The library is excited to welcome writer, teacher, and wilderness advocate Amy Rae Pearson on Thursday, March 14 at 6:30 pm in the Cordingley Room. Pearson will read, and talk about about, her poetry detailing her experiences at the Jumbo Mountain Lookout during one of the most active fire seasons ever in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
The Jumbo Mountain Lookout is located between Augusta and Seeley Lake in the middle of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, a little over 20 miles north of Ovando.
Pearson grew up on a farm in northcentral Montana and earned a Ph.D. in organizational communication from Arizona State University. After finishing her formal education, she hit the road to Asia for a few years, but found herself missing the mountains of Montana. She has worked for the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, in the environmental non-profit sector, and now as a communications professor at Great Falls College-Montana State University. She also is the former president of Montana Wilderness Association’s Flathead Chapter.
Her book 100 Days of Solitude came out in 2017. Pearson spent the entire summer of 2015 working as the lone fire lookout at Jumbo Mountain, her first summer in that job. In an interview with the Daily Inter Lake, Pearson said she knew what she was getting into when she chose that job and that it fit her personality at the time:
“I always knew that I would be a lookout,” Pearson said. “I think it just suits my nature a little bit. I like solitude, I like to spend time on my own and I love the mountains and I love the time by myself to just be there and to write. That’s probably why (I chose the job.)”
Pearson has continued to write and came out with a second poetry collection, as well, titled “Poems for Certain Women.” It is dedicated to her Grandma Harriet who also was a poet. Mia Kelso, a fellow writer, wrote of the book, “These words drip with authenticity and with each drop I am filled whole with what it is to be wild in my womanhood.”
For more information, contact Jake Sorich at jsorich@greatfallslibrary.org or
406-453-0349 ex. 220.
Author: Staff
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