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Before I left Missoula in 2008, I stood on Higgins Bridge, shook my fist at the churning Clark Fork River, and with all the melodrama of Scarlet O’ Hara, swore that I’d be back, and with a published book. That’s right, a BOOK. With a shiny cover. And chapters. And an acknowledgements page.

And so, after three years of flaming meteors and alien invasions and giant poison spitting toads and who knows what else (who said writing a book was easy?), I shall make my Great Return to Missoula at the Montana Festival of the Book this fall. I don’t know yet if I’ll be reading at Fact and Fiction, or at the Wilma, or perhaps standing on the M for an audience of puckerbrush and ponderosa pines. But I will be reading.

My BOOK.

I began My Life as Laura at the beginning of my MFA in 2006. I had no idea what writing a book meant, beyond subjecting my fellow workshoppers to half-cocked drafts. (Flashback: sudden memory of an early chapter that included a certain “Kraft Macaroni n’ Cheese Incident,” in which orange noodles gave me the ability the ability to channel Laura Ingalls Wilder.)

Uh, that did not make the final cut.

I’ll be launching an author website soon (Does “book” mean I’m no longer a “writer” but an “author” now? One can hope). In the meantime, I look forward to the time when I can see the people who saw the pages in humbler, more orange forms.

The Western Literature Association Conference will be that same weekend. Also, a good thing.

P is for Publication!

Hey my story, "The Law of Meat" is out in the fall '09 The Gettysburg Review. My first fiction pub. Yay! And there's a picture of a tiger!

For any fellow classmates out there this is a revision of the creepy babysitter story from the fall '07 Canty workshop.

The website is down so if you are my mother or my two friends I co-write this blog with and wish to purchase the issue, TGR's number is (717) 337-6770, or email kkoontz@gettysburg.edu.

The Tabby Recommends

Theodore highly recommends The God of Animals by Montana MFA grad Aryn Kyle.

He found the depiction of stable life to be generally convincing, although he did wonder about the barn cats. He worried about them drowning in the canal like Polly Cain. He believes Alice’s mother would have enjoyed a cat to watch TV with, and that the cat, in turn, would appreciate her stillness.

He totally agreed with Alice that Sheila Altman was loud and annoying. Sheila Altman is the type to yell “kitttyyy!" and pet too aggressively. If Sheila Altman came over to his house, Theodore would hide under the bed.

Theodore, like Nona, would like to meet a cowboy. He was down with that plotline, too. His only real complaint was the unanswered questions regarding said God of animals. If there is such a God, why are there fleas? Eve ate the apple, but what did cats ever do? He wishes the intelligent and lovely Ms. Kyle had dedicated more lines of her lucid, insightful prose to this important topic.

A final note: Theodore liked the part where Alice has clandestine phone conversations with her teacher. He also enjoys hiding in closets. They are a great place to pee.

Montana MFA's in the News

In my lit mag research (read: randomly clicking on websites) I stumbled upon Elizabeth Benjamin (class of '07) in The New Orleans Review. Last I heard Elizabeth was butchering chickens in Maine. And writing. Chickens and literature are inexorably linked, I've noticed. Chickens work in the way that other domesticated animals do not.

From Mount St. Helens:

"When I was twenty-nine, my hair became so tangled with grief that my my mother and I wore bathing suits in the shower together while she greased my hair and combed it under the spray..."