Montana Book Festival 2018

ABOUT THE PANELISTS:

Casey Charles lives in Missoula, Montana, where he teaches queer studies, law in literature, and Shakespeare at the university. Charles’s writing draws on his experience as an activist, a trial lawyer, and a researcher.

Samina Hadi-Tabassum is a Clinical Associate Professor at the Erikson Institute in Chicago. She earned her doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in cultural and linguistic anthropology. Her published work includes "Language, Space, and Power" as well as essays in "Multicultural Science Education - Theory, Practice, and, Promise" and "Women of Color in STEM." She also writes poetry and fiction.

Molly Caro May is a writer whose work explores body, place and the foreign. Her memoir "The Map of Enough" was called "addictive" by Elle Magazine. She received a writing fellowship at the Taft Nicholson Environmental Humanities Center, where she wrote the first draft of her second book, Body Full of Stars.

Alicia Mountain received her MFA at the University of Montana in Missoula. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Pleiades, Barrow Street, Witness, Spillway, LIT, The Southampton Review and elsewhere. She is the recent recipient of an Idyllwild Fellowship and received a 2014 Academy of American Poets Prize. She’s finishing her first collection of poetry.

Ana Maria Spagna is the author of several award-winning nonfiction books including Reclaimers, stories of indigenous women reclaiming sacred land and water, 100 Skills You’ll Need for the End of the World (as We Know It) a humor-infused exploration of how to live more lightly on the planet, the memoir/history Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter’s Civil Rights Journey, winner of the River Teeth literary nonfiction prize, and three essay collections, Potluck, Now Go Home, and most recently, Uplake: Restless Essays of Coming and Going. Ana Maria’s work has been recognized by the Society for Environmental Journalists, the Nautilus Book Awards, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Awards, and as a three-time finalist for the Washington State Book Award.