Library to host talk on women writers

The Thompson Falls Public Library will host the Montana Conversations program “Montana Women Writers” with Caroline Patterson on Tuesday, March 19. The program will be at the library at 6:30 p.m. The presentation is free and open to the public. Funding for the Montana Conversations program is provided by Humanities Montana through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Montana’s Cultural Trust, and private donations.

Patterson provides an hour-long survey of Montana women writers, from early Native American writers through homesteaders and settlers (Mary Ronan and Nannie Alderson) into the mining days (Mary MacLane of Butte) and the progressive era of Montana (Frieda Fliegelman and Grace Stone Coates). Patterson finishes with a survey of the contemporary women poets, memoirists, and fiction writers who have helped to reinterpret and re-envision the American West (Judy Blunt, Sandra Alcosser, Melissa Kwansy, Maile Meloy, Deirdre McNamer, and Tami Haaland). To conclude, Patterson asks the audience to volunteer stories about remarkable women they have known who were homesteaders, teachers, ranchers, rodeo riders, and homemakers.

Patterson, of Missoula, has published fiction and nonfiction in publications including Seventeen, Southwest Review and Sunset. She is the author of Ballet at the Moose Lodge: Stories, Montana Women Writers: A Geography of the Heart, and two children’s books on natural history. She also edited Montana Women Homesteaders: A Field of One’s Own, Border to Border: Historic Quilts and Quiltmakers of Montana, and Fra Dana: American Impressionist in the Rockies. She teaches creative writing through The University of Montana and the Missoula Writing Collaborative.

For more information, please call the library at 827-3547.