Montana Book Festival 2018

Russell Rowland, Aaron Parrett and Greg Keeler will read, discuss the influence of music in their writing, and play some tunes. The panel discussion will be moderated by local writer, musician and photographer, Chris La Tray. Join us after the author reception!

RUSSELL ROWLAND is a fourth generation Montanan, born in Bozeman in 1957. He has a Master’s in Creative Writing from Boston University. His latest book is Arbuckle, the final novel in a trilogy based on his own family history. He has published four novels, In Open Spaces, The Watershed Years, High and Inside, and Arbuckle. He is also the author of the non-fiction narrative Fifty-Six Counties, the story of his journey to every county in Montana. In Open Spaces made the San Francisco Chronicle’s bestseller list, and was named among the Best of the West by the Salt Lake City Tribune. The Watershed Years and High and Inside were both finalists for the High Plains Book Award for Fiction. He also co-edited the anthology West of 98: Living and Writing the New American West. He has taught at several colleges, and currently teaches online workshops and does private consulting with other writers.

AARON PARRETT started writing songs in 1995 while living on Barber Street in Athens, Georgia, while he was enrolled in graduate school in Comparative Literature. "The Sinners," his first CD, came out in 1996 to great critical acclaim. A year later he teamed up with Jason Anderson, Jon Mills, and John Neff to record a second showcase of his songs called "The Judge and the Jury: The Legend of Jim Collins," released in 2000 on the Pizzle label. He and Jason recorded a second Judge and Jury album in 2002, called "Left of the Mason Dixon Line," which also featured some fine pedal steel work by John Neff. Meanwhile, Aaron started writing stuff other than songs-an academic tome on traveling to the moon, various essays, and a dozen short stories that have appeared in places like The Massachusetts Review, Open Spaces, Wild Blue Yonder, The Wisconsin Review, and Janus Head. Some of these stories are available for your reading pleasure elsewhere on this website. Nowadays, teaching at the local college in Great Falls, Montana keeps him pretty busy, but he plays out regularly throughout the state, and gives readings when invited.

GREG KEELER has extensive teaching and publishing experience in both poetry and memoir. The Bluebird Run is his ninth book of poetry, and he has published two memoirs, Trash Fish: A Life and Waltzing With the Captain: Remembering Richard Brautigan. His writing, deeply rooted in the natural world, often uses humor to give structure to, what poet Mark Gibbons describes as "this journey of living and dying, this dog-eared catalog of loss."