This will be a great event for teachers and writers of all ages!
Robert E. Lee will disucss outreach and Marnie Prange will talk about teaching younger children, including some of her own poetry lessons and the responses by her students. Mark Gibbons will discuss his experiences in the classroom by way of student poetry and Sheryl Noethe will read her own poems about kids and writing.
Three poets and a novelist with astoundingly full schedules (they are editors, publishers, teachers, reading-series hosts, administrators) share their creative work and discuss the joys and perils of the modern writer's perpetual juggle.
Bitterroot photographer Barabra Michelman and former Missoula writer Charles Finn will give a combined talk and reading, “Tin Types: A Photo-Poetic Collaboration”. Chronicling the inspiration for and evolution of their collaborative project, the two long-time friends will discuss the improvisational nature of working together by using each other’s work to inspire their own. Barbara will also explain the revitalized technique, tintype, she used to give their work its unique look, and Charles will read from selected pieces. Q & A to follow.
Self-publishing is an increasingly viable and respectable route for writers to find audiences for their work. From funding and editing to e-book creation and physical book printing, the options are exciting, scary, challenging, and numerous. In this panel, three very different writers describe their paths to self-publishing.
Jess E. Owen is the author of the award winning YA fantasy series, The Summer King Chronicles. Janice K. Mineer self-published her first literary novel, Secret Heart of the Bitterroot, in March 2015, and is an award-winning poet. Carol Buchanan may publish her fourth novel, The Ghost at Beaverhead Rock, in early September, although she says, “One of the best things about self-publishing is the freedom not to publish until the book is good enough.” She teaches self-publishing at Flathead Valley Community College.
Around the World in 50 Minutes with Marty Essen is a high-energy show, featuring interesting facts, humorous stories, and the best of the thousands of photos Marty Essen took while traveling for his six-time award-winning book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents.
One part lecture, one part theater, one part slide show, one part comedy—it’s the type of show where the audience has fun laughing at the stories, oohing and aahing at the photos, and then, when it’s all done, they realize just how much they’ve learned.
Marty divides his show into eight segments, covering his adventures and wildlife encounters on each of the seven continents, plus Central America. He talks about endangered species, new scientific discoveries, and the need to protect our environment. After the show, he opens up the floor for questions and engages the audience in a lively discussion.
“A great deal of the living world really is red in tooth and claw. That important principle has needed a real biologist to illustrate and explain it, now accomplished dramatically by Emlen's Animal Weapons: The Evolution of Battle.”
—Edward O. Wilson (Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist, Harvard University)
Join biologist Doug Emlen and illustrator David J. Tuss for a discussion on the production of Animal Weapons: The Evolution of Battle.
About the book:
The story behind the stunning, extreme weapons we see in the animal world—teeth and horns and claws—and what they can tell us about the way humans develop and use arms and other weapons
In Animal Weapons, Doug Emlen takes us outside the lab and deep into the forests and jungles where he’s been studying animal weapons in nature for years, to explain the processes behind the most intriguing and curious examples of extreme animal weapons—fish with mouths larger than their bodies and bugs whose heads are so packed with muscle they don’t have room for eyes. As singular and strange as some of the weapons we encounter on these pages are, we learn that similar factors set their evolution in motion. Emlen uses these patterns to draw parallels to the way we humans develop and employ our own weapons, and have since battle began. He looks at everything from our armor and camouflage to the evolution of the rifle and the structures human populations have built across different regions and eras to protect their homes and communities. With stunning black and white drawings and gorgeous color illustrations of these concepts at work, Animal Weapons brings us the complete story of how weapons reach their most outsized, dramatic potential, and what the results we witness in the animal world can tell us about our own relationship with weapons of all kinds.
Join four prolific prose writers - Jacob Appel, Kate Bolick, Bernard Cooper and Kisha Schlegel - as they share from creative work and converse on pleasures and challenges inherent in the research (and memory-mining) process necessary for successful essay writing.
What role can the speculative play in character-driven literary fiction? This panel unites four authors with ties to the Pacific Northwest in an exploration of hybrid forms and the future of slipstream literature. J Robert Lennon, Sharma Shields, Benjamin Parzybok, and Shya Scanlon read from their work, discuss common influences, expectations, and one another’s unique approaches, then answer questions.
Just beginning its fifth year, YesYes Books has released titles that have won the American Book Award (Boyishly by Tanya Olson), the Lambda Award for Gay Poetry ([insert] boy by Danez Smith), and been ranked as top collections of the year (American Barricade by Danniel Schoonebeek and If I Should Say I Have Hope by Lynn Melnick, among others). YesYes Books is fast becoming known for its experimental projects, its electrifying tours, and the diversity of voice it brings forward.
Enjoy a brief reading from three of the newest poets at YesYes Books and then stay for a discussion with these poets and the publisher of this young, dynamic, award winning literary press as we walk through the journey from submission to production to promotion of small press poetry in today’s climate.
Beth McHugh has a novel on the way (The Actor), Marian Palaia (The Given World) is touring with her first, and Martin Corless-Smith is an acclaimed poet who recently published a book of fiction (This Fatal Looking Glass). Join us for a reading and conversation on the different stages in novel writing: creation, submission, publication and promotion.
This event is sponsored by Novel Suite, a new software program designed for writing novels.
Join us for a dynamic reading and conversation centered around the dyanimcs of privilege impacting academia, publishing and exposure. Three poets and one writer of fiction - Jeff Renard Allen, Tod Marshall, Rob Schlegel and Randall James Tyrone - will each share creative work and add their unique perspective to the conversation.
