Montana Book Festival 2018

Come listen to Mark Gibbons read and discuss his newest collection of poetry, The Imitation Blues, by Foothills Press.

Reviews of The Imitations Blues:

At times weary, at times sparkling with wonder, The Imitation Blues is a fierce meditation on what is lost, what is found. The poems here are burly, flexing, but there is grace in all the musculature. Political, but never indulgent; profound, but never ephemeral. These poems are deeply rooted. A tough guy eye on mortality, but a tender heart revealed as he squints. “This losing is what we do,” Gibbons professes, but this collection is a gift you will find meaning in, again and again.
 —Richard Fifield, author of The Flood Girls

This man has decided not to coat his tongue in silver. He has covered it with tree bark and Clark Fork River water. He reveals to us, the truth, the dishonesty, the actuality of how humans discover themselves. A true master who calls to the animals inside us, those beasts who know this is a good place. 
—Monty Campbell, Jr., author of A Large Dent in the Moon

Insofar that The Imitation Blues makes us descend into the root cellars of the poet's heart and history, it will also praise the living and light of our days. These pages pour libation and summon the dead: John Lennon, Johnny Cash, Jack Kerouac, Jack Spicer, Ed Lahey, Guy Lombardo, Smelley the cat, and dear departed friends and family. In these poems, a lost mother will keep sowing. A father will keep working a brutal graveyard shift. Reader, don't be afraid. There's a party going on. Dylan Thomas will guide us through Golden Gate Park! I've been a fan of Gibbons' poetry for almost twenty years, and this is classic Gibbo. These poems tell the truth, and they are unafraid. 
—Miles Waggener, author of Phoenix Suites and Sky Harbor

Celebrate the short story!  Join four authors of short story collections, all published by small presses.  Learn about the whys of short story, and the hows of small press publishing.

Elizabeth Colen is the author of True Ash, a collection of linked short stories, a collaboration with Carol Guess,  published by Black Lawrence Press
Michelle Blair Wilker  is the author of  Chain Linked Stories, published by Post Hill Press  
Jacob M. Appel  is the author of The Amazing Mr. Morality: Stories published by Vandalia Press
Bradley Jay Owens  is the author of  How I Met You, a collection of 15 short stories  published by    Brighthorse Books    

Aaron Parrett talks reads and discusses Maple & Lead, a critically acclaimed anthology of 11 short stories with illustrations by artist Seth Roby, letterpress-printed and hand-bound at The Territorial Press.

An article on Maple & Lead from the Great Falls Tribune:
https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/life/2017/10/27/maple-lead-book-made-hard-way/763015001/

Join us for a reading of Christopher Preston's book, The Synthetic Age: Outdesigning Evolution, Resurrecting Species, and Reengineering Our World, by Christopher Preston.Christopher Preston is Professor of Philosophy and a Research Fellow in the Mansfield Center's Program on Ethics and Public Affairs at the University of Montana.Summary of The Synthetic Age:

Imagining a future in which humans fundamentally reshape the natural world using nanotechnology, synthetic biology, de-extinction, and climate engineering.

We have all heard that there are no longer any places left on Earth untouched by humans. The significance of this goes beyond statistics documenting melting glaciers and shrinking species counts. It signals a new geological epoch. In The Synthetic Age, Christopher Preston argues that what is most startling about this coming epoch is not only how much impact humans have had but, more important, how much deliberate shaping they will start to do. Emerging technologies promise to give us the power to take over some of Nature's most basic operations. It is not just that we are exiting the Holocene and entering the Anthropocene; it is that we are leaving behind the time in which planetary change is just the unintended consequence of unbridled industrialism. A world designed by engineers and technicians means the birth of the planet's first Synthetic Age.

Preston describes a range of technologies that will reconfigure Earth's very metabolism: nanotechnologies that can restructure natural forms of matter; “molecular manufacturing” that offers unlimited repurposing; synthetic biology's potential to build, not just read, a genome; “biological mini-machines” that can outdesign evolution; the relocation and resurrection of species; and climate engineering attempts to manage solar radiation by synthesizing a volcanic haze, cool surface temperatures by increasing the brightness of clouds, and remove carbon from the atmosphere with artificial trees that capture carbon from the breeze.

