2023 Festival

John Fraley came to Montana as a teenager and received fish and wildlife management degrees from both Montana universities. He retired after a forty-year career with Montana's wildlife agency, mostly spent in northwest Montana's Flathead country. John wrote regularly for Montana Outdoors, and he has written articles on the Flathead's history and other topics for True West, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Western Wildlands, Wild Outdoor World, and other magazines. John's other books include Wild River Pioneers; Rangers, Trappers, and Trailblazers; A Woman's Way West; and Heroes of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. He lives with his wife, Dana, in Kalispell.

Steve Fox is the winner of the Rick Bass/Montana Prize for Fiction. his work has appeared in or been recognized by Midwestern Gothic, Narrative Magazine, The Wisconsin Academy of Arts, Sciences & Letters, The Iowa Review, Whitefish Review, Cutbank, the Wisconsin Writers Association, and more. Steve lives in Wisconsin with his wife, three boys, and one dog.

From Hope, British Columbia, Brady Harrison has worked as a piano mover, construction yardman, reporter, and research officer for the Métis Settlements of northern Alberta. He has written, edited, or co-edited several books, including The Term Between: Stories and A Journey to Al Ramel: A Novel (forthcoming), and his articles, essays, poems and stories have appeared in journals and books in several countries. He lives in Missoula, Montana, and has also lived and worked in France and Ireland.

Anne Holub is a graduate of the University of Montana's MFA program in creative writing. Her poetry has been featured on Chicago Public Radio and Yellowstone Public Radio, and in various print and digital publications. Her debut poetry chapbook, 27 Threats to Everyday Life (Finishing Line Press 2023) was a semi-finalist in the publisher’s 2021 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition and contains her poem “Mudslides” which was awarded runner-up in the 2022 Mountain West Writers Contest by the Western Humanities Review.

Buzzy Jackson grew up in the mountains (Truckee CA and Montana), lived all over the place (Iowa City, Perth Australia, Los Angeles, Barcelona, NYC, Berkeley, Cambridge MA, San Francisco, Oakland, Cape Town South Africa), and then moved back to the mountains again (Colorado), where she lives with her family and Ralph (a dog). She is the proud daughter of Motor City legend Ruth J. Hall and beloved mystery writer Jon A. Jackson.

Elizabeth Gonzalez James is the author of the novels Mona at Sea and The Bullet Swallower (forthcoming 2024), as well as the chapbook, Five Conversations About Peter Sellers. Originally from South Texas, Elizabeth now lives with her family in Massachusetts.

Adria L. Jawort is a Northern Cheyenne fiction writer and veteran journalist based in Billings, Montana. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, and Indian Country Today, among many other publications. She is the author of Moonrise Falling, a horror novel, and the editor of and contributor to Off the Path volumes I and II, a fiction anthology featuring indigenous writers from around the globe. Adria currently finishing a novel, "...And Then There Was No More Art," based on her experiences of coming out as a trans Two Spirit/transgender woman in Montana and is Director of the Indigenous Transilience non-profit.

Sonora Jha is the author of the novels The Laughter (2023) and Foreign (2013) and the memoir How To Raise A Feminist Son: A Memoir and Manifesto (2021). The Laughter has earned rave reviews from The New York Times, The New Yorker, India Today, and The Seattle Times and received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Bookpage and others. Sonora was formerly a journalist covering crime, politics, and culture for the Times of India and for East Magazine, Singapore. She moved to the United States to earn a Ph.D. in Political Communication. Dr. Jha's OpEds, essays, and public appearances have featured in The New York Times, on BBC, and in several anthologies. She is a professor of journalism at Seattle University and also teaches creative writing for Hugo House, Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat, Creative Nonfiction, and Seattle Public Library.

Jessica E. Johnson writes poetry, nonfiction, and things in between. An Oregon Literary Fellowship recipient and an Oregon Book Award finalist for In Absolutes We Seek Each Other, she is the author of the book-length poem Metabolics, a study in the ecologies of contemporary parenting that borrows the language of metabolic pathways to construct an allegory about a family in the Pacific Northwest. She lives in Portland.

Marc C. Johnson is the author of books on US Senate history – including his latest Mansfield
and Dirksen: Bipartisan Giants of the Senate – and a frequent commentator on American politics
and political history
Johnson is also a fellow at the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana.
His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Bulwark, California
Journal of Politics and Policy, Montana The Magazine of Western History, and the Indiana
Magazine of History. He is a columnist for the Lewiston (ID) Tribune and writes regularly on the
blog Many Things Considered.

Charles Kell is the author of Ishmael Mask, just released from Autumn House Press. His first collection, Cage of Lit Glass, was chosen by Kimiko Hahn for the 2018 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize. He is an assistant professor at the Community College of Rhode Island and editor of the Ocean State Review.

Lauren R. Korn holds an M.A. in poetry from the University of New Brunswick, where she was the recipient of the Tom Riesterer Memorial Prize and the Angela Ludan Levine Memorial Book Prize. A former bookseller and the former Director of the Montana Book Festival, she is now the host and co-producer of Montana Public Radio’s literature-based radio program and podcast, The Write Question. She is a 2022 Fishtrap Fellow, a graduate of the 2017 Tin House Summer Workshop and the 2016 Juniper Summer Writing Institute, where she attended as a Writer of Promise. Her interviews with authors have been published in Foglifter, The Adroit Journal, The Malahat Review, and Carve Magazine; and her short book reviews have been featured in the American Bookseller Association’s IndieNext previews and on LitHub.com. She currently lives on the aboriginal territories of the Salish and Kalispel people (Missoula, Montana).