Featured Speakers

Gary Scharnhorst - Keynote Speaker

Gary Scharnhorst is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of New Mexico. He is the author or editor of over thirty-five books, including Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Twayne, 1985) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Bibliography (Scarecrow, 1985). A few of his most recent works are Kate Field: The Many Lives of a Nineteenth-Century American Journalist (Syracuse UP, 2008), Mainly the Truth: Interviews with Mark Twain (U Alabama, 2009), and Twain in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates (University of Iowa Press, 2010).

Deirdre McNamer

Deirdre McNamer grew up in several small towns in north central Montana. She graduated from the University of Montana with a journalism degree and worked for almost a decade as a wire service and daily newspaper reporter. She returned to UM and obtained an MFA degree in fiction-writing, and, in 1991, published her first novel, Rima in the Weeds. She has since published three more novels, in addition to scores of essays and stories in national publications including the New Yorker, Outside magazine, and the New York Times. Her most recent novel, Red Rover, was named a Best Book of 2007 by the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Artforum, Bloomberg News and the Rocky Mountain News. She has taught in UM's creative writing program for twelve years, and lives in Missoula with her husband, Bryan Di Salvatore.  

 

Jennifer S. Tuttle

Jennifer S. Tuttle is the Dorothy M. Healy Chair in Literature and Health and Associate Professor of English at the University of New England in Maine, where she also serves as faculty director of the Maine Women Writers Collection and directs the Program in Women's and Gender Studies. She is coeditor of The Selected Letters of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (U of Alabama P, 2009) and editor of the first modern-day edition of Gilman's novel The Crux (U of Delaware P, 2002). Her other published work, in Gilman studies and beyond, concerns literatures of the American West as well as issues of health and illness in the late 19th-century U.S. She currently serves as president of the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society and as coeditor of Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers.

Melody Graulich

Melody Graulich is professor of English and American Studies at Utah State University and the editor of the scholarly journal, Western American Literature. Recent books include the co-authored Trading Gazes: Euro-American Women Photographers and Native North Americans, as well as three edited collections, Reading The Virginian in the New West, In Search of a Common Language: Environmental Writing and Education, and Exploring Lost Borders: A Collection of Essays on Mary Austin. Professor Graulich has published numerous essays on western literature and culture, including two essays about the relationship between Mary Austin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Her essay "Monopolizing The Virginian—or Railroading Wister" won the Palladin prize for the best essay published in Montana: A Magazine of Western History for 2006. She is currently working on an edition of the letters of Mary Hallock Foote and a monograph on Wallace Stegner.

Nancy Cook

Nancy Cook is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Montana. She is also the Co-Vice President of the Western Literature Association. Her field of study includes: Western American Studies, Literature of Place, Literature and the Environment, 19th, 20th, and 21st century American Literature and Culture. She received her Ph.D. from SUNY Buffalo. Her publications include: "Home on the Range: Montana Romance Novels and Geographies of Hope," in All Our Stories are Here, "Writing Water in the West: Reclaiming the Language of Reclamation," in The Bureau of Reclamation: History Essays from the Centennial Symposium and "The Romance of Ranching, or Selling Place-Based Fantasies in/of the West," in Postwestern Cultures: Literature, Theory, Space. Her affiliations include: Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), American Studies Association, Center for Great Plains Studies, Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Beta Kappa, Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publication (SHARP), Western Literature Association. (Photo and bio courtesy of UM English Dept.)

Valerie Hedquist

Valerie Hedquist teaches the introductory courses in Art History and Art Criticism, with a special emphasis on the art of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. She enjoys teaching and advising students, collaborating with colleagues, and writing about the art of Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Gabriel Metsu. Her current project is a book on Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy entitled, "Famous on Two Continents: The English Blue Boy and its American History."

 

Jennifer Greene

  Jennifer Greene’s latest book of poetry entitled What Lasts was published by Foothills Publishing in  2010.  She received the Menada Literary Award at the Ditet e Naimit International Poetry Festival in Macedonia, and she participated in a Poetry Marathon in Bosnia.  Her writing appeared on the Heart of the Bitterroot: Voices of Salish and Pend d’Orielle Women CD which was nominated for a Native American Music Award.  Greene won a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Educational Publishers for an article in Teaching Tolerance magazine.  Her book, What I Keep, won the 1998 North American Native Authors Poetry Award.  Jennifer is Salish and Chippewa-Cree and a member of the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes.

Ruth McLauglin

 Ruth McLaughlin grew up in the wheat and cattle country of northeastern Montana where her     grandparents homesteaded. She graduated from the University of Montana, and received an MFA  from the University of Arizona. Her stories and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies,  including The New Montana Story, Montana Women Writers: A Geography of the  Heart, and Best American Short Stories. She received a Montana Arts Council individual artist fellowship in support of her memoir Bound Like Grass, which received this year's Montana Book Award. She lives in Great Falls.