Shakespeare & Co. is pleased to host a reading and discussion with award-winning Missoula-based poet Philip Schaefer on Wednesday, November 11, 2026, at 6:00 pm. Schaefer will read from his new poetry collection, Pagan Era. Joining Schaefer will be fellow Missoula-based writers Michael Hicks, author of a forthcoming short story collection, and Brett Puryear, author of the forthcoming novel, Nightburner. This event is free and open to the public.

About Philip Schaefer’s Pagan Era:
Pagan Era is a road map for revenge on the mind. Grappling with the damaged, external world, the collection veers through an isolated, rural Montana landscape, considering it a projection of the speaker’s own personal demons and flaws. In its reflection on religion, the book balances divorce and dialogue, breaking away from a childhood brand of 90s’ nondenominational Christianity while creating a conversation with one of its primary characters: Satan. In this way, Pagan Era explores a cynicism stemming more from sincerity than irony, though everyone is indicted – first and foremost the speaker himself. 

These poems swim in the deep end, struggle for air, yet somehow find solace in the reprieve of fighting until you just let go. The collection may seem to show little room for mercy, but as the speaker revenges himself further, as the mind begins to resemble more and more the broken exterior, the realization emerges: maybe mercy is all we have.

Author Biographies:
Philip Schaefer’s debut collection Bad Summon (University of Utah Press, 2017) won the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize, and his second, Pagan Era, won the Barrow Street Poetry Prize (2026), selected by John Murillo. Individual poems have won contests published by The Puritan, Meridian, & Passages North. His work has been featured on Poem-A-Day, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and in The Poetry Society of America. He runs a modern Mexican restaurant called The Camino in Missoula, MT. 

Michael Hicks was a Truman Capote Fellow at the University of Montana. His work was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appears in The Missouri Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Missoula.

Brett Puryear was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He's the author of the novel Nightburner, an Appalachian literary survival-horror forthcoming from Minotaur Books in 2027. He has written for Southwest Review, The Iowa Review, CutBank, Writer's Foundry Review, Field & Stream, Men's Journal, and many other venues online and in print. He's a regular contributor at the American travel and culture publisher Wildsam, where he writes about fly fishing, road travel, and the natural world. He lives in Missoula, Montana, with his family

Philip Schaefer

Michael Hicks

Brett Puryear