Thursday January 30th: Please join us for an in-store reading and signing for We Leave The Flowers Where They Are. The lineup includes Kelley Provost, Gladys Considine, Victoria Emmons, Sarah Aronson, and Elke Govertsen. This event is part of the on-going tour across the state to bring advocacy to women's voices. This event will benefit Humanities Montana and the Zootown Arts Community Center. 7 pm.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” —Joan Didion
The wisdom of author Joan Didion is coming to fruition all around Montana this fall. Forty-one contemporary Montana women are telling their stories in a new collection to be published September 1st.
Longtime memoir instructor and novelist Richard Fifield of Missoula is curating the anthology, entitled “We Leave The Flowers Where They Are,” named after a line in the single poem included in the book. Fifield is the author of The Flood Girls (Simon & Schuster, 2016) and The Small Crimes Of Tiffany Templeton (Penguin, Spring 2020).
A portion of the book’s proceeds will benefit two nonprofit organizations — Zootown Arts Community Center (ZACC), an arts nonprofit based in Missoula, and Humanities Montana, a nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) with offices around the state.
“Storytelling has been part of the human race for centuries,” says Fifield, 43. “Writing a memoir, telling your own story, changes everything.”
The idea for the project grew out of Fifield’s memoir classes. Women of all ages and backgrounds have been writing and sharing their stories in his classes for years, according to Fifield, who says “it is time to share these stories with a broader audience.”
The anthology is a truly diverse collection, with stories from women all around the Big Sky State, from Powder River to Eureka. Reflecting the lives of all Montana women, the authors’ stories offer joy, pain, humor and hope. From the story of how a midwife in Montana was sued and fought in court to ultimately earn the first professional license issued by the state, to the memoir of an incarcerated woman diagnosed with AIDS, the anthology represents the voices of writers with stories that demand to be told. Fifield’s hope is that these memoirs will help other women to not feel alone, ashamed, and to believe that change is possible.
