Bozeman News

Western Book Roundup

Writers Rally Against Oil Company’s Relocation and “Brokeback” Duo Scripts New Westerns

By Jenny Shank, 1-05-11

Happy New Year, everyone.  Now back to work, right?  I’ve got a backlog of Western book news to share today, so here we go:

• A few weeks ago, the New York Times discussed the Montana writer Annick Smith’s efforts to block “Imperial Oil, a Canadian subsidiary of ExxonMobil” from moving “its oversize oil-processing equipment from a port in Idaho to Canada, along a path that includes some of the nation’s most scenic highways.” Other writers are joining the fight—David James Duncan and Rick Bass have written a book, The Heart of the Monster, and the proceeds will go to a group called All Against the Haul.  (Steve Bunk summarized the court battle over megaloads on Highway 12 recently for New West.) My new favorite website, Northwest Book Lovers, recently caught up with Bass and Duncan to discuss the project. Check out All Against the Haul’s Twitter feed for more information.

• I was lucky enough to have my essay, “The Ham-and-Egger,” about the process of writing my forthcoming novel The Ringer, published in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers, the annual “Inspiration Issue” of the magazine.  I discovered that I’m not the only writer from this region featured in the issue—there is lots of great stuff, including Cathie Beck’s essay “The Online Book Launch: Self-Publishing Your Way to a Book Deal.” Beck, the author of the memoir Cheap Cabernet: A Friendship, lives in Denver and like me was a Rocky Mountain News book reviewer for many years.  This issue of Poets & Writers also mentions The Whitefish Review and Missoula’s Submishmash, which provides software that allows electronic submissions.  The debut poets roundup features Salt Lake City’s Shira Dentz, Missoula’s Keetje Kuipers, and Denver’s J. Michael Martinez.  It’s like I’ve always said—you Rocky Mountain writers are very inspiring.

• Denver novelist Cortright McMeel will read from his new novel Short at the Tattered Cover (Colfax) tonight, January 5 at 7:30 p.m.

• Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry will be at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) on January 10 at 7:30 p.m.  Eckstut and Sterry are the authors of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, and they will be presenting a session of Pitchapalooza, which I wrote about a few months ago in my report on the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Writers’ Conference.  If you’re an aspiring author who has written a book and you want to figure out how to sell the darn thing, I highly recommend you attend.  Aileen Jacobson recently wrote for the New York Times about Eckstut and Sterry’s Pitchapalooza session in Huntington, New York.

• Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, the screenwriting team behind Ang Lee’s film Brokeback Mountain, based on the Annie Proulx story of the same name, have announced they are working on two more screen adaptations of Western books.  According to Deadline New York:

“They are scripting The Color of Lightning [by Paulette Giles] for Ridley Scott to direct at 20th Century Fox, and they are at the center of a new deal at Warner Bros to adapt the S. C. Gwynne book Empire of the Summer Moon into a film that will be directed by Crazy Heart helmer Scott Cooper.” (Via Shelf Awareness.)

• Nevada-native novelist Charles Bock’s wife is hospitalized with leukemia, and a bunch of writers in New York are hosting an event to raise money for the expenses.  “The World’s Most Literary Rent Party Ever” will be held February 6, at PS 122 in the East Village, with appearances by such writers as Richard Price (one of my absolute favorites), Jonathan Safran Foer, Gary Shteyngart, and a lot more.  But even if you’re not up for a trip to New York City, you can chip in by donating on the event’s website.

Check back next week for the Western Book Roundup in which I will discuss the many western books I’m looking forward to reading this year.  If you’ve got a book set in the West that will be published in 2011, please let me know about it.

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