Debra Magpie Earling to be Keynote Presenter at Flathead River Writers Conference
An award-winning author and University of Montana professor emeritus, Debra Magpie Earling's lecture and workshops at this year’s festival have something of a metaphysical bent
By Mike Kordenbrock
The Flathead River Writers Conference is back this week, with a host of authors, agents and writers ready to present on topics like “Secrets of a Working Writer,” the “Elements of Conjuring Story,” “Mystery Genres and The Cozy Market,” how to “Revise Like a Pro,” and “10 Hacks of Successful Writers.”
The annual multi-day event is organized and hosted by Authors of the Flathead, and this year’s keynote speaker will be the award-winning Missoula-based author and University of Montana professor emeritus Debra Magpie Earling.
Also presenting at this year’s conference will be novelist Kathy Dunnehoff, author and former Booklist executive editor Keir Graff, Agatha Award-winning author Leslie Budewitz, Flathead Beacon columnist and writer Maggie Neal Doherty, Howland Literary agent Zoe-Aline Howard, Nelson Literary Agency agent Joanna McKenzie, technical writer and author Carl Bond Stevens, and romance author Danica Winters.
Earling’s debut novel, “Perma Red” originally came out in the early 2000s, and was re-released in 2022. Last year brought the publication of her second novel, “The Lost Journals of Sacajawea,” a work that took nearly 20 years to write. The New York Times described “The Lost Journals of Sacajawea” as “a formally inventive, historically eye-opening novel” which is “voiced by a Sacajawea who starts out a Shoshone-speaking 7-year-old and is gambled away to a Francophone fur trader whose child she bears at 12.”
Earling, who is Bitterroot Salish, became the first Native American director of the University of Montana’s creative writing program in 2016, roughly 15 years after she began teaching at the university.
Her lecture and workshops at this year’s festival have something of a metaphysical bent. Earling’s keynote lecture, “Wonders of the Landscape: One Writer’s Journey,” will describe how personal experience and geography can become part of “a greater mythology,” according to a description on the Authors of the Flathead website. On Saturday, Earling will lead a workshop called “The Dark Door Opens” which explores how the uncanny, unusual and spooky can be tapped into for producing convincing, haunting writing. On the festival’s final day, Sunday, Earling will lead a second workshop called “Elements of Conjuring Story,” which will impart ideas and methods to help characters, scenes and stories more effectively capture readers’ attention.
The conference will take place at the Kalispell Red Lion Inn from Oct. 4 through Oct. 6, and the full lineup of speakers, presenters and workshop hosts can be found at authorsoftheflathead.org. Tickets can also be purchased on the Authors of the Flathead website. All slots have been filled for “Capture Readers with Conflict,” an extended Oct. 4 workshop with Keir Graff. Appointment slots with agents Zoe Howard, Joanna MacKenzie and Keir Graff have also been filled.