Miles Community College is excited to announce that Montana author, Russell Rowland, will be on campus at the Judson H. Flower Jr. Library on September 28, 6:30 p.m., to speak about his latest book, “Fifty-Six Counties: A Montana Journey”. This presentation is free and open to the public.
Montana has a long and celebrated tradition of artful, reflective nonfiction. From Joseph Kinsey Howard’s “Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome” to K. Ross Toole’s “Montana: An Uncommon Land,” we’ve been gifted with a series of erudite and sharp-eyed guides to help show us who we are. To this eminent list we can now add Russell Rowland’s Fifty-Six Counties: A Montana Journey.
Rowland spent the better part of two years studying and traveling around his beloved home state, from the mines of Butte to the pine forests of the Northwest, from the stark, wind-scrubbed badlands of the East to the tourist-driven economies of the mountain West. Along the way, he considered our state’s essential character, where we came from and, most of all, what we might be in the process of becoming.
Rowland is a third generation Montanan, born in Bozeman in 1957. He holds a BA in Music Education from Pacific Lutheran University and an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University. Rowland’s first published book was “In Open Spaces” (Harpercollins, 2002) which made a fairly big splash with a New York Times Review and a week on the San Francisco Chronicle’s bestseller list. His second and third novels, “The Watershed Years” (Riverbend, 2007) and “High and Inside” (Bangtail Press, 2012) were both finalists for the High Plains Book Award. Rowland lives in Billings where he teaches writing workshops and does private consultation with other writers.
Rowland will have books available for purchase at this presentation on September 28. For more information, please contact the Judson H. Flower Jr. Library at 406.874.6153.
