Elk River Arts & Lectures presents the Fall 2023 Lecture Series
in pictures
Journalist Kathleen McLaughlin discusses her book Blood Money. Photo by William Campbell.
Metís storyteller and Montana Poet Laureate Chris La Tray speaks to a packed house about the history of the Little Shell and settler colonialism in Montana. Photo by Anthony Pavkovich.
Poet Ilya Kaminsky reads a poem from his award-winning Deaf Republic. Photo by William Campbell.
Kaminsky and Farris teach a youth poetry writing workshop for middle and high school students.
McLaughlin talks censorship (and more) with a Multimedia Journalism class at Park High.
During his visit to Livingston, La Tray spoke with the entire fourth grade about how Anishinaabe values inform his poetry writing. He also met with a high school poetry class.
Poet Katie Farris reads from her much acclaimed Standing in the Forest of Being Alive. Photo by Wiliam Campbell.
Attendees of the Montana Youth Climate Summit, with a panel on wildfire moderated by Lecture Series guest Justin Angle and members of the Park High Green Initiative.
Authors Nick Mott and Justin Angle speak about about wildfire at Elk River Books. Photo by Ethan Ash.
SEptember 21
Kathleen McLaughlin
Thursday, September 21, 2023
Elk River Books
122 S. 2nd St.
Livingston, MT 59047
7 pm
KathleenMcLaughlin published her first book, Blood Money, in February 2023. Kirkus called it “a disturbing, painful story that smoothly combines the personal and the universal.”
McLaughlin’s visit is made possible by the generous support of the Park County Community Foundation and individual donors. During her time in Livingston, McLaughlin will meet with students at Park High. The free, public event will include a book signing and reception.
Kathleen McLaughlin is an award-winning journalist who reports and writes about the consequences of economic inequality around the world. A frequent contributor to The Washington Post and The Guardian, McLaughlin’s reporting has also appeared in The New York Times, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, The Economist, NPR, and more. She is a former Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT and has won multiple awards for her reporting on labor issues around the globe.
McLaughlin’s first book, Blood Money: The Story of Life, Death, and Profit Inside America’s Blood Industry, is a “haunting” (Anne Helen Petersen, author of Can’t Even) and deeply personal investigation of an underground for-profit medical industry and the American underclass it drains for blood and profit.
McLaughlin spent 15 years as a correspondent in China, where she won multiple SABEW awards from the Association for Business Journalists of for her reporting on labor and human rights abuses in the massive factories that supply the world’s tech products and cheap clothing, and reporting on the displacement of rural villagers in the rush for development. Her work traced the fault lines of China’s economic rise and how workers got caught in the crosshairs, and was recognized by the True Story Award and the One World Media awards. She traced a trail of counterfeit medications from China to East Africa and wrote about the consequences of China’s entry into the sphere of global health. As a correspondent for Science magazine, she revealed China’s plan to create a national park system to protect endangered species.
She now lives in Montana, where she was born and raised, and continues to write about social justice and ongoing threats to democracy for the Guardian, the Nation and other national outlets.
October 9 (Indigenous Peoples’ Day)
Chris La Tray
Monday, October 9, 2023
Elk River Books
122 S. 2nd St.
Livingston, MT 59047
7 pm
Chris La Tray is a Métis storyteller, a descendent of the Pembina Band of the mighty Red River of the North, and an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. He writes the weekly newsletter “An Irritable Métis.”
Chris La Tray is a Métis storyteller, a descendent of the Pembina Band of the mighty Red River of the North and an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. He is currently a board member for All Nations Health Center in Missoula – one of 41 Urban Indian Health Programs (UIHP) located throughout the United States – and a member of the advisory board for Swan Valley Connections in Condon. For several years he has taught poetry to elementary students on the Flathead Reservation on behalf of the Missoula Writing Collaborative, and teaches a storytelling class at the University of Montana for the Creative Writing department.
La Tray’s third book, Becoming Little Shell, will be published by Milkweed Editions in 2024. His first book, One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large, won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award. His book of haiku and haibun poetry, Descended from a Travel-worn Satchel, was published in 2021 by Foothills Publishing. Chris writes the weekly newsletter “An Irritable Métis” and lives near Frenchtown, Montana.
https://chrislatray.substack.com
La Tray’s visit is made possible by the generous support of the Park County Community Foundation and individual donors. During his time in Livingston, La Tray will meet with students at Park High. The free, public event will include a book signing and reception.
October 19
Ilya Kaminsky & Katie Farris
Thursday, October 19, 2023
Elk River Books
122 S. 2nd St.
Livingston, MT 59047
7 p.m.
Garth Greenwell called poet Ilya Kaminsky “the most brilliant poet of his generation, one of the world’s few geniuses.” The Paris Review and The Los Angeles Review of Books have both described Katie Farris‘s poetry as “extraordinary.”
During their time in Livingston, Kaminsky and Farris will teach a poetry workshop for local youth. Recommended for middle & high school students. Friday, October 20 from 1-2:30 p.m. at the Livingston-Park County Public Library. Free! Email director@elkriverarts.org with any questions.
