Montana Book Festival 2018

Join these writers as they discuss the art of the memoir.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS:
Sneed B. Collard III is the author of more than eighty award-winning books including Hopping Ahead of Climate Change—Snowshoe Hares, Science, and Survival; Catching Air—Taking the Leap with Gliding Animals; Shep—Our Most Loyal Dog; Dog Sense (novel); and The Prairie Builders—Reconstructing America’s Lost Grasslands, winner of the AAAS/Subaru/Science Books & Films Prize for Excellence in Science Books. Sneed has evolved through several life-history stages on his way to becoming one of today’s leading children’s authors.

Bernice Ende: As a fearless young girl on her parents' Minnesota dairy farm, Bernice Ende loved to gallop bareback through pastures and cornfields. Today, at a slightly more sedate pace, she has become Lady Long Rider, with more than 29,000 miles in the saddle, criss-crossing the United States, Canada, and in 2018, southern France. Readers can follow Bernice's travels through her blog. Between long rides, Bernice makes her home in Trego, Montana.

Susan Devan Harness: "I have been given many gifts and many experiences that created a unique space in which to write BITTERROOT: A SALISH MEMOIR OF TRANSRACIAL ADOPTION. I am a member of the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes, a transracial adoptee, a cultural anthropologist and a writer. The stories I've collected for my scholarly work MIXING CULTURAL IDENTITIES THROUGH TRANSRACIAL ADOPTION: OUTCOMES OF THE INDIAN ADOPTION PROJECT (1958-1967) validated my experiences and, in essence, validated my existence as a member of two cultural groups who experience very real and significant tensions."

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, Barrelhouse, Mutha, Blackbird, and Fourth Genre. Her memoir, Driven, was released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in July of 2018. She lives in Missoula, Montana with her two kids.