2023 Festival

Marga Lincoln covers arts and entertainment news for the Helena Independent Record's Your Time.

Even at a young age, people could tell Montana-based comedian and humorist Charley Macorn was funny. "He said he wants to be a girl," her father would say through gritted teeth. "Isn't that hilarious?”
Since stepping onstage with Missoula’s HomeGrown Comedy, Charley has criss-crossed the country, performing their distinct and fiery stand-up to sellout crowds. An alumna of the inaugural Portland Queer Comedy Festival, The Onion/Clickhole’s Nerd Up Stand Up, the Presidential Comedy Festival, the Art of Female Comedy Festival, and the 10th Annual Women in Comedy Festival, Charley's writing credits include the all-ages queer-friendly comic book Jill Trent, Science Sleuth and an audio adventure for Big Finish's "Doctor Who" line. When not on the road, Charley lives in Missoula, Montana where she works as a senior trainer at the Davis Center for Equine Pugilism.

Milana Marsenich lives in Northwest Montana near Flathead Lake at the base of the beautiful Mission Mountains. She enjoys quick access to the mountains and has spent many hours hiking the wilderness trails with friends and dogs. For the past 20 years she has worked as a mental health therapist in a variety of settings. As a natural listener and a therapist, she has witnessed amazing generosity and courage in others. She first witnessed this in her hometown of Butte, Montana, a mining town with a rich history and the setting for Copper Sky, her first novel.
She has a short story included in The Montana Quarterly book: Montana, Warts and All. She has three published novels, Copper Sky, The Swan Keeper, and Beautiful Ghost, and one popular history, nonfiction, book Idaho Madams.

John Messick is a writer, teacher, and father who has also worked building hiking trails, fighting wildland fire, and shoveling snow in Antarctica. Since moving to Alaska in 2010, he has lived in Fairbanks, Homer, Ketchikan, and Soldotna, where he still lives with his spouse, Mollie, their two children, and a pair of aging sled dogs.

He currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Writing at Kenai Peninsula College, where he teaches composition and creative writing.

Nick Mott is a reporter and podcast producer based in Livingston, Montana.

Justin Angle is a professor and the Poe Family Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the University of Montana College of Business. His work has been published in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, and the Washington Post.

Christopher Brean Murray’s book, Black Observatory, was chosen by Dana Levin as the winner of the 2021-2022 Jake Adam York Prize. It was recently published by Milkweed Editions. He has received awards from the Academy of American Poets and Inprint Houston, and he served as online poetry editor of Gulf Coast. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Colorado Review, and other journals. He lives in Houston, Texas.

Gwendolyn N Nix is the author of the Celestial Scripts fantasy series, the apocalyptic climate sci-fi Sharks of the Wasteland, and the weird west I Have Asked To Be Where No Storms Come. An active member of HWA, SFWA, and IAMTW, and an editor with Aconyte Books, she lives in Montana with her husband, young son, and wild gray Labrador. Find her at gwendolynnix.com.

Christopher J. Preston is a writer, a professor of philosophy, and a one-time commercial fisherman who is obsessed with the sight of freshly falling snow. The most inflated title he ever possessed was Distinguished Visiting Fellow in the Ethics of the Anthropocene.

Tenacious Beasts is quintessential nature writing for the Anthropocene, touching on different facets of ecological restoration from Indigenous knowledge to rewilding practices. More important, perhaps, the book offers a road map—and a measure of hope—for a future in which humans and animals can once again coexist.

Josh Quick is an author and illustrator residing in Missoula, Montana. He is the writer and drawer of a series of books, including "Montana Quick Facts," "Yellowstone Quick Facts," and "Glacier Park Quick Facts." Recently, he created "More Montana Quick Facts." These compendiums serve as delightful treasure troves of lesser-known facts about the beautiful Treasure State, and to add to their allure, they are adorned with whimsical illustrations suitable for readers of all ages.

Gaaby Rappaport is a 35-year Montana resident. In former lives, she’s been a playwright, published fiction, nonfiction and poetry, and was one of 2017's Academy of Motion Pictures’ Nicholl Fellowship quarterfinalists for her feature screenplay Sure of You. She served as the creative writing director for tech startup The Audience Awards, as copy editor for The Independent, and as a script supervisor for short films, feature films, and television series. In 2020 she earned her master's degree in media arts and filmmaking from the University of Montana. She is currently a freelance editor and is in pre production on her feature film 40teen. She lives in Missoula with her daughter.

Laura Read teaches writing at Spokane Falls Community College and in the MFA program at Eastern Washington University. Her new book of poems, But She Is Also Jane, is just out from University of Massachusetts Press

Almedia Ryan was born and raised in Southeast Texas, spending most of her early years barefoot and exploring the outdoors. Her love of nature took her to the beautiful state of Montana, where she now lives with her husband, two children, and a spoiled rotten husky named Boulder. She used her education of art and dance to teach art to special needs students and as a performance arts choreographer for public schools. After one too many dance injuries, she left teaching and hung up her dancing shoes so she could dive back into another passion—writing.