Elsie Fox: Portrait of an Activist

On Mother’s Day of 2006, ninety-eight-year-old Elsie Fox stepped up to a microphone at a park in Bozeman, Montana, and called for people to wake up, remember, act, and make a difference. Spanning a century, Elsie Fox: Portrait of an Activist is the biography of feisty Elsie Fox, who is now 101 years old. It tells the story of a woman who made activism her life.

Fox was born on a remote Eastern Montana ranch and nurtured by a strong desire to be self-reliant at a time when women were expected to be good housewives. She came of age in the rip-roaring decade of the twenties and witnessed the Depression in Seattle. which led her to discover Marxism and a like-minded husband. Those relationships led her to San Francisco and the International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union where she worked for twenty-eight years.

Fox spent WWII fighting for her husband’s release from a Prisoner of War camp in the United States where he was being held as an illegal German alien. The book includes photos and paints a vivid picture of a woman who fights for what she believes, always asking, “If we don’t take action when there are problems in the world, then what are we?”

Elsie Fox: Portrait of an Activist was written by Karen Stevenson, from Miles City, Montana. Stevenson will be a guest on The Write Question February 15 and 19.

Click here to find out more about Karen Stevenson and listen to the program.

Buck Rogers at the Little Big Horn

by Craig Johnson

In my attempts to keep you abreast of the latest developments in forensic history, or in the re-telling thereof, it would appear that even if George Armstrong Custer had ridden into the valley of the Little Big Horn with a million troopers, they would've still fallen to defeat at the hands of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors who had been bathed in 'an invisible ray' that rendered each of them impervious to Misters Remington and Colt.

No, really.

According to Weekly World News the self-appointed 'World's Only Reliable News', and Dr. Angela Day Brewer, these protective rays left 'mysterious ultraviolet scars' in the earth of the famed 1876 battle. "These scars can only be seen through special infrared scopes." Or if you spend a few hours up at the Parkman Bar with a couple of my Cheyenne and Crow buddies getting your beer-goggles on.

"I and my colleagues had always suspected they (the rays) were caused by alien beings. Now we know for certain that they are." says Dr. Brewer.

According to Weekly World, those darned computers have finally been able to decipher electronic data from the UFO crash site at. You guessed it, Roswell, New Mexico.

Honest.

'CIA cryptographer', Walter Frobel says, "The government doesn't want the public to know about the dead aliens. There's good solid evidence that these creatures were the same beings that recorded the events at the Little Big Horn. The data reveals the aliens made certain that there were no white survivors." No mention is made of Comanche, the Mustang/Morgan who also survived-one of only two horses buried by the U.S. Military with full honors.

Frobel elaborated by saying that the beings were from a galaxy billions of light-years away and have apparently been overseeing the development of various North American Indian tribes. Frobel goes on to say, "One passage we decoded clearly explains their reasons for getting involved in the Little Big Horn massacre. The excerpt reads, 'We know the Indian's days on planet earth are numbered because there are so many white men and they are so greedy'."

Speaking as a white man, I don't have too much of an argumentwith that last part, but it does make you wonder what the aliens were up to during Wounded Knee and Sand Creek.

In the interest of public knowledge and good reporting, I called up my buddy Marcus Red Thunder. His comment upon hearing that his ancestors had blownthe Seventh out of their collective saddles with laser beams?

"Are you drinking again?"

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Craig Johnson is the author of the Walt Longmire series. Find out more about Craig Johnson and his books at CraigAllenJohnson.com.

The Write Question features Margot Kahn

Margot Kahn, author of Horses That Buck: The Story of Champion Bronc Rider Bill Smith, is the guest on The Write Question Sunday, January 25 and Thursday, January 29.

Horses That Buck is Kahn's first book. It tells the inside story of the glamor and pitfalls of earning a living as a rodeo cowboy and how one man made the transition from bronc rider to raising and training horses. Kahn spent seven years riding with Bill Smith, and researching and writing the book.

Click here to listen to the program online.

A Reader’s Risk in Western Noir: Neil McMahon and Lone Creek

Inspiration was imminent after I listened to Neil McMahon give a reading. His charisma was contagious and his writing enthralled me. After reading an excerpt from his novel, Lone Creek, I wanted to read more and have since purchased the book.

To be entirely honest, the first page didn’t engage me. Yet, I forged ahead and the more I read the more I wanted to continue. My reaction to his genre of writing surprised me. In the past, I’ve never been interested in reading western noir or stories of ranch life. However, after reading Lone Creek my previous convictions
were trampled.

As a native of Helena, I am skeptical of all portrayals of my home land. I am protective of the beauty of the Helena valley and admire writers and artists that can appreciate the area as much as I do. While reading the descriptions of Helena and the Pettyjohn Ranch in Lone Creek, I felt proud of my home town. The detailed imagery made me feel as though I was walking in the golden grasses, that I could smell the stench of rotting horse carcasses, and feel the pummeling punches slugged into Hugh Davoren’s gut.

I am grateful to Neil McMahon for being the one writer that swayed my previous notions of noir writing. His work inspired me write about ranch life and the complexities of human interaction in such a setting. Montana writers are faced with the difficultly of encapsulating the beauty of Montana, especially the hidden and well protected treasures of the state.

