Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/category/culture/page/16/)
Over the Christmas holidays last year, Jon Switzer was exhausted. Exhausted, he said, “by my dumb ‘smart’ phone and the constant distractions it brought me.”
So he sat down with an old magazine full of photographs of Montana. He was captivated, he said, but also frustrated because he wanted to go the places pictured in the photos but found little or no guidance on how to find any of them. (more…) Continue Reading →
This House of Books isn’t even open yet and it already has a new home. The independent cooperative bookstore had been talking for almost four months about moving into the old Wendy’s restaurant at 2906 Second Ave. N. (more…) Continue Reading →
This story has been updated to include a correction. Friends and family got a sneak peek at the Annex Coffeehouse and Bakery on Monday evening. The new business is connected to the Fieldhouse restaurant, owned by Ben and Krystal Harman, at 2601 Minnesota Ave. (more…) Continue Reading →
Last year, a 2,000-square-foot space on the top floor of a six-story apartment building in the heart of downtown Billings went on the market. The penthouse property, at 300 N. 25th St., across Third Avenue North from the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office and the downtown bus transfer station, had once been the law offices of the late Charles “Timer” Moses. But it had been used for storage for many years, so it was basically an empty shell. (more…) Continue Reading →
Ted Kim thinks his web-based comedy series has two big things going for it. One is a strong concept, which he describes as “a love story about two sisters who can never get in synch,” and in fact are constantly at war. The other is that it is being filmed in Billings and Roundup, tapping into a national and even an international fascination with Montana. (more…) Continue Reading →
The title of Aaron Parrett’s new book, “Montana Americana Music: Boot Stomping in Big Sky Country,” published this summer by The History Press, was more than enough to draw me in. What made it irresistible was to see that the foreword was written by Smith Henderson, the Montana native whose first novel, “Fourth of July Creek,” published in 2014, was so uncommonly good. (more…) Continue Reading →
When I pitched my new novel, “Edward Unspooled,” to the publishing house with which I’ve been in business for five books, I was struck by a profound difference in our focus. I’d followed passion and emotion—that fire to get up every day and dive into the manuscript, maybe the only thing that makes the enterprise bearable. Here it is, I’d said. I wrote my whole heart into this thing. My publisher talked about the numbers. Continue Reading →
A week from Saturday, some of the best chefs in Billings will be serving some of their favorite appetizers—more than 20,000 of them. The occasion will be the Taste of Summer fundraiser at the Billings Depot, an outdoor, all-you-can-eat-and-drink event featuring 15 restaurants, nearly 20 Montana breweries, all kinds of wine and live music. (more…) Continue Reading →
For most of her life, British-born Anne Kania had what she called a typical aversion to guns—typical among opera-singing, liberal-minded Englishwomen, anyway. She thought that guns were a barbaric throwback and that hunting was only for rednecks. When she first visited Montana to see Bruce Kania, the man she would eventually marry, her views began to change. (more…) Continue Reading →
Elisa Lorello has been a published author for less than a decade, but her writing career has already been surprisingly varied. She self-published her first book, “Faking It,” and then self-published a sequel, “Ordinary World,” shortly after, in 2009. In the face of slow sales, she released both books on Kindle. Sales were still slow—until she lowered the price on them from $1.99 to 99 cents, and they caught fire. (more…) Continue Reading →
