New Montana Story Anthology Published

Announcing the publication of The New Montana Story: An Anthology by Riverbend Publishing. The anthology showcases the third wave of modern Montana storytellers and includes both well-known writers and new discoveries.

New Montana Story AnthologyPublished

Riverbend Publishing of Helena, Montana, announces the publication of The New Montana Story: An Anthology, compiled by veteran Montana editor Rick Newby. Showcasing the group of writers Newby calls the third wave of modern Montana storytellers," The New Montana Story features more than thirty stories, ranging from short fiction to novel excerpts, memoirs, and personal essays.

The third wave of modern Montana storytellers-writers at mid-career and younger-follows in the footsteps of A. B. Guthrie, Jr., Mildred Walker, and Dorothy Johnson (the first wave) and of Norman Maclean, Mary Clearman Blew, Thomas McGuane, William Kittredge, and Ivan Doig (the second wave). Included in the anthology are stories by such celebrated third-wave writers as Deirdre McNamer, David Long, Melanie Rae Thon, Ralph Beer, Debra Magpie Earling, and Maile Meloy, together with works by talented writers never before anthologized.

Newby writes in the anthologys introduction, The writers of the third wave-shaped, challenged, and instructed by the rigor, ambition, and sheer accomplishment of their forbears-have been writing a new Montana story that is astonishingly diverse and superbly crafted."

Newby continues, The 'new Montana story is many stories: some rural, others urban, some about deep roots, others about the loss of any sense of home, some boisterously funny, others sad beyond bearing. With skill and heart and power, Montanas storytellers continue to tell us about individual lives-and the realities of Montana existence-in ways that touch us all, no matter where we live or what our experience."

Riverbend Publishing is donating a 5 percent royalty from sales of The New Montana Story to the Montana Center for the Book, in support of the annual Montana Festival of the Book.

The New Montana Story is available in bookstores everywhere. It retails for $21.95.