Montana Book Festival: Full Schedule

Download a printable program here or use Sched to print your individual plan!

11:00am MDT

Montana Mystery, Suspense and Thrill

These readings are likely to include murder, war, bison, biology, crime, cave pictographs, sheriffs, reporters, a high-altitude sex club, a home for troubled teens, guns, arrows, PTSD, high-speed truck chases and more, all set in Montana. Don’t miss it: Christine Carbo (Mortal Fall), Gwen Florio (Disgraced) and Keith McCafferty (Buffalo Jump Blues, Crazy Mountain Kiss).

Moderators

Whitney Rimel

Speakers

Christine Carbo

Christine Carbo is the author of Mortal Fall and The Wild Inside. After earning a pilot’s license, pursuing various adventures in Norway, and working a brief stint as a flight attendant, she got an MA in English and linguistics and taught college-level writing, linguistics... Read More →

Gwen Florio

Award-winning journalist Gwen Florio has covered stories ranging from the shooting at Columbine High School and the Oklahoma City bombing trials, to the glitz of the Miss America pageant and the more practical Miss Navajo contest, whose participants slaughter and cook a sheep. She’s... Read More →

Keith McCafferty

Keith McCafferty is the survival and outdoor skills editor of Field & Stream andthe author of The Royal Wulff Murders, The Gray Ghost Murders, Dead Man’sFancy, Crazy Mountain Kiss, which won the Western Writers of America 2016Spur Award for Best Western Contemporary Novel, and... Read More →

Friday September 23, 2016 11:00am - 12:15pm MDT
Zootown Brew 121 W Broadway St, Missoula, MT 59802

$ Button Required, Fiction | Reading, Fiction

11:00am MDT

The Convergence of the Real and Unreal

On a post-plague planet, it’s City vs. New Charity; Musician Karl Bender’s time-traveling wormhole is a groupie’s dream come true. Two authors use the matter of our known world to imagine the fantastic: Camille Griep (New Charity Blues) and Mo Daviau (Every Anxious Wave).

Moderators

Jordan Chesnut

Author of a forthcoming cross-genre collection, HOW GROSS, MY SEANCES (Plays Inverse, 2022)

Speakers

Mo Daviau

Mo Daviau is the author of the novel Every Anxious Wave, which was published in February 2016 by St. Martin's Press. Her nonfiction has been published in Nailed, The Toast, and The Offing Magazines. She is a graduate of Smith College and the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University... Read More →

Camille Griep

Camille Griep is the author of the novels Letters to Zell and New Charity Blues. She is the managing editor of Easy Street and a senior editor at The Lascaux Review. Her shorter works have appeared at Cartridge Lit, Synaesthesia, and The First Line, among other online and print... Read More →

Friday September 23, 2016 11:00am - 12:15pm MDT
E3 Convergence Gallery 229 W. Main St. Missoula, MT, 59802

$ Button Required, Fiction | Reading + Discussion, Fiction

4:00pm MDT

Electricity, Boxing and Survivors

A dynamic trio: two novelists and one story-writer strong on history, the west and unforgettable characters : Chad Dundas (Champion of the World), Virginia Reeves (Work Like Any Other) and Matt Pavelich (Survivors Said).

Moderators

Anne Yoncha

Master of Fine Arts Candidate, University of Montana

Speakers

Chad Dundas

A fourth-generation Montanan, Chad Dundas earned his MFA from the University of Montana-Missoula in 2006. His short fiction has appeared in the Beloit Fiction Journal, Sycamore Review, Sou’Wester, and Thuglit. Since 2001, he’s worked as a sportswriter for national outlets... Read More →

Matt Pavelich

Matt Pavelich was born on the Flathead Indian Reservation and raised there, for the most part, on a ranch in Lonepine. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop where he was a teaching/writing fellow and also a Michener Fellow. His first collection of short fiction won the Montana... Read More →

Virginia Reeves

Virginia Reeves is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas. Her debut novel, Work Like Any Other, has been published internationally and translated into several languages. Her short fiction has appeared in The Common and The Baltimore... Read More →

Friday September 23, 2016 4:00pm - 5:15pm MDT
Fact & Fiction Bookstore 220 N Higgins Ave, Missoula, MT 59802

Reading, Fiction | $ Button Required, Fiction

9:00am MDT

Daredevils, Lunatics, Fire

These bold authors bring on the blaze in their new novels - readings by Shawn Vestal (Daredevils), Megan McNamer (Children and Lunatics), and Jessica Barksdale (The Burning Hour).

