montana festival of the book
Missoula Bookfest Celebrates the Voices of the West
By Emily Darrell, 9-10-07
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| For more on the Montana Festival of the Book, visit www.bookfest-mt.org. | |
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Want a chance to mingle with novelists, poets, and playwrights from around the West? To hear Governor Brian Schweitzer read a children’s book in Caras Park? To find out if Missoula Mayor John Engen can correctly define “peripatetic”?
Then check out the eighth annual Montana Festival of the Book, which will be held in and around downtown Missoula, September 13-15.
Festival Coordinator Kim Anderson of Humanities Montana says that along with the usual readings and panel discussions this year’s bookfest is offering many new and unique events. One such event is the Celebrity Define-a-thon. Who are the celebrities? “It’s Missoula,” Anderson says, “so celebrity is in quotations.”
The Define-a-thon will have 15 different teams competing to determine who has the most extensive and erudite lexicon. Teams will include Mayor John Engen and the City Team ("I’ll do my best, but I’ve seen the competition and I think they’re considerably more versed in the English language than I,” Engen humbly insists), a team comprised of Sen. Jon Tester’s Missoula staff, and teams from the Missoulian, the Independent, and New West.
This year will also mark the first time that the Governor has made an appearance at the Festival of the Book. Governor Schweitzer will be in Caras Park on Saturday the 15th to read a children’s book that was written by Helena-based author and editor Jessica Solberg, First Dog: Unleashed in the Montana Capitol. The book’s narrator: Schweitzer’s border collie, Jag. It was written to interest and engage kids in state government.
Another first at this year’s festival will be a rock concert/book promotion. Local band the hermans will be playing at the Wilma Theater Saturday night, in part to promote their book Stalking America: The Stolen Journal of an Unknown Rock and Roll Band, which will be released in paperback next month by Running Press Book Publishers. The book’s foreword was written by Havre-born, Big Sandy-raised, UM dropout Jeff Ament, who also happens to be the bassist for Pearl Jam.
Anderson, who has been involved in the planning and organization of each Festival of the Book since the event’s inception in 2000, says that it developed at a time when literary festivals were becoming something of a fad across the country, though she says few have had the success and longevity of the one here in Montana. Last year the festival drew around 6,000 attendees and numbers are expected to be at least that strong this year.
“Location is key to the success of this festival,” Anderson says. “Festivals in other parts of the country have been struggling and some have ceased existing. We have been incredibly blessed here.” Anderson credits this in part to the writing program at the University of Montana as well as the large number of writers and literary types who reside in the state.
Engen agrees: “[The festival] is just such a Missoula event. There are more and better writers here per capita than you’ll find anywhere else in the West.” This year the lineup includes award-winning authors James Lee Burke, William Kittredge, Deirdre McNamer, Ron Carlson, Larry Watson, Mary Clearman Blew, Pete Fromm, Aryn Kyle, Christy Leskovar, Kat Martin, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Kevin Canty, Alyson Hagy, and many others.
Anderson says the festival focuses on writers and writing from the Inland Northwest, though she says that the term “Inland Northwest” is used pretty loosely to include writers from as far east as Wisconsin and as far West as Seattle.
Though the writing in this region is incredibly diverse, Anderson says, much of it does tend to have a common thread. “You don’t see a lot of urban interior dramas [from here]” she says. “There’s an awareness of forces bigger than mankind, an awareness of landscapes and forces one can’t control.”
For more information on the Montana Festival of the Book and for a complete schedule of events visit www.bookfest-mt.org. With a few exceptions all events are free and open to the public.
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