Montana Book Festival 2017: Full Schedule

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

Special Event, Button Required for Admission

7:30pm MDT

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

Speakers

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 →

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

Special Event, Button Required for Admission

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

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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

Special Event, Button Required for Admission