Moderators

Gayle Morrison

Speakers

Jessica Barksdale

Jessica Barksdale’s fourteenth novel, The Burning Hour, was published by Urban Farmhouse Press in April 2016. A Pushcart Prize and Best-of-the-Net nominee, her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming in the Waccamaw Journal, Salt Hill Journal, Little... Read More →

Megan McNamer

Megan McNamer’s debut novel Children and Lunatics (Black Lawrence Press, 2016) won the Big Moose Prize. Her second novel, Home Everywhere, was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2018. Her work has appeared in Salon, Sports Illustrated, The Sun, Tropic Magazine (of The... Read More →

Shawn Vestal

Shawn Vestal’s debut novel, Daredevils, was published in spring 2016 by Penguin Press. Liesl Schillinger called the novel "breathtaking and brash," and wrote: "Vestal sends his characters soaring across the gulf that separates the identity that confines them and the identity they would choose, letting them land roughly b... Read More →

Saturday September 24, 2016 9:00am - 10:15am MDT
Holiday Inn - Garden City Ballroom D 200 S Pattee St, Missoula, MT 59802

Reading, Fiction | $ Button Required, Fiction

9:00am MDT

A Conversation With Anne Hillerman

Chérie Newman, producer of The Write Question, talks with New Mexico author Anne Hillerman about her latest books ('Spider Woman's Daughter' and 'Rocks With Wings') in which she continues her late father's Navajo Country mystery series. They'll also discuss why Hillerman gave police officer Bernadette Manuelito a larger role in her novels, American Indian stories written by non-Indian authors, and grappling with the mythic West in fiction.

Speakers

Anne Hillerman

The daughter of beloved novelist Tony Hillerman, Anne has continued the Navajo mystery series with the elevation of Officer Bernadette Manuelito from sidekick to crime solver. Anne received the Spur Award for her first mystery Spider Woman Daughter. Her second, Rock with Wings was... Read More →

Cherie Newman

Chérie Newman is an arts and humanities producer and on-air host for Montana Public Radio, and a freelance writer. Her weekly literary program, The Write Question, is broadcast on several public radio stations, and available online at PRX.org and MTPR.org. Her articles, essays, and book reviews have been published in Montana Magazine, High Country News, the University of Montana Alumni Newsletter, Whitefish Review, the Billings Gazette, theMissoulian, Montana Senior News, Outside Bozeman Magazine, and on numerous... Read More →

Saturday September 24, 2016 9:00am - 10:15am MDT
Holiday Inn - Garden City Ballroom B 200 S Pattee St, Missoula, MT 59802

Special Event, Fiction | $ Button Required, Fiction

11:00am MDT

James Lee Burke

A reading and conversation with the master, James Lee Burke, author of two new novels since our last book festival: The Jealous Kind and House of the Rising Sun.

Speakers

James Lee Burke

James Lee Burke, a rare winner of two Edgar Awards, and named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, is the New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty novels and two collections of short stories. He lives in Missoula, Montana.

Saturday September 24, 2016 11:00am - 12:15pm MDT
Holiday Inn - Garden City Ballroom B 200 S Pattee St, Missoula, MT 59802

Reading, Fiction | $ Button Required, Fiction

2:00pm MDT

Vibrant Lives and Crossroads

These fiction authors pen masterful short (and longer) works with unforgettable characters that face off and move on. Readings by Glen Cha.m.berlain (All I Want is What You’ve Got), Matthew R. K. Haynes (Friday), and Sam Ligon (Wonderland, Among the Dead and Dreaming).

Moderators

Taylor White

Speakers

Glen Chamberlain

Glen Chamberlain has received the Pushcart Prize for the best writing in America’s small presses, the first Gilcrease Prize for fiction, and the Rona Jaffe Award for both fiction and creative nonfiction. The Rona Jaffe Foundation named her “one of the most promising women writers... Read More →

Matthew R. K. Haynes

Publisher, Educe Press

Matthew R. K. Haynes earned his M.A. in Fiction and M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from Boise State University. His first novel, Moving Towards Home, was published in 1999. His newest novella, Friday, was published in 2015. He was been a finalist for the Faulkner Award in Nonfiction... Read More →

Sam Ligon

Samuel Ligon is the author of two novels—Among the Dead and Dreaming and Safe in Heaven Dead—and two collections of stories, Wonderland, illustrated by Stephen Knezovich, and Drift and Swerve. He is co-editor, with Kate Lebo, of Pie & Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence... Read More →

Saturday September 24, 2016 2:00pm - 3:15pm MDT
Holiday Inn - Garden City Ballroom D 200 S Pattee St, Missoula, MT 59802

Reading, Fiction | $ Button Required, Fiction