawn McDermott, one of Bill’s last students who studied with him when he served as the “Distinguished Kittredge Visiting Writer” in 2012, will discuss Bill’s tremendous talents as a teacher and mentor.

Moderators
avatar for Robert Stubblefield

Robert Stubblefield

Robert Stubblefield has published fiction and personal essays in Dreamers and Desperadoes: Contemporary Short Fiction of the American West, Best Stories of the American West, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Left Bank, The Clackamas Literary Review, Cascadia Times, Oregon Humanities, Oregon... Read More →

Speakers
avatar for Debra Earling

Debra Earling

Debra Magpie Earling teaches fiction at the University of Montana. Her novel Perma Red (Putnam, 2002) won the Western Writers Association Spur Award, WWA’s Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for Best First Novel, a WILLA Literary Award and the American Book Award. The Lost Journals of... Read More →
avatar for William Kittredge

William Kittredge

William Kittredge taught creative writing for 29 years at The University of Montana. He is the author of two collections of short fiction, The Van Gogh Fields and Other Stories (1979) and We Are Not In This Together (1984); a novel, The Willow Field (2006); a memoir, Hole in the Sky... Read More →
avatar for Shawn McDernott

Shawn McDernott

Shawn McDermott holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana. She works as a freelance writer in Butte, Montana, where she lives in the historic uptown with her husband and daughter.
avatar for Deirdre McNamer

Deirdre McNamer

Deirdre McNamer is the author of the novels Rima in the Weeds (HarperCollins, 1991), One Sweet Quarrel (HarperCollins, 1994), My Russian (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), and Red Rover (Viking, 2007), which was named a Best Book of 2007 by Artforum, The Washington Post, and the LA Times... Read More →
avatar for Kim Zupan

Kim Zupan

Kim Zupan is a native Montanan who grew up in and around Great Falls, where much of his novel The Ploughmen is set. Winner of the 2014 Montana Book Award, The Ploughmen was released by Holt and has been published through Harper Collins Canada and by Picador in the United Kingdom... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 1:30pm - 3:00pm MDT
Downtown Dance Collective

2:00pm MDT

Lessons from Wooly Mammoths and Volcanoes
Ian Lange went from cold to hot in his studies of natural history. His first book covered Ice Age Mammals of North America, and his most recent molten lava...Volcanoes: What's Hot and What's Not. Ian mastered the science of geology and stable isotope geochemistry at Dartmouth College and the University of Washington and has worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, consulted for mineral exploration companies, and is a professor Emeritus of Geology at the University of Montana in Missoula.



Speakers
IL

Ian Lange

Ian Lange, a graduate of Dartmouth College and with a Ph.D. from the University of Washington in geology and stable isotope geochemistry, was fascinated, upon seeing an article, in an old Life Magazine, about mega Ice Age animals. Lange worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, consulted... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 2:00pm - 3:15pm MDT
Fact & Fiction

2:00pm MDT

Two Writers, One Reading: A View of the Whole World at Once
Polly Buckingham, winner of the Katherine Ann Porter prize for fiction, reads from her new collection of short stories, The Expense of a View, and Erin Pringle reads selections from her new book of short fiction, The Whole World at Once.

Erin Pringle grew up in rural Illinois and is the author of two short story collections, The Whole World at Once (West Virginia University Press/Vandalia Press 2017) and The Floating Order (Two Ravens Press, 2009). Her work has been four-times nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2007, 2013, 2014, 2016), selected as a Best American Notable Non-Required Reading (2007), shortlisted for the Charles Pick Fellowship (2007), and a finalist for contests such as the Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest and the Kore Press Short Fiction Award (2012). Pringle is a recipient of a Washington State Artist Trust fellowship (2012). She lives in Spokane, Washington, with her partner Heather and son, Henry. 

