Shann Ray Ferch is the author of Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity and The Spirit of Servant Leadership co-edited with Larry Spears. He is also a poet and prose writer and his collection of stories, American Masculine, was selected for the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference prestigious Katherine Bakeless Nason Literary Publication Prize. Ferch is a professor of leadership in the PhD. Program in leadership studies at Gonzaga University. He is the also editor of The International Journal of Servant Leadership and his work regarding conflict and the human will to forgive and reconcile has appeared in scientific journals internationally. He holds a dual MFA in poetry and fiction from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers at Eastern Washington University, a Masters in clinical psychology from Pepperdine, and a PhD in systems psychology from the University of Alberta in Canada. He is a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow and has served as a research psychologist for the Centers for Disease Control and as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also served as a visiting scholar in the Netherlands, Colombia, Canada, the Philippines, and South Africa. He lives with his wife and three daughters in Spokane, Washington. [website]

Charles Finn is the editor of High Desert Journal a literary and visual arts magazine out of Bend, Oregon. His book of micro-essays, Wild Delicate Seconds: 29 Wildlife Encounters was published last spring. Before joining High Desert Journal Charles taught English as a foreign language in Hiroshima, Japan, hid out in the woods of British Columbia, Canada, learned the art of deconstruction in Potomac, Montana, and wrote. A self-taught woodworker and proponent of “living little” he lived for many years in an eight by twelve foot cabin of his own making with no running water or electricity. During this time, he began A Room of One's Own, building “microhomes,” one-room wood cabins constructed entirely out of reclaimed lumber and materials he salvaged from taking down old barns and buildings. Originally from Vermont, he now lives in Elizabeth, New Jersey with his wife Joyce Mphande-Finn and their two cats, Pushkin and Lutsa. [website]

Amanda Fortini writes for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Rolling Stone, among other publications. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies, including Best American Political Writing and The Best of Slate. She lives in Livingston, Montana.

Annie Garde is the host of Montana Public Radio's children's show, the Pea Green Boat. As an active member of Garrison Keillor's POEM (Professional Organization of English Majors), she strives to bring the best poetry, literature and music to young and young-at-heart listeners. For material, Annie frequents libraries, pilfers kids' bookshelves and CD collections, takes suggestions from parents and finds it hard to call it all "work". Annie loves her job.

Mark Gibbons is a poet from western Montana. Forgotten Dreams is his seventh collection of poems. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. An MFA graduate from the University of Montana, Mark teaches for the Missoula Writing Collaborative and the Montana Arts Council. He has also worked a variety of labor jobs to pay the bills. For twenty years he moved furniture and drove truck. In 2011 he began Blind Horses Press and is currently researching the life and work of his old friend, the late-great Montana poet, Ed Lahey.

Kevin Goodan was born in Missoula, and raised in the Mission Valley. He studied at the University of Montana, and at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He is the author of three books, In the Ghost-House Acquainted, Winter Tenor, and most recently Upper Level Disturbances. He is currently Assistant Professor at Lewis-Clark State College, and faculty advisor for Talking River. He lives in Joel, Idaho.

Tami Haaland has had great success in the fields of poetry and teaching—she won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize for her first collection of poems, Breath in Every Room, and has a new collection, When We Wake in the Night, which was a finalist for the May Swenson Award. Haaland is exceptionally generous about sharing her talents and her teaching wherever and whenever she is asked to do so. She travels to communities to offer poetry workshops and has taught creative writing classes at the Montana Women's Prison in Billings. Her classes are sought after by serious writing students. Haaland is a founder of the Yellowstone Writers Collective, which plans and sponsors readings for writers, and is involved with Stone's Throw, an online magazine she started with Russell Rowland, a Billings author. She is a board member for Aerie, a youth literary journal based in Missoula, emphasizing her commitment to all of Montana. Her online teaching for students as far away as Iran underscores her commitment to both poetry and people worldwide.

Alyson Hagy was raised on a farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. A graduate of Williams College and the MFA program at the University of Michigan, she is the author of four collections of short fiction, Madonna On Her Back; Hardware River; Graveyard of the Atlantic; and Ghosts of Wyoming; and three novels, Keeneland; Snow, Ashes; and this year’s Boleto. Her stories have most recently appeared in Shenandoah, Five Points, and the Virginia Quarterly Review and on National Public Radio, and they have been awarded a Nelson Algren Prize, a Syndicated Fiction Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her story “Search Bay” was also included in Best American Short Stories 1997. Hagy lives in Laramie, Wyoming and teaches at the University of Wyoming.

