Craig Lancaster

Recent Posts

Montana Quarterly: Counting our blessings

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Editor’s note: This has been updated to cover a lamentable oversight. Dear readers, consider this a public service announcement. If you are not a subscriber to the Montana Quarterly, or if, God forbid, you have never even looked at a copy of that fine magazine, here’s what you should do: run out right now and buy the winter edition. It’s available at a lot of stores, including all the Albertsons stores, as far as I know. The Montana Quarterly is always good, but this winter edition is uncommonly good, showcasing some of the MQ’s best writers doing what they do best. Continue Reading →

Filed under: Last Best Blog, Craig Lancaster, John Clayton, John Warner, Montana Quarterly, Scott McMillion, Sid Gustafson

Montana Quarterly publishes ‘best-of’ collection

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Here’s something I should have brought to your attention a bit earlier. But better late than never. The Montana Quarterly, the Livingston-based magazine that recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, has published a book of collected pieces under the title, “Montana, Warts and All,” which also happens to be the magazine’s motto. Here’s the official blurb for the book: “Elegant. Literate. Continue Reading →

Filed under: Last Best Blog, Alan Kesselheim, Craig Lancaster, Jeff Hull, Jeff Welsch, John Clayton, Montana Quarterly, Scott McMillion

Ivan Doig: Celebrating the literary heart of Montana

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Authors

Ariana Paliobagis, owner of the Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, distilled the feelings of a packed house Tuesday night with one emotion-laden sentence: “I can’t talk about Ivan Doig in the past tense, because that would be like letting him go.” (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: 'This House of Sky', Carrie La Seur, Country Bookshelf, Craig Lancaster, Ivan Doig, Jamie Ford, Malcolm Brooks, Mary Jane Di Santi

Lancaster’s thoughts on rebel flag worth another read

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In light of all the attention being paid to the Confederate flag these days, I thought I should bring to your attention a fine op-ed piece that Craig Lancester wrote for Last Best News last August. In “The Confederate flag and the NDO,” Lancaster wrote about how, as a teenager, he and his classmates at Richland High School in North Richland Hills, Texas, rebuffed a request from the local chapter of the NAACP to remove that flag from the school’s letterhead, uniforms, etc. It is a good, timely piece, worth reading again. I should also update Craig’s bio at the end of the piece. It reads: Craig Lancaster, of Billings, is the author of the novels “600 Hours of Edward,” “Edward Adrift,” “The Summer Son” and the forthcoming “The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter.” 

Well, that forthcoming book has been out for a while, and his new forthcoming book is called “This Is What I Want.” Continue Reading →

Filed under: Last Best Blog, Confederate flag, Craig Lancaster, NAACP, Texas

‘Welcome to Montana’: 10 plays, 10 minutes each

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The cow

A festival of 10 one-act plays was put together by the Sacrifice Cliff Theatre Company as the result of what amounted to a challenge. “This year,” said company co-founder Patrick Wilson, “I’d been hearing a lot of people asking, ‘are there even any writers left in Billings who want to get their plays on stage?’” (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Billings, Culture, Andy Farkas, Billings Studio Theatre, Craig Lancaster, Delaney Kay Hardy, Demetra Perros, Kirsten Pett

Being one with Billings

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Rims

Lay of the Land: A series of essays on the spirit of Montana
I can’t remember when I first came to Billings, but the safe money would put it sometime in the first half of 1970, when I would have been mere weeks or months old. My parents lived in Casper, Wyo., at the time, and we had kin in Billings and Great Falls who were eager to meet me. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Lay of the Land, '600 Hours of Edward', 'Edward Adrift', 'The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter', Billings Public Library, Craig Lancaster, Harper & Madison

Another look at ‘Off the Path’ anthology

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AJ

Don’t miss Craig Lancaster’s interview with Adrian Jawort, who edited and published “Off the Path: An Anthology of 21st Century Montana American Indian Writers, Vol. 1.” We wrote about the book in February, but Lancaster’s interview has a lot of new information, including Jawort’s plans for upcoming anthologies and his own novel. Excerpt: “A lot of people open the book perhaps expecting something typical and almost clichéd and formulaic about Native Americans, but this is very edgy and atypical. We do touch on plaguing real issues like suicide, abuse , alcoholism, and poverty that Natives out west deal with on a seemingly extreme level and a lot of it is biographical, but it’s still very original fiction. Off the Path has basically created a life force of its own and a lot of that stemmed from positive reactions to it.” Continue Reading →

Filed under: Last Best Blog, "Off the Path", Adrian Jawort, Craig Lancaster

In praise of libraries; namely, ours

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Nearly 40 years clear of it, I still remember my first visit to a public library. It’s not with the crystal recall I might have boasted 20 years ago, when there was more tread on the tires, but the wonder — at the stacks of books, thousands of them, all there for the claiming — remains fresh, as if it happened yesterday. And in a way, it did. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Billings, Culture, Bill Cochran, Billings Public Library, Craig Lancaster