Ever since the tragic death of Rob Reiner, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can often take for granted someone who is such a steady presence in American culture. He never seemed like someone who was desperate for attention or praise, despi...

When Lynn Stegner met her future husband Page, she had no idea that his father was one of the most famous writers in America, even though she was an aspiring writer. But the first time she met Wallace Stegner in person, they quickly discovered ...

Growing up in Montana during the '60s and '70s, I was a huge fan of Western films, although my attitude toward that genre changed a lot through the years. As I became more aware of how these films tended to show racist, sexist attitudes, I came...

Alan Grostephan is the author of The Banana Wars, winner of the 2025 Georgia Author of the Year Award, and Bogotá, a novel chosen by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best ten books of fiction in 2013 and longlisted for the Pen/Robert W. Bi...

Allen Morris Jones has published three novels, LAST YEAR’S RIVER, A BLOOM OF BONES, and SWEENEY ROCKS; he published a book of essays about hunting called A QUIET PLACE OF VIOLENCE, as well as three children’s books: MONTANA FOR KIDS, YELLOWSTON...

Larry Watson is the author of ten novels, including Montana 1948, White Crosses, American Boy, and Let Him Go, which won the High Plains Book Award for fiction, and was made into a film starring Kevin Costner and Diane Lane. W...

Dzanc Books conducts a literary contest every year, and they publish the winner in several categories--fiction, poetry and short stories. In 2019, the winner of the Dzanc Award for fiction was a debut novel by John Englehardt called Bloomla...

The big production by Pete Hegseth and our president got me thinking about a question that someone asked me at one of my recent readings for my new book, BE A MAN: Raised in the Shadow of Cowboys. And I'm pretty sure my answer to that question ...

Anne Millbrooke is a retired history professor at Montana State University in Bozeman. Earlier this year, after becoming fed up with the government budget cuts, especially to the forest service, Anne walked into a Forest Service office and volu...

Novelist Afabwaje Kurian was born in Nigeria, raised in Maryland, and worked in the health care community for many years before she was accepted into the Iowa Writers Workshop, widely considered the best writing program in the country. While th...

For about two years, I've been writing film and television reviews for my substack page, and I decided to start doing an audio version of these reviews, although I'm going to try and figure out how to turn this into video eventually. For this w...

I met Alex Lawson at a conference in my home town of Billings in early 2024, and he’s a dynamic speaker, but more importantly a strong advocate for one of the American institutions and Trump and the Republican party have nailed a target on, whi...

Bruce Robinson has led an extraordinary life. As the younger brother of the lead singer for one of the most successful bands in the history of Montana, the Mission Mountain Wood Band, Bruce stepped in to perform in his brother’s place when the ...

In 2018, Damon Falke, a poet, novelist, and playwright who grew up in America but has lived in Norway for about 13 years, came across a painting on Facebook that drew his attention. He started to notice more pieces by the same painter, a woman ...

Wally Kurth, who I have known since middle school, is the only actor who is currently appearing as a regular on two different soap operas, Days of our Lives, where he plays Justin Kiriakis, and General Hospital, where he has played two differen...

 Walter Lamar was teaching shop at Browning High School when two FBI agents showed up to ask why he hadn’t completed the application he picked up from them a few months earlier. This visit changed the trajectory of Walter’s life in ...

James Grady has led a bit of a charmed life, selling his first novel, Six Days of the Condor, when he was only twenty-three, and having that book made into a film, directed by Sidney Pollack and starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway...

Peter Riegert is known for his roles in some of the most iconic American films, such as Animal House, Crossing Delancey, The Mask, and Traffic. But my personal favorite is Local Hero, where Peter plays a young Texas o...

Laurie Sargent and Billy Conway were independent rock artists who met in Boston and moved to Montana in 2009. Billy was the drummer for two successful bands, Treat Her Right and Morphine, and he had a presence that helped make everyone around h...

 George Singleton is a Southern author who has written eight collections of short stories two novels, a collection of essays, and an instructional book on writing fiction. &nb...

On February 9, 2020, Steven Bognar stood on the stage with his longtime filmmaking and life partner Julia Reichert, accepting the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary for their film, American Factory. Julia had already been going...

One fall day in 2018, Ellen Jovin set up a folding table on a Manhattan sidewalk with a homemade sign that said “Grammar Table.” Right away, passersby began excitedly asking questions, telling stories, and filing complaints. What happened next ...