Diana Hipp is an author and curriculum developer who has worked in schools across the country helping to foster a positive school climate. At her home, which is nestled between the Bitterroot River and the Bitterroot Mountains in western Montana, she immerses herself in the world of nature where wildlife abounds and spends hours hiking, observing, photographing and taking notes of the many lessons nature has to offer. Her children’s books include Hermis and Howard: A Bully Finds His Heart and Stuart the Donkey: A Tale of His Tail. [website]

William Hjortsberg was born in New York City, and graduated from Dartmouth. He received a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship from Stanford and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He is the author of eight books, including Alp, Gray Matters, and Falling Angel, as well as screenplays “Legend” and “Thunder & Lightening.” Short fiction, non-fiction and reviews have appeared in Playboy, Esquire, Oui, Penthouse, Look, Sports Illustrated, Rocky Mountain Magazine, Cornell Review, The Realist, House & Garden, San Francisco Focus, Big Sky Journal, Fishing Update No. 1 (The Hunting & Fishing Library,) New York Times Book Review, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, Men's Journal, Catholic World and The Last Supplement To The Whole Earth Catalog. He lives in Montana with his wife, painter Janie Camp. [website]

Bruce Holbert is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, where he assisted in editing The Iowa Review and held a Teaching Writing Fellowship. His fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, Hotel Amerika, Other Voices, The Antioch Review, Crab Creek Review, The Spokesman Review, The West Wind Review, Cairn, RiverLit and has won annual awards from the Tampa Tribune Quarterly and The Inlander. His non-fiction has appeared in The New Orleans Review, The Spokesman Review and The Daily Iowan, and his poetry in RiverLit. He recently co-authored, with his wife, Signed, Your Student (Kaplan Press) a collection of remembrances of influential teachers recounted by prominent Americans. His first novel is Lonesome Animals. Holbert grew up in the country described in Lonesome Animals, a combination of rocky scabland farms and desert brush at the foot of the Okanogan Mountains. What once was the Columbia River, harnessed now by a series of reservoirs and dams, dominates the topography. Holbert’s great-grandfather, Arthur Strahl, was an Indian scout and among the first settlers of the Grand Coulee. The man was a bit of a legend until he murdered Holbert’s grandfather (Strahl’s son-in-law) and made Holbert’s grandmother a widow and Holbert’s father fatherless. A fictionalized Strahl is the subject of Lonesome Animals. Holbert currently teaches “school resistant” students at Mt Spokane High School in Mead, Washington. He’s has been married to his wife, Holly, for 26 years and has three children, Natalie 20, Luke 18 and Jackson 17. [website]

Wayne Horvitz is a composer, pianist, and electronic musician. He has performed extensively throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America. He has performed and collaborated with Bill Frisell, Butch Morris, John Zorn, Robin Holcomb, Fred Frith, Julian Priester, Philip Wilson, Michael Shrieve, Bobby Previte, Marty Ehrlich, Skerik, William Parker, Ron Miles, Sara Schoenbeck, Peggy Lee, Steven Bernstein, Briggan Krauss, and Dylan van der Schyff among others. He has been commissioned by the NEA, Meet The Composer, Kronos String Quartet, Seattle Chamber Players, Mary Flagler Cary Trust, PGAFF, BAM and others. Collaborators include Paul Taylor, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Gus Van Sandt and Gordon Edelstein. He has produced CDs for Eddie Palmieri, Fontella Bass, Robin Holcomb and Bill Frisell among others. He is the 2001 recipient of the Seattle Artist Trust Fellowship, 2003 and 2006 recipient of the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture fellowship, 2002 recipient of the Rockefeller Map Grant for JOE HILL, 16 Actions for Chamber Orchestra, Voices and Improviser, and the 2008 NEA American Masterpieces grant for These Hills of Glory for string quartet and improviser. Ensembles include The President, Pigpen, Zony Mash, The HMP Trio, The New York Composers Orchestra, The 4 Plus 1 Ensemble, Sweeter Than the Day and The Gravitas Quartet. [website]

