Montana Book Festival

Five editors and writers of the forthcoming book of the same title will discuss the dynamics of compiling an anthology centered around an environmental and social issue, specifically mining and other non-sustainable development efforts in Paradise Valley and the Absaroka Range, just north of Yellowstone National Park. Topics will include: the strategy of responding to an evolving and complex issue as both editors and writers; the writer's place in working for positive social and ecological progress; and the personal, social, artistic, economic and environmental value of Montana's wild spaces. 

The book, Unearthing Paradise, is an effort to raise awareness and activism regarding the need to protect wild lands of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem from extractive and destructive threats. Profits will be used to assist environmental organizations in their efforts to protect these lands. The project grew out of local efforts in Park County to stop two gold mining proposals at the northern gateway to Yellowstone, and includes poetry, essay and fiction by 30 Montana writers including Rick Bass, Tami Haaland and the late Jim Harrison. The book's editors are Marc Beaudin, Seabring Davis and Max Hjortsberg. Terry Tempest Williams provides the foreword.

A free preview sampler chapbook will be available at the discussion, as well as information for pre-ordering the book, to be released later this fall.