Montana Book Festival

Karin Schalm is the Creative Writing Program Coordinator at the University of Montana where she earned both her M.F.A. in Poetry and M.A. in Literature. Her work has been published in Camas, CutBank, The Sun, Verde Que Te Quiero Verde: Poems After Frederico García Lorca, and other journals. She has poems forthcoming in Epiphany and Poems Across the Big Sky II.

Sean Frede is a current MFA student in fiction at Boise State University while also holding the graduate assistant editor position for the Idaho Review. He currently resides in Boise with his beautiful fiancee and year old Cocker Spaniel, Winnie.

Katie Fuller is from Maine.  She is the Program Director at The Cabin, a literary center in Boise, where she coordinates community creative writing and arts education. She holds a poetry MFA from Boise State University, and MA in Literature from the University of Maine. Her chapbook Valve is out from DoubleCross Press.

Riley Gillan is a creative nonfiction writer from Chicago, Illinois. He is a second-year MFA candidate studying nonfiction and forestry at the University of Montana-Missoula, where he received the Truman Capote Scholarship. Gillan is a contributing blogger for "The MFA Years" and teaching resident at Arrowmont School of Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN. His work has appeared in Peal Magazine, Canvas, Laurel, and elsewhere... Read More →

Elin Hawkinson is a graduate of The New School and has just completed her first year in the MFA program at Eastern Washington University. She serves as a fiction editor for Willow Springs and her work can be found in Midwestern Gothic and Twelfth Street, among others.

Current MFA candidate in poetry at Boise State University, editorial & design assistant for Ahsahta Press, student-editor for Free Poetry, former poetry editor for the Idaho Review. 

Holly Lavecchia writes nonfiction. She's a second-year MFA candidate at Eastern Washington University and managing editor of Willow Springs Magazine. She thinks that reading out loud and wearing glasses actually make her smarter.

Rachel Richardson is a MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Montana.

Michael Schmidt was born and raised in the pacific northwest. He's uncertain about most things nowadays except that he likes poetry. He's an MFA candidate at the Inland Northwest Center for Writers.

Danielle Weeks is an MFA candidate at Eastern Washington University.

Hannah Withers is a fiction writer from Southern California. She's a second year at the Montana MFA program, and is co-curator of the MFA reading series, Second Wind. Her work can be found at The Kenyon Review Online, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The Red Branch Journal, and NPR.org. She used to make rent by performing improv at Bar Mitzvahs.