Pam Houston is the author of two collections of linked short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, the novel Sight Hound, a collection of essays called A Little More About Me, and most recently the novel Contents May Have Shifted, all published by W.W. Norton. Her stories have been selected for volumes of Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Short Stories of the Century. She is the winner of the Western States Book Award, the WILLA award for contemporary fiction, and The Evil Companions Literary Award and multiple teaching awards. She is the Director of Creative Writing at U.C. Davis and teaches in The Pacific University low residency MFA program, and at writers’ conferences around the country and the world. She lives on a ranch at 9,000 feet in Colorado near the headwaters of the Rio Grande. [website]

Lowell Jaeger is author of four collections of poems: War On War (Utah State University Press, 1988), Hope Against Hope (Utah State University Press 1990), Suddenly Out of a Long Sleep (Arctos Press, 2009), and WE (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2010). He is founding editor of Many Voices Press and recently edited New Poets of the American West, an anthology of poets from western states. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, winner of the Grolier Poetry Peace Prize and recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council. Most recently, Lowell was awarded the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for his work in promoting civic discourse.

Kate Rutledge Jaffe's creative work has been published or is forthcoming in Narrative Magazine, The Believer, The Missouri Review, and others, and was awarded the Fulton Prize in Short Fiction and the Matt Clark Prize in Poetry. Her editorial work can be found in Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives (McSweeney's, 2010), and she served as editor of CutBank. She lives in Missoula, MT. [website]

Alan S. Kesselheim lives in Bozeman, Montana. Books include Water and Sky: Reflections of a Northern Year; Silhouette on a Wide Land; and The Lightweight Gourmet: Drying and Cooking Food for the Outdoor Life. His most recent book, Let Them Paddle, describes the three coming-of-age river trips he and his wife, Marypat, took with their three children. He is also a regular contributor to many magazines. [website]

Walter Kirn is the author of seven books, including Up in the Air, Lost in the Meritocracy, Thumbsucker, and Mission to America. He is the national correspondent for the New Republic and is currently writing a memoir of his relationship with the con-man and impostor Clark Rockefeller. He lives in Livingston, Montana.

Tahj Bo Kjelland is a poet and musician, artist and activist, student and father, and poetry slam majordomo. He lives in Missoula.

Shawn Klomparens, the author of the novels Jessica Z and Two Years No Rain, was born squarely in the palm of Michigan, and grew up between there and Central Ohio. After studying English and geological sciences in the beautiful foothills of Appalachia at Ohio University, he moved to Jackson, Wyoming for what he thought would be a one-year break from graduate work. He’s been there ever since. [website]

Jane Lambert is a fifth-generation, northern California rancher, turned Montanan, in large part due to Charles M. Russell's art and Will James's books. Her book, Charlie Russell: The Cowboy Years, chronicles the eleven years Charles M. Russell spent on the open range of Montana working as a cowboy, from 1882 until 1893. Lambert’s family homesteaded in Lake County, California, in the 1850s. She grew up ranching with a passion for horses. As a kid, she hung Russell's art on her walls and read all of James's books with a fascination for, and a desire to see, Montana. That dream was realized in 1981 when she quit her job as an Agriculture/Home Economics teacher, drew her money, and moved with her daughter, Lisa, to Stevensville, Montana.

J. Robert Lennon is the author of a story collection, Pieces For The Left Hand, and seven novels, including Mailman, Castle, and Familiar. He holds an MFA from the University of Montana, and has published short fiction in The New Yorker, Harper's, Playboy, Granta, The Paris Review, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. He has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and his story "The Rememberer" inspired the CBS detective series Unforgettable. His book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, and The London Review of Books. Lennon lives in Ithaca, New York, where he directs Cornell University's Creative Writing program. [website]

Denise Malloy is a transplanted Southern girl living in Big Sky Country. After working as a lifeguard, a Peace Corps volunteer, a middle school teacher, a Hickory Farms girl, a switchboard operator, a front-desk clerk at a hotel featuring the Fashion Don’t uniform consisting of a tacky brown, three piece polyester suit with a bow tie, and finally, an attorney, Malloy is now a columnist for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, blogger and the author of A Real Mother: Stumbling Through Motherhood. Her articles have appeared in Family Circle, Parents, Funny Times and American Profile. [website]

William Marcus received his B.A. in Radio-Television/Journalism from The University of Montana in 1974 and has worked in public broadcasting for more than 25 years. He began as a production assistant at KUFM-FM at UM in 1975. He created the KUFM-FM Development Office in 1976 and became Audio Production Director for UM's Telecommunications Center and KUFM-FM in 1984. In 1996, he was promoted to Director of the Broadcast Media Center and station manager of KUFM-TV and KUFM Radio. His radio work has been heard on several NPR programs including Performance Today, All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Weekend Edition Sunday.