Ilya Kaminsky is the author of the widely acclaimed Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019), a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry, which Kevin Young, writing in The New Yorker, called a work of “profound imagination.” Poems from Deaf Republic were awarded Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize and the Pushcart Prize. He is also the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), and Musica Humana (Chapiteau Press, 2002). Kaminsky has won the Whiting Writer’s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and the Foreword Magazine’s Best Poetry Book of the Year award. His poems have been translated into numerous languages and his books have been published in many countries including Turkey, Holland, Russia, France, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, Spain and China. Kaminsky is also the editor of several anthologies.
In an interview with the Poetry Society of America on poetry and politics, Kaminsky notes, “Poetry is the art of language. It was Brodsky, I think, who said that poetry and politics have only two things in common, letter p and letter o. I agree with this. But, poetry is also the art of attentiveness. Attentiveness, Celan teaches us, is the natural prayer of the human soul. I don’t think there is much poetry of attentiveness that isn’t political. (The decision not to be political is also political.)”
Kaminsky was born in the former Soviet Union city of Odessa. He lost most of his hearing at the age of four after a doctor misdiagnosed mumps as a cold, and his family was granted political asylum by the United States in 1993, settling in Rochester, New York. After his father’s death in 1994, Kaminsky began to write poems in English.
In the late 1990s, Kaminsky co-founded Poets For Peace, an organization that sponsors poetry readings in the United States and abroad. He has also worked as a Law Clerk at the National Immigration Law Center and at Bay Area Legal Aid, helping the poor and homeless to overcome their legal difficulties. He is on the creative writing faculty at Princeton University.
Katie Farris is a poet, writer of hybrid forms, and translator. Her poetry has been called “extraordinary” by both Paris Review and The Los Angeles Review of Books, while The Literary Review commented on the “immersive magic and unforgettable imagery” of Farris’s writing. Farris’s work has been commissioned by MoMA and appears in American Poetry Review, Granta, McSweeneys, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, Poetry and 2022 Pushcart Prize Anthology. Her most recent book is Standing in the Forest of Being Alive (Alice James Books, 2023.) It has been called “luminous” by Carolyn Forche and “real genius” by Kaveh Akbar.
Farris is also is the award-winning translator of several books of poetry from the French, Ukrainian, Chinese, and Russian, including Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poems and Prose. Her awards include The Pushcart Prize, Orison Prize, and Anne Halley Prize from Massachusetts Review. In addition to her poetry and translations, Farris also writes prose about cancer, the body, and its relationship to writing, such as in her recent, widely circulated essay in Oprah Daily.
Kaminsky and Farris’s visit is made possible by the generous support of the Park County Community Foundation and individual donors. The free, public event will include a book signing and reception.
October 26
Nick Mott & JUstin Angle
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Elk River Books
122 S. 2nd St.
Livingston, MT 59047
7 pm
Journalist Michelle Nijhuis called Nick Mott and Justin Angle‘sThis Is Wildfire “an eminently readable guide to good citizenship in our hotter, smokier, riskier times.”
Mott and Angle’s visit is made possible by the generous support of the Park County Community Foundation and individual donors. During their time in Livingston, Mott and Angle will meet with students at Park High and participate in the Youth Climate Summit. The free, public event will include a book signing and reception.
Nick Mott is a reporter and podcast producer based in Montana. His previous productions include the Peabody Award-winning podcast Threshold and the MTPR podcast Richest Hill, which was recognized by the New Yorker as one of the best podcasts of 2019. His work has been published in NPR’s All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition, the Washington Post, Outside, High Country News, Reveal, PRI’s The World, and other outlets. He holds an MA in environmental journalism from CU Boulder.
Justin Angle is Associate Professor of Marketing and the Poe Family Distinguished Faculty Fellow. He earned his Ph.D. and MBA from the Michael G. Foster School of Business at the University of Washington. Justin’s academic research, which focuses on how people express their identities through their consumption behaviors has recently been published in Journal of Consumer Research and Journal of Consumer Psychology. His work has been covered by media outlets such as Sports Illustrated, ESPN, The Washington Post, and Business Insider. Justin is also creator and host of the College of Business podcast, A New Angle.
Prior to his doctoral studies, Justin worked as a bond trader with a specialty in hedging interest rate risk for mortgage banks. After leaving the trading floor, he worked as a collegiate rowing coach at both the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University. When not teaching, doing research, or chasing his two daughters around, Justin is a competitive endurance athlete and field tester for Patagonia.
Mott and Angle’s book This Is Wildfire: How to Protect Yourself, Your Home, and Your Community in the Age of Heat will be published in August 2023. The first of its kind, This Is Wildfire is required reading for our new reality. It offers everything you need to know about fire in one useful volume: reflects on the history of humanity’s connection to flames; analyzes how our society arrived at this perilous moment; and recounts stories of those fighting fire and trying to change our relationship with it. It also offers practical advice: choosing your insurance and making your home resilient to burns; packing an emergency go-bag; rebuilding after a fire; and so much more.
Journalist Michelle Nijhuis called This Is Wildfire “an eminently readable guide to good citizenship in our hotter, smokier, riskier times.”