What does it mean when humans shift from being caretakers of the Earth to being shapers of it? And in whom should we trust to decide the contours of our synthetic future? These questions are too important to be left to the engineers.

What drives our work, whether consciously or unconsciously? How do writers embrace their influences? Four Northwest poets, all published with Spokane-based Scablands Books, will discuss the books, music, movies, food, and other obsessions they were “under the influence of” as they worked on their collections. Moderated by Scablands poetry editor Maya Jewell Zeller, poets Tim Greenup Aileen Keown Vaux, Kathryn Smith, and Ellen Welcker will also read selections from their books.

One editor and six contributors from the New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice collection This Is the Place: Women Writing About Home will read from their essays and discuss how the notion of home informs and infiltrates their writing.

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE

A thought-provoking collection of personal essays about home

What makes a home? What do equality, safety, and politics have to do with it? And why is it so important to us to feel like we belong? In this collection, 30 women writers explore the theme in personal essays about neighbors, marriage, kids, sentimental objects, homelessness, domestic violence, solitude, immigration, gentrification, geography, and more. Contributors--including Amanda Petrusich, Naomi Jackson, Jane Wong, and Jennifer Finney Boylan--lend a diverse range of voices to this subject that remains at the core of our national conversations. Engaging, insightful, and full of hope, This is the Place will make you laugh, cry, and think hard about home, wherever you may find it.

"This collection, encompassing a spectrum of races, ethnicities, religions, sexualities, political beliefs and classes, could not be timelier....open this book, hear its chorus of voices and remember that we are a nation of individuals, bound to each other by our humanity." --The New York Times Book Review

Four books, two fiction and two nonfiction, with one thing in common: the West! This will be a reading and discussion about that commonality and how four very different works came from it.

BRUCE HOLBERT is the author of Whiskey. Three generations of a Native American family struggle with hard lives, bad choices, and alcohol in this impressive novel. In the state of Washington, two brothers sit in their local tavern at a critical time. Andre is heading toward his second divorce from Claire, and Smoker is hunting his wayward wife so he can retrieve his 10-year-old daughter, Raven. The siblings embark on an odyssey that weaves through the book in scattered sections.

DONNA M. MCNAMARA is the author of A Birth of Justice: The Vigilantes of Virginia City. Lying in southwestern Montana are the towns of Virginia City and Nevada City. In 1864 the towns possessed the lure of instant wealth, excitement, and adventure that came from gold mines. Along with this excitement came danger-danger posed by men of unsavory character who would not stop at anything to get what they desired. Five men who were residents of the towns fought back by forming a Vigilance Committee with the goal of bringing justice to the men who terrorized the towns.

C.W. GUTHRIE

ERIC SCOTT FISCHL is the author The Trials of Solomon Parker. This is Butte, Montana in 1916, the Richest Hill on Earth: a metal-fueled boomtown of industry, pollution, labor unrest, vice, and crime.  The Gibraltar of Unionism, where a man can get a fair wage for fair work, or maybe get himself killed down the mine, one way or another.  Butte, where fortunes are made.  The city of the Copper Kings.

Join Lindsey Drager, Gwendolyn N. Nix, Marty Essen, and AliciaKay Rehbein for readings of selected sci-fi works, followed by a discussion.

LINDSEY DRAGER is the author of The Lost Daughter Collective (2017)

GWENDOLYN N. NIX is the author of The Falling Dawn: Celestial Scripts Book One (2018)

MARTY ESSEN is the author of Time Is Irreverent (2018)

ALICIAKAY REHBEIN is the author of the literary science fiction novel Time of the Marked Souls: Equivocal (2017)

Brief reading by the author John Witham and discussions with artist Linda Leslie on:
Narrative in Art - letting the viewer complete the story
Color-reproduction - art books and color fidelity
Creative Collaborations - artists, writers, book-makers, filmmakers

Join Gary L. Gillette (Director of The Missoula City Band & author of The Missoula City Band: Stories in Time), John Lawton (North Western Journeys: Spokane Pioneers and Scablands Settlers), and Katharine Seaton Squires (An Antietam Veteran's Montana Journey: The Lost Memoir of James Howard Lowell) for a discussion about the ins and outs of digging up the past and preserving it via writing.