Gregory Martin is the author of Mountain City, a memoir of the life of a town of thirty-three people in remote northeastern Nevada, which received a Washington State Book Award, was named a New York Times Notable Book, and is referred to by some people in Mountain City as “the book.” Martin’s second book, the memoir Stories for Boys, will be published in October. Martin is an associate professor of English and serves as director of the combined BA/MD degree program. His work has appeared in The Sun, The Kenyon Review, Creative Nonfiction, Storyquarterly, The Writer, Witness, and elsewhere. For his teaching, Martin has received the University of New Mexico Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award. [website]

Keith McCafferty is the survival and outdoor skills editor of Field & Stream. He has written articles for publications as diverse as Fly Fisherman Magazine, Mother Earth News, Gray’s Sporting Journal and the Chicago Tribune. Keith has won numerous awards, including the Robert Traver Award for angling literature. He has twice been a finalist for a National Magazine Award. In addition to writing nearly a thousand magazines articles (several are linked here), his non-fiction work includes the L.L. Bean Family Camping Handbook and the L.L. Bean Hiking and Backpacking Handbook, which his son illustrated. The Royal Wulff Murders is Keith’s first novel. Keith has finished his second book in the series, The Gray Ghosts, which is slated for hardback release February. He is currently working on his third novel. [website]

Catherine McKenzie was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. A graduate of McGill University and McGill Law School, McKenzie practices law in Montreal. Her novels Spin and Arranged were international bestsellers. They, along with her third novel, Forgotten, will all be published in the U.S. by William Morrow this year. Spin has also been published in French and German, and Arranged was published in French in June, 2012. [website]

Neil McMahon grew up in Chicago, holds a degree in psychology from Stanford, and has lived in Montana since 1971. His wife, Kim, coordinates the annual Montana Festival Of The Book. Along with writing, he spent many years working as a carpenter. He has published ten thrillers, and co-authored with Kim the young adult novel Adam of Albion.

Scott McMillion writes for magazines and newspapers around the country, focusing much of his work on environmental and natural resource issues. He is the author of Mark of the Grizzly, a finalist in creative nonfiction for the 1999 Independent Publisher Awards and now in its 13th printing. His essays have been collected in Where We Live, The Best of the Big Sky Journal, Ring of Fire, the Writers of Greater Yellowstone, and Farming and the Fate of Wild Nature, Essays in Conservation-based Agriculture. He has penned the introduction for Yellowstone View, a book of photography by Thomas Lee, and was a contributor for Call of the Wild, the Art of Parks Reece. He co-authored, with Robin Tawny Nichols, Len and Sandy Sargent, A Legacy of Activist Philanthropy. After 20 years in the newspaper business, where he won dozens of awards, McMillion is now senior editor of Montana Quarterly, which was named the best new magazine west of the Mississippi during its maiden year in 2005. Scott lives with his wife, Jennifer, in Livingston, Montana, a funky, windy town on a big bend of the Yellowstone River, about an hour north of Yellowstone National Park. [website]

Dana McMurray is the Youth Services Associate at the Missoula Public Library where he leads numerous activities, among them altered books workshops in which books about to be thrown away are given a second life.

Colin Meloy once wrote Ray Bradbury a letter, informing him that he "considered himself an author too." He was ten. Since then, Meloy has gone on to be the singer and songwriter for the band the Decemberists, where he channels all of his weird ideas into weird songs. The Wildwood Chroncles (Wildwood and the newest in the series Under Wildwood) are his first attempts at channeling those ideas into a novel. [website]

Ginny Merriam earned a degree in journalism at the University of Montana and worked as an award-winning reporter at the Missoulian newspaper for 20 years. She now works as communications director for the City of Missoula and manages to work in some freelance journalism too.

Robert Morgan is the author of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, noted most for his novel Gap Creek and his biography of Daniel Boone, both of which were national bestsellers. A professor at Cornell University since 1971, and visiting writer-in-residence at half a dozen universities, his awards include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships and an Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature. He was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2010. [website]

2012 Festival

• Schedule of Events (PDF)
• Authors & Presenters
  - At a Glance
  - Bios: A-E | F-M | N-Z
• Panel Descriptions (PDF)
• Festival Sponsors & Partners
• Festival Photos  
• Festival on Facebook  

Other Resources

• Video from Past Festivals  
• Photos from Past Festivals
• About Missoula

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