To the readers of The Write Question blog, please take the time to pick up a copy of Neil McMahon’s writing and experience the authenticity of his work. Lone Creek is an engaging Montana mystery novel that is well worth the risk to read.

Lisa Teberg is currently a post-baccalaureate student, majoring in English with a focus in creative writing at the University of Montana.

A Poetic Bit of Holiday Cheer

So as to be sure to be the one this holiday season who gives the gift to your friends who will listen, or the one who throws it in the face of your more-conceded ones, remember this name: Chris Dombrowski. I ask, “were there ever more fulfilling proclamations in the English language than, ‘I told you so!’ or ‘I knew him before he was him!’?” And being an advocate of chest-puffing via other writers’ work myself, I can assure you Chris’ is surely one to remember.

Already a well-known poet throughout the Missoula and greater Montana writing community, I ran into his poetry through a class specifically focused on current Montana writers. Although I’ve enjoyed the class, it has tended toward more regionalist writings, a style I’ve never been too highly fond of, and so, from Chris, I wasn’t expecting much more than another few elk poems outside of Dillon or stanzas comparing the Gallatin and Clark Fork — but what I discovered was something far greater.

Writing in the same poetic styling as Billy Collins, Chris takes his local knowledge, his precise eye for detail, both in nature and in his home, and is able to uncover that in it which takes on the full spectrum of human emotion: the confusion, mystery, and beauty that are all interlaced aspects of the human condition. And yet, what I love most about Chris’ poetry is not necessarily their applicable content, but the means by which this relevance is achieved, the completely fresh, unique, and often startling way he is able to contrast and relate these interwoven facets of human life. In his poem “Get Up, John”, a piece on the struggle of growing older, and a new personal favorite, Chris sharply compares himself to his young son in the lines:

“But the yearling child
reaching into the lineaments of sun
lancing between his crib bars—how might
this shame us, that they seem
to seem graspable to him?”

And in other poems, including “Fragments with Dusk in Them”, the title poem of his recently-published chapbook, and “Landscape with Scavenger and Bonelight”, another new personal favorite, Chris is able to achieve this same universal sentiment through his poignantly harrowing descriptions of the otherwise simple and often mundane scenes around him. It’s simple to say that, speaking as a student, to know his name would be a great benefit in any dinner-table conversation on current literature, but speaking more-prominently as a writer myself, I’d say that beyond knowing his name, knowing Chris’ poetry is a gift any poet-enthusiast would love to receive this holiday season.


Jacob Kahn is currently a sophomore at the University of Montana in Missoula. He is studying Creative Writing, and loves nothing more than a good book of poetry and prose.

Murder and Mayhem in the Montana Mountains

When Neil McMahon walks on stage to give a reading he does not necessarily look like one would expect a Montana cowboy to look. In fact he is a carpenter who writes or more accurately a writer who does carpentry in Missoula. When he starts to read, his characters jump off the page and come alive.

It is not much different when reading one of his books. His characters are well rounded and are always doing things, getting into one jam after another. McMahon does not fill the pages with flowery descriptive prose of landscape and people but with punchy lines that get to the heart of the story and allow the reader to instantly sympathize with the character in a too real landscape.

In the first twenty pages of Lone Creek, the protagonist, a mature Hugh Davoren, is employed at his boyhood stomping grounds: the Pettyjohn Ranch in the Rocky Mountains northwest of Helena, Montana. During his weekly Saturday trip to the dump with the construction debris, he discovers two thoroughbred horses who have been savagely murdered. He has a run in with the foreman and the owner then lands in jail. The surroundings remind him of the girl he had a crush on who died when they were both teenagers.

What could be better to curl up with on a cold Montana afternoon when the North wind is tapping at the windows than a murder mystery that is so real it makes you afraid to walk out your back door?

But as a word of warning, once the last page of Neil McMahon’s Lone Creek is turned, you won’t want to let the Davoren go. Fortunately, you won’t have to because he reappears as the protagonist in McMahon’s latest novel Dead Silver.

Title: Lone Creek
Author: Neil McMahon
Number of Pages: 328
Cover Price: Hardcover $24.95
Trade paperback: $14.95
Publisher: HarperCollins
Released: April 2007


Jullie Hoen is a nontraditional student at the University of Montana, Missoula. She will graduate in spring 2009 with a BA in English with Literature and Creative Writing options. When not in school she makes her home in Great Falls with her husband and dog.

Two Bobbies: A True Story of Hurricane Katrina, Friendship, and Survival

Authors Kirby Larson and Mary Nethery, two real-life best friends, found a way to combine their very different writing styles into this beautiful and poignant book.

Bobbi (a dog with a bobbed tail) and Bob Cat (also with a bobbed tail) traveled together for months after Katrina, barely managing to survive. Expect tears when their astonishing secret of friendship is revealed near the end of the book.

The book is illustrated by Jean Cassels, from New Orleans, whose painful memories of Katrina almost made her turn down the job.

You can find more information about the book and the real Two Bobbies at TwoBobbies.com.

Ten percent of author sales from the book go to Best Friends Animal Society.