Speakers
avatar for Polly Buckingham

Polly Buckingham

Polly Buckingham is the author of The Expense of a View (Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction 2016), and A Year of Silence (Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award for Fiction 2014). She was the recipient of a Washington State Artists Trust fellowship and of Hubbub's Kenneth... Read More →
avatar for Erin Pringle

Erin Pringle

Erin Pringle grew up in rural Illinois and is the author of two short story collections, The Whole World at Once (West Virginia University Press/Vandalia Press 2017) and The Floating Order (Two Ravens Press, 2009). Her work has been four-times nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2007... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 2:00pm - 3:15pm MDT
Dana Gallery

2:30pm MDT

West of Love: new stories by Francis Davis
Francis Davis of Dillon, MT, reads from his new collection of short stories, West of Love,

Exhibitors
avatar for Francis Davis

Francis Davis

Francis Davis was born and raised in Philadelphia, but has lived most of his adult life in the West.  A finalist for the 2016 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction for West of Love, his debut collection of stories, he’s won writing fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 2:30pm - 3:00pm MDT
The Public House

2:30pm MDT

Some Like it (Steamy) Hot!
Speakers
avatar for Kristen Proby

Kristen Proby

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Kristen Proby is the author of the bestselling With Me in Seattle and Love Under the Big Sky series. She has a passion for a good love story and strong, humorous characters with a strong sense of loyalty and family. Her men are the alpha... Read More →
avatar for Jennifer Ryan

Jennifer Ryan

Jennifer Ryan is the New York Times & USA Today bestselling author of The Hunted, McBride, and Montana Men series. She writes suspenseful contemporary romances with outrageous plot twists, deeply emotional love stories, high stakes and higher drama. Her stories are filled with love... Read More →
avatar for Danica Winters

Danica Winters

Danica Winters is a bestselling author who has won multiple awards for writing books that grip readers with their ability to drive emotion through suspense and occasionally a touch of magic. Most recently, Danica was the winner of the Paranormal Romance Guild’s Paranormal Romantic... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 2:30pm - 3:45pm MDT
Montgomery Distillery

3:00pm MDT

Montana Writing since The Last Best Place, Presented by The Montana Center for the Book
Speakers
KE

Ken Egan

Ken Egan has served as the executive director of Humanities Montana since 2009. He earned his B.A. in English at the University of Montana, his M.A. and Ph.D. in American Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He taught English at Middlebury College, Rocky Mountain College... Read More →
avatar for Melissa Kwasny

Melissa Kwasny

Melissa Kwasny is the author of six books of poetry, including Where Outside the Body Is the Soul Today, selected by Linda Bierds for the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series (University of Washington Press 2017), Pictograph (Milkweed Editions 2015), and Reading Novalis in Montana (Milkweed... Read More →
avatar for Aaron Parrett

Aaron Parrett

Aaron Parrett started writing songs in 1995 while living on Barber Street in Athens, Georgia, while he was enrolled in graduate school in Comparative Literature. The Sinners, his first CD, came out in 1996 to great critical acclaim. A year later he teamed up with Jason Anderson... Read More →
avatar for Natalie Peeterse

Natalie Peeterse

Natalie Peeterse has an MFA from the University of Montana. Her poetry has appeared in Blackbird, Sonora Review and Strange Machine, among other journals. Selected poems have appeared in the anthology I Go to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Poems in Defense of Global Human Rights (Lost... Read More →
avatar for Kathryn Shanley

Kathryn Shanley

Kathryn Shanley teaches in Native American Studies at the University of Montana and serves as Special Assistant to the Provost for Native American and Indigenous Education. She earned an MA (Diaspora Literature) and a Ph.D. in English with a specialization in Native American literature... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 3:00pm - 4:15pm MDT
Downtown Dance Collective

3:00pm MDT

Nick Neely and Bernard Quetchenbach
Nature writing/Essays

Speakers
avatar for Nick Neely

Nick Neely

Nick Neely’s first book of essays, Coast Range: A Collection from the Pacific Edge (Counterpoint), was a finalist for the 2017 John Burroughs Medal for natural history writing and CLMP’s Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction. He is the recipient of a PEN Northwest Boyden Wilderness... Read More →
avatar for Bernard Quetchenbach

Bernard Quetchenbach

Bernard Quetchenbach’s latest books are Accidental Gravity, an essay collection (Oregon State University Press) and a poetry collection, The Hermit’s Place (Wild Leaf Press). He has published poetry, articles, and essays in various periodicals and anthologies, including Poems... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 3:00pm - 4:15pm MDT
Shakespeare & Co

