Brian D’Ambrosio | From Haikus to Hatmaking
Anyone familiar with western Montana’s burgeoning arts scene will recognize many of the names and faces assembled in Brian D’Ambrosio’s collection of feature stories, subtitled One Year in the Life of Western Montana. From ceramic superstar Rudy Autio to Montana Poet Laureate Greg Pape, from sculptor George Ybarra to multi-media artist John Well-Off-Man, and from songwriter David Boone to bluesman Mike Bader, the collection aptly reflects the breadth and depth of our cultural life. Read more • (3) Comments
Missoula hosts Montana Festival of the Book
As in years past, the Montana Festival of the Book will feature some of the most important voices of the West, including award-winning authors William Kittredge, Deirdre McNamer, Mary Clearman Blew, Rick Bass, Kim Barnes, Robert Wrigley, John Maclean, and many others. Highlights include a Friday Night Family Affair, featuring readings by James Lee Burke, daughter Alafair Burke, and cousin Andre Dubus III; and a gala Saturday reading, featuring Tom McGuane and other prominent writers. Read more • (1) Comments
Festival looks at literature along the Medicine Line
The seventh annual Helena Festival of the Book, Oct. 8-12, celebrates life, culture and literature along the Medicine Line, with such acclaimed writers as Kirby Larson, author of the award-winning young adult novel Hattie Big Sky, and Joseph Marshall III, a Lakota historian and novelist, author of Hundred in the Hand, as well as numerous other books.
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High Plains BookFest walks on wild side
The YMCA Writer's Voice presents the sixth annual High Plains BookFest, “The Call of the Wild,” Oct. 17-19 in Billings. The 2008 event focus on contemporary regional writers whose works explore the theme of wilderness, both as subject matter and as metaphor. Confirmed participants include Gary Ferguson, Tim Cahill, Pam Houston, Steven Rinella, Pete Fromm, Lois Red Elk, Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs, David Romtvedt, Michael Engelhard, Alan Kesselheim and many other regional writers. Read more
Hipólito Rafael Chacón | The Original Man
Although A.J. Gibson was not a nationally known architect, “it is a story of national importance, for the majority of our architects are local and regional figures,” Rafael Chacón writes in the preface to his new book. ”Most of the buildings we inhabit are the works of individuals who have literally given form to our world, and yet they remain unsung.” Read more • (1) Comments
William Kittredge | The Next Rodeo, New and Selected Essays
“All these stories are about a place called Home and a time in which I imagined we owned it all,” writes William Kittredge in the opening essay of his new collection. ... This is the mastery the Missoula writer wields: telling stories that help us makes some sense the world we know simply as The West, straddling as he does the old (he was raised on a sprawling cattle ranch in eastern Oregon) and the new (he’s lived for many years in Missoula, where he taught creative writing to generations of students at The University of Montana). Read more
Greg Lemon | Blue Man in a Red State
How this remarkably savvy politician, once dubbed by a CNN reporter as the “Rock Star from the Rockies,” has garnered national attention and become a popular Democratic governor in a state that was seen as increasingly Republican, is a story worth telling.... Author Greg Lemon splices reflections on the state’s past and current political seasons, with a look at the governor’s personal history, his childhood on a homestead near Havre, family dynamics (he’s in the middle of six children), his education as a soil scientist and his pre-political pursuits (he spent several years building farms in the Middle East where, he says, he learned to negotiate like a Bedouin). Read more