Whitefish Review debuts 'Awakenings'

Whitefish Review will release “Awakenings & Our Teachers” issue No. 24 on Saturday, Dec. 7 with a celebration at Casey’s in downtown Whitefish. The new issue features 45 authors, poets, photographers, and artists, as well as an interview with singer and songwriter, Huey Lewis. The cover features work by Michael Reeder and Lola Dupré.

“For this issue, our 24th experiment in art, literature, and community, we put out a call for stories where there was an awakening. We also looked at broad interpretations of what could be considered a teacher,” said founding editor Brian Schott.

For the featured interview, Huey Lewis sat down with Review editors to talk about his own awakenings, and specifically his hearing loss. The color section features 16 surprising works of ceramic art by artists from the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana. An interview with resident artist director Steven Young Lee takes a deeper look at the Bray’s tradition of collaboration and teaching.

At the launch event, the evening will feature readings by Kevin Canty, Debra Magpie Earling and Robert Stubblefield.

Kevin Canty’s eighth book, a novel called “The Underworld,” was published by W.W. Norton in 2017. He is also the author of three previous collections of short stories and four novels. Canty has won a Pacific Northwest Book Award, and been in Best American Short Stories (twice) and on the “Notable Books” by The New York Times Book Review multiple times. He is a professor of English at the University of Montana.

Debra Magpie Earling’s novel Perma Red (Putnam, 2002) won the Western Writers Association Spur Award, WWA’s Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for Best First Novel, a WILLA Literary Award and the American Book Award. She is a professor of Fiction and Native American Studies at the University of Montana.

Robert Stubblefield has published fiction and personal essays in publications like Best Stories of the American West, Open Spaces, and High Desert Journal, among others. Robert grew up in eastern Oregon and now lives in Missoula, Montana and teaches at the University of Montana.

The event will also feature two Whitefish locals who are published in this issue. Sherri Nissen is a fifth grade teacher in Columbia Falls and will read from her essay “River Lessons.” David Noftsinger is a songwriter and will perform from his submission, “Cold Crow.”

Doors open at 6 p.m. with live music by the Caroline Keys Trio. Readings begin at 7 p.m. The Whitefish Community Foundation, Glacier Bank, and Good Medicine Lodge sponsor the evening. A $10 entry donation is suggested to support the nonprofit journal.

Whitefish Review is a nonprofit journal publishing the literature, art, and photography of mountain culture and beyond. As a recognized nonprofit corporation created for the public good, it is supported by generous donations, grants, and subscriptions.

Copies of Whitefish Review are also available in bookstores and for order online at www.whitefishreview.org.