3:15pm MDT

CutBank MFA Reading
Saturday September 30, 2017 3:15pm - 4:30pm MDT
The Public House

4:00pm MDT

Reading: Jamie Harrison, Alexandra Teague
Speakers
avatar for Jamie Harrison

Jamie Harrison

Jamie Harrison, the author of The Widow Nash (Counterpoint), has lived in Montana with her family for thirty years and has worked as a caterer, a gardener, and an editor. She is the author of four previous novels known as the Blue Deer mysteries.
avatar for Alexandra Teague

Alexandra Teague

Alexandra Teague is the author of the novel The Principles Behind Flotation (Skyhorse, 2017), which is described in a Booklist starred review as a debut novel that “masterfully chronicles the friction, contradictions, and emotional tsunamis of being an intelligent 14-year-old... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 4:00pm - 5:15pm MDT
Fact & Fiction

4:15pm MDT

Different Paths into Nature Writing
Moderators
avatar for Nick Neely

Nick Neely

Nick Neely’s first book of essays, Coast Range: A Collection from the Pacific Edge (Counterpoint), was a finalist for the 2017 John Burroughs Medal for natural history writing and CLMP’s Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction. He is the recipient of a PEN Northwest Boyden Wilderness... Read More →

Speakers
avatar for John Clayton

John Clayton

John Clayton is the author of Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Icon, published by Pegasus Books in August. His previous books include Stories from Montana’s Enduring Frontier and The Cowboy Girl: The Life of Caroline Lockhart, which was... Read More →
avatar for Jack Clinton

Jack Clinton

Jack Clinton lives in Red Lodge, Montana, and works as a Spanish teacher. Clinton spent most of his adult life in Wyoming, working as kitchen help, laborer, carpenter, and mountain guide. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degree in Spanish at the University of Wyoming, in Laramie... Read More →
avatar for Bernard Quetchenbach

Bernard Quetchenbach

Bernard Quetchenbach’s latest books are Accidental Gravity, an essay collection (Oregon State University Press) and a poetry collection, The Hermit’s Place (Wild Leaf Press). He has published poetry, articles, and essays in various periodicals and anthologies, including Poems... Read More →
avatar for Maya Jewell Zeller

Maya Jewell Zeller

Maya Jewell Zeller is the author of Alchemy for Cells & Other Beasts, a collaboration with visual artist Carrie DeBacker (Entre Rios Books, Fall 2017), Yesterday, the Bees (Floating Bridge Press, 2015), and Rust Fish (Lost Horse Press, 2011). Maya serves as Assistant Professor... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 4:15pm - 5:15pm MDT
Shakespeare & Co

4:30pm MDT

Montana Center for the Book Prizes, and Montana’s New Poet Laureate, Lowell Jaeger, Presented by The Montana Center for the Book
Montana Poet Laureate Lowell Jaeger teaches creative writing at Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell, Montana. He is author of six collections of poems: War On War  (Utah State University Press, 1988), Hope Against Hope (Utah State University Press 1990), Suddenly Out of a Long Sleep (Arctos Press, 2009), WE (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2010), How Quickly What's Passing Goes Past (Grayson Books, 2013) and Driving the Back Road Home (Shabda Press, 2015). He is founding editor of Many Voices Press and recently edited New Poets of the American West, an anthology of poets from western states. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, winner of the Grolier Poetry Peace Prize, and recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council. In 2010, Jaeger was awarded the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for his work in promoting civil civic discourse.

Speakers
avatar for Lowell Jaeger

Lowell Jaeger

Lowell Jaeger, a Bigfork resident and nationally recognized poet, was named the Montana Poet Laureate in 2017.  He is founding editor of Many Voices Press and recently edited New Poets of the American West, an anthology of poets from western states. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s... Read More →



Saturday September 30, 2017 4:30pm - 5:45pm MDT
Downtown Dance Collective

6:00pm MDT

Montana Noir at the Bar, with musical guest Russ Nasset

Noir at the Bar: Montana Noir Group Reading

The just-released Montana Noir is the first-ever anthology of noir short stories by Montana authors. Join editors James Grady and Keir Graff, and contributors David Abrams, Gwen Florio, Eric Heidle, Sidner Larson, Carrie La Seur, Caroline Patterson, and Yvonne Seng for an unforgettable group reading. Local favorite Russ Nasset will serve as musical master of ceremonies.  Authors will be available to sign copies of Montana Noir and a limited-edition event poster. (Book sales by Shakespeare & Co.) Stick around as Russ Nasset and the Revelators take the stage and rock the house. No cover charge!



