Livingston Montana Writers

Find a whole community of professional writers right here in historic Livingston, Montana, attracted to this area for many reasons, including the surrounding beauty and the peaceful small-town environment.

Livingston Writers
- by David McCumbe

Livingston and environs are home to more professional writers, per capita, than San Francisco, New York City, or any other literary hotbed you'd care to name.

These days nobody knows quite who to blame for this, although novelist Tom McGuane, who moved here nearly three decades ago, certainly had a lot to do with it, playing a role in attracting several of his writer friends to the area, including the late poet Richard Brautigan; novelist / screenwriter William Hjortsberg; and Russell Chatham, who is renowned for writing as well as for his magnificent landscapes arid for Livingston's five-star restaurant, Chatham's Livingston Bar and Grille.

Tom is certainly not alone. Renowned adventure writer, Tim Cahill arrived twenty-plus years ago, and eventually caused several other writers to fall in love with this place, including me.

Of course, not all the ink-slingers lire imports. Quite a few native species, including journalist Scott McMillion, author of Mark of the Grizzly; singer-songwriter Mike Devine and his singer-songwriter son, Sean; magazine writer Lynette Dodson; archaeologist-writer Larry Lahren; and poet Patty Miller, to name a few.

The list of Livingston-area writers goes on and on: Novelist and Time Magazine columnist Walter Kirn. Mystery writers Jamie Harrison and Peter Bowen. Environmental authorities Doug Peacock, Alston Chase and Thomas McNamee. Fishing and hunting writers John Holt and Ben 0. Williams. jazz critic and humorist James Liska. Foreign correspondent Thomas Goltz. cowgirl poets Gwen Petetsen and Sandy Seaton. The fine historical novelist, Richard S. Wheeler. journalist Steve Chapple, Debby Bull, Maryanne Vollers, Max Crawford, Diane Smith, Steven Hughes, Kim Leighton, et cetera.

Then there are the literary drop-ins, those who spend at least part of the year here on a regular basis. They include Jim Harrison, Peter Mattheissen, Guy de la Valdene, Toby Thompson, Richard Ford and Robert F. Jones. Also, the town plays host to two major writers' conferences annually.
Writers love it here for all the reasons everybody else does - the Yellowstone, the mountains, the small-town comfort, the people. But there are more prosaic reasons. When you're having trouble with a manuscript or merely wish a sympathetic ear toward which you might lament the tyranny of editors, publishers and agents, it's quite a comfort to have half a dozen world-class scribblers within a two-block walk. So, watch out. This sort of infestation is the sort of thing that feeds on itself. It may actually get worse before it gets better.

Contributed by Livingston write, David McCumbe, whose most recent book is the Cowboy Way: Seasons of a Montana Ranch.

- content from David McCumbe via Livingston Chamber of Commerce