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."
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