Speakers
avatar for David Abrams

David Abrams

David Abrams’ debut novel about the Iraq War, Fobbit, was named a New York Times Notable Book. He served in the U.S. Army for twenty years and was deployed to Iraq in 2005 as part of a public affairs team. His stories have appeared in Esquire, Narrative, and other literary maga... Read More →
avatar for Gwen Florio

Gwen Florio

Award-winning journalist Gwen Florio turned to fiction in 2013 with the publication of MONTANA, the first in her Lola Wicks mystery series. The fifth book in that series, UNDER THE SHADOWS, will be released in 2018, as well as a standalone novel set in Afghanistan, WOMEN OF STONE... Read More →
avatar for James Grady

James Grady

James Grady was born and raised in Shelby and graduated from the University of Montana. He was a research analyst for the state’s 1972 Constitutional Convention and a legislative aide to Montana’s U.S. Senator Lee Metcalf during Watergate. Grady’s first novel, Six Days Of The Condor... Read More →
avatar for Keir Graff

Keir Graff

Keir Graff was born and raised in Missoula, where he attended Hellgate High School and, briefly, the University of Montana. The co-editor (with James Grady) of Montana Noir, he is also the author of four novels for adults (most recently, The Price of Liberty), two novels for middle-graders... Read More →
avatar for Eric Heidle

Eric Heidle

Eric Heidle is a full-blooded Montanan-American living and working east of the divide as a creative director, writer, and photographer. In 2015 his story, “At Jackson Creek,” took first place in Montana Public Radio’s fiftieth-anniversary short fiction contest. Eric’s photography... Read More →
avatar for Sinder Larson

Sinder Larson

Sidner Larson is the former director of American Indian Studies at Iowa State University (2000–2015); an enrolled member of the Gros Ventre tribal community of Fort Belknap; and the author of Catch Colt,Captured In The Middle, and numerous academic articles and poems. He is... Read More →
avatar for Caroline Patterson

Caroline Patterson

Caroline Patterson grew up in Missoula, Montana, in the four-square Prairie-style house built by her great-grandfather in 1906 after he won a case against the Great Northern Railway. She lives there today with her husband and her two college-aged children. In 2006, she published the... Read More →
avatar for Yvonne Seng

Yvonne Seng

Yvonne Seng has lived in Montana for most of the twenty-first century—in Missoula, Ovando, and Helena, where she was curator for the Holter Museum of Art—all after having worked extensively in the Middle East. Born in Australia, her first book was the nonfiction Men In Black... Read More →
avatar for Carrie La Seur

Carrie La Seur

Carrie La Seur is a Billings-based environmental lawyer whose debut novel, The Home Place, was on the Indie Next List, won a High Plains Book Award, and was a finalist for a Strand Critics’ Circle Award. Her work has been published in Daily Beast; Grist; the Guardian;the Harvard Law and Poli... Read More →


Saturday September 30, 2017 6:00pm - 8:30pm MDT
Union Club
 
Sunday, October 1
 

10:00am MDT

We Will Be Heard, We Will Not Be Shamed: Radical Transparency through Form, Place, and Desire in Queer Western Nonfiction
In this panel three emerging queer writers (all out of northern Idaho) will discuss the role of radical transparency in their personal essay and memoir writing. 

Speakers
avatar for Keegan Lawler

Keegan Lawler

Keegan Lawler is a senior in the undergraduate English program at the University of Idaho. Her interests include creative nonfiction, queer and feminism studies, and ecocriticism.
avatar for Austin Maas

Austin Maas

Austin Maas is an undergraduate English student at the University of Idaho. A journalist and creative writer, his articles frequently appear in the Argonaut and Blot magazine, and his creative works have been highlighted in Moscow, Idaho’s Pop-up Prose Reading Series. This year... Read More →
avatar for Laura Zak

