The Montana Festival of the Book is always a highlight of the year for me. Over 100 writers doing panels and readings in beautiful downtown Missoula. This year was particularly exciting for several reasons:
1. I pulled down my SECOND Nahum Tate Cup! This is a feat unprecedented in Montana literary history: there have only been four "Happy Tales Contests," and now I've won two of them. Sorry to be tooting my own horn so much here, but it IS pretty much a career objective -- achieved! The idea of the contest is to rewrite a classic work of literature with a happier ending. In 2001 I took on Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It," and this year's victim -- I mean, honoree -- was Larry Watson's "Montana 1948." I didn't know I'd won until the very last day of the Festival, a wonderful cap to the event.
2. A panel that I moderated, on Writing for Magazines, went surprisingly well. It also included Gary Ferguson, Peter Stark, and Bill Vaughn. I'd never met the last two, but their stories, advice and humor dovetailed well with Gary's and mine. Actually the panel as a whole gave all sorts of conflicting advice to aspiring magazine writers -- but hey, isn't that what life's about? (The festival may have CD's available in a few months -- check their website.)
3. I arrived in town, picked up the Missoula Independent, and was surprised to find my own article, "Fit to be T'd," featured in that week's edition. Like several of my essays, it had been syndicated by Writers on the Range -- and I never know where those are going to show up!
Check out the festival next year. And enter the contest to be named what I like to think of as Montana's "wiseass laureate"... if you dare take me on while I gun for the hat trick!
1. I pulled down my SECOND Nahum Tate Cup! This is a feat unprecedented in Montana literary history: there have only been four "Happy Tales Contests," and now I've won two of them. Sorry to be tooting my own horn so much here, but it IS pretty much a career objective -- achieved! The idea of the contest is to rewrite a classic work of literature with a happier ending. In 2001 I took on Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It," and this year's victim -- I mean, honoree -- was Larry Watson's "Montana 1948." I didn't know I'd won until the very last day of the Festival, a wonderful cap to the event.
2. A panel that I moderated, on Writing for Magazines, went surprisingly well. It also included Gary Ferguson, Peter Stark, and Bill Vaughn. I'd never met the last two, but their stories, advice and humor dovetailed well with Gary's and mine. Actually the panel as a whole gave all sorts of conflicting advice to aspiring magazine writers -- but hey, isn't that what life's about? (The festival may have CD's available in a few months -- check their website.)
3. I arrived in town, picked up the Missoula Independent, and was surprised to find my own article, "Fit to be T'd," featured in that week's edition. Like several of my essays, it had been syndicated by Writers on the Range -- and I never know where those are going to show up!
Check out the festival next year. And enter the contest to be named what I like to think of as Montana's "wiseass laureate"... if you dare take me on while I gun for the hat trick!
