Montana has a rich history of high quality literature, and nobody can really explain why. But for the past century, Montana, or Montana writers, have produced many of the most influential books to come out of the West. The reputation has become such that many established writers move here and adopt the state, as with Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison, Rick Bass, and Debra Magpie Earling, the most recent chairman of the Creative Writing Department at the University of Montana.

But Montana’s strong reputation was mostly built on the backs of wonderful writers who were grew up in Montana, writers like A.B. Guthrie, Dorothy Johnson, Ivan Doig, and Norman Maclean.

Breakfast in Montana is a podcast where two Montana writers, Russell Rowland and Charles Finn discuss two Montana books per episode, in an effort to explore what it is about this state that inspires so much incredible literature. In each episode, Rowland and Finn interview a contemporary Montana writer, and then pair them up with a writer that they have found influential to their own work.

 

List of Episodes

We are grateful for past support from the Montana Arts Council, and for our sponsors, The Isle of Books in Bozeman, and The Bookstore, in Dillon.