Laura Zak

Laura Zak is a queer writer from the Texas Panhandle. She placed as a finalist in the Montana Book Festival’s 2017 Regional Emerging Writer’s Contest and her work can be seen or is forthcoming in Furious Gazelle, The Manifest-Station, and Sundog Literary Magazine. She is a recent... Read More →


Sunday October 1, 2017 10:00am - 11:00am MDT
E3 Convergence Gallery

10:00am MDT

The Ins, Outs, Ups and Downs of Self Publishing
Speakers
avatar for C.J. Anderson-Wu

C.J. Anderson-Wu

C.J. Anderson-Wu’s short stories appear in Anthology of Short Stories in English, Eastlit, and Lunaris Review, among other literary journals. She has translated several significant literary works such as Darkness Visible​ by British writer William Golding, Fanny, Being the True... Read More →
avatar for Timothy Browne

Timothy Browne

Timothy Browne is an orthopaedic surgeon and medical missionary who has served around the world with Operation Blessing, Mercy Ships, and Hope Force International. Browne has ministered in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Brazil, Ukraine, Borneo, Malaysia, Singapore... Read More →
avatar for P.R. Oliver

P.R. Oliver

A graduate of the University of Montana School of Law, P.R. Oliver is an attorney in Billings, Montana. Oliver, an army brat born in California and raised in Virginia, attended Washington and Lee University and received degrees from Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia. Before... Read More →


Sunday October 1, 2017 10:00am - 11:15am MDT
Fact & Fiction

12:00pm MDT

Poetic Notions from Northern Idaho--Reading by Jennifer Met
Poet Jennifer Met, who lives in a small town in North Idaho, is attracting some major attention. Jennifer is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a finalist for Nimrod's Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and winner of the Jovanovich Award. Her recent work has appeared in Gravel, Gulf Stream, Harpur Palate, Juked, Kestrel, Moon City Review, Nimrod, Sleet Magazine, Tinderbox, and Zone 3. She will be reading from her recently published chapbook Gallery Withheld (Glass Poetry Press, 2017).

Speakers
avatar for Jennifer Met

Jennifer Met

Jennifer Met lives in a small town in North Idaho with her husband and children. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a finalist for Nimrod's Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and winner of the Jovanovich Award. Her recent work is published in Gravel, Gulf Stream, Harpur Palate, Juked, Kestrel... Read More →


Sunday October 1, 2017 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
E3 Convergence Gallery

12:00pm MDT

Mysteries, Love and Grief in the Given World

Marian Palaia reads from 

Marian Palaia
was born to wander. She was raised in Riverside, California, and Washington, DC., but since then the USPS has periodically forwarded her mail to Montana, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, Nepal (where she was a Peace Corps volunteer) and eventually to San Francisco where she now lives. To support her writing Marian has worked as a truck driver, bartender and logger. The Given World, Marian's first novel, traces the wanderings of a troubled Montana teen through the streets of San Francisco during the post-Vietnam War era, and over to Saigon and back.

On The Given World:
“Nothing, nobody really goes away—not once they’ve infiltrated your life. No matter how many brain cells you drench in rocket fuel and hold your little lit Zippo to.”

Montana in the 60s on an isolated family farm; late nights and early mornings in 70s and 80s San Francisco; an emergent Saigon in the 90s; San Francisco, again, in time for cellphones, stock options and AIDS. And home—wherever that is—at a time and in a condition to be determined. At the heart of this book is a place we mostly identify with a war played out nightly on black and white TV, but it is not about war. It is about surviving immense loss, about a Montana girl and a motley band of co-gypsies, seeking to find, and define, home and family. It is about “bad behavior”—how it starts, and how it ends. What is set in motion by one casualty cascades, over the years, into others.

When she is 13, the army loses Riley’s brother Mick, a “tunnel rat” in Vietnam, and her life goes off the rails. Rescue, in the form of a boy from a nearby reservation, appears, but not for long. Hoping to beat the crappy odds and discover the ocean she’s always dreamt of, Riley heads west to San Francisco, and from there to Saigon. She encounters, sometimes attempts to rescue, and is as often rescued by an itinerant posse of the dispossessed. Taking their pain out mostly on themselves, they line a switch-backed trail that will lead Riley (if she survives them) to something along the lines of redemption.

