Last March Bessann and I were delighted to host Montana author and publisher Dale Burk (on right), who attended the presentation of the inaugural Wallace Stegner Prize from the University of Utah Press. As a reporter for the Missoulian, Dale was one of the principal figures in the Bitterroot National Forest clearcutting controversy. He now owns Stoneydale Press in Stevensville, Montana.
Thanks to Dale and to everyone at the University of Utah Press and the Marriott Library for making this a very special day. |
Dear
Readers,
This March I was honored to learn that The Bitterroot and Mr. Brandborg has received the Western Writers of America's Spur Award in the category of contemporary nonfiction. The Spur has been awarded annually since 1953, initially for fiction and more recently in a number of nonfiction categories.
In May 2011 I was in Montana to present my new book, The Bitterroot and Mr. Brandborg: Clearcutting and the Struggle for Sustainable Forestry in the Northern Rockies. Chapter One Bookstore in Hamilton hosted a very enjoyable evening at which Stewart and Anna Vee Brandborg attended, along with other members of the Brandborg family and a number of G.M. Brandborg's friends and acquaintances.
That summer and fall I was in Helena as part of a James H. Bradley Fellowship, through which authors spend a month researching in the collections of the Montana Historical Society. I examined the papers of former senator Lee Metcalf, one of the country's strongest conservation champions, and am currently working on an article for the society's quarterly journal, Montana: The Magazine of Western History. The Autumn 2010 issue has an article I wrote on G. M. Brandborg and the Bitterroot clearcutting controversy. You might also enjoy an article I wrote for Forest History Today, the journal of the Forest History Society.
The
journal Weber, The Contemporary West featured one of my essays on page 90 of its Spring-Summer
2009 issue. Fans of the Dirty Devil River canyons might want to have a look. I
was honored to learn that this essay received the journal's O. Marvin
Lewis award for the best essay published during 2009.
I'm also introducing a new section to this site called The Overlook, which will feature an occasional essay on the wild places of the West.
Thanks for your interest! Fred Swanson Comments?
Email me here.
P.S. For an interesting literary take on the recent events in Egypt and the Mideast, see my friend Jennifer Anderson's novel, Ill Wind in Egypt. Jennifer was a foreign correspondent in Cairo during the first years of the Mubarek regime and her book presciently fortells the current unrest there. |