Sandra Scofield will read from Mysteries of Love and Grief (November 2015), a book about her grandmother’s life.  Sandra Scofield spent most of her childhood with her grandmother Frieda and remained close to her in adulthood. When Frieda died, Sandra received her Bible and boxes of her photographs, letters, and notes. For thirty years, Sandra dipped into that cache.
            Sandra always sensed an undercurrent of hard feelings within her grandmother, but it was not until she sifted through Frieda’s belongings that she began to understand how much her life had demanded, and how much she had given. At the same time, questions in Sandra’s own history began to be answered, especially about the tug-of-war between her mother and grandmother. At last, in Mysteries of Love and Grief, Scofield wrestles with the meaning of her grandmother’s saga of labor and loss, trying to balance her need to understand with respect for Frieda’s mystery.





Speakers
avatar for Marian Palaia

Marian Palaia

Marian Palaia’s first novel, The Given World, (Simon and Schuster, 2015) was shortlisted for the Saroyan International Prize for Fiction, longlisted for The PEN/Bingham First Novel Prize, a finalist for the VCU/Cabell Award, and recognized by Kirkus as a Best Novel of 2015. She... Read More →
avatar for Sandra Scofield

Sandra Scofield

Sandra Scofield is the author of 11 books: seven novels (including a National Book Award finalist); a memoir, Occasions of Sin; a book of essays about family, Mysteries of Love and Grief; a craft book, The Scene Book; and most recently, Swim: Stories of the Sixties. The Last Draft... Read More →


Sunday October 1, 2017 12:00pm - 1:15pm MDT
Fact & Fiction

2:00pm MDT

Viability, and other works by Sarah Vap
A reading by poet Sarah Vap, author of several collections of poetry, including including Viability (Penguin Books) and Dummy Fire, winner of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, and Gulf Coast, among other publications. 

Speakers
avatar for Sarah Vap

Sarah Vap

Sarah Vap is the author of six books of poetry and poetics. Her most recent book, Viability (Penguin 2016), was selected for the National Poetry Series. She is the recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, and teaches in the MFA program at Drew University.


Sunday October 1, 2017 2:00pm - 3:00pm MDT
Montgomery Distillery

3:15pm MDT

Seeking Luminosity and Tending Bar in Missoula--Poetry Readings by Natalie Peeterse and Philip Shaefer
Philip Schaefer observes a variety of characters and aspects of life from behind the bar he tends in Missoula, Montana, when he isn't writing poetry. His debut collection Bad Summon (2017) won the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize from the University of Utah Press, and he has published three chapbooks, two of which were co-written with friend and poet Jeff Whitney. His solo creations have appeared in Kenyon Review, Thrush, Guernica, The Cincinnati Review, Birdfeast, Salt Hill, Bat City, Adroit, Nashville Review, and Passages North among others.

Natalie Peeterse's
new book Dreadful: Luminosity, Letters was published by Educe Press this year.  A graduate of UM's MFA Creative Writing Program, Natalie's work has graced the pages of MagnoliaBlackbird, and Sonora Review among other journals. She also edits Verde Que Te Quiero Verde: Poems after Federico Garica Lorca for Open Country Press. Her chapbook Black Birds: Blue Horse, An Elegy won the Gold Line Press Poetry Prize in 2011. Natalie has been a fellow with the Arizona Commission on the Arts, a participant at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and an artist in residence at the Caldera Institute. The Montana Arts Council awarded Natalie an Artist Innovation Award in 2013.

Speakers
avatar for Natalie Peeterse

Natalie Peeterse

Natalie Peeterse has an MFA from the University of Montana. Her poetry has appeared in Blackbird, Sonora Review and Strange Machine, among other journals. Selected poems have appeared in the anthology I Go to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Poems in Defense of Global Human Rights (Lost... Read More →
avatar for Philip Shaefer

Philip Shaefer

Philip Schaefer’s debut collection of poems Bad Summon (University of Utah Press, 2017) won the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize. He is the author of three chapbooks, two co-written with friend and poet Jeff Whitney. Schaefer won the 2016 Meridian Editor’s Prize in poetry and has... Read More →


Sunday October 1, 2017 3:15pm - 4:00pm MDT
Montgomery Distillery
 
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