Acclaimed novelist, outdoor writer and publisher, Allen Morris Jones will read from his debut poetry collection, Mumblecusser. Jones lives in Bozeman. He is the author of the novels, Last Year’s River, A Bloom of Bones, and Sweeney on the Rocks; the highly influential examination of the ethics of hunting, A Quiet Place of Violence; a Spur Award-winning children’s book, Montana for Kids: The Story of Our State; and co-editor, with William Kittredge, of The Best of Montana’s Short Fiction. He has published more than 100 short stories, articles, essays, and poems. A former editor of Big Sky Journal and an acquisitions editor for the Lyons Press, he is the publisher of his own small book house, Bangtail Press, and he has appeared as a guest essayist on Jim Lehrer’s “PBS NewsHour,” lectured to the Outdoor Writer’s Association of America…
Of Mumblecusser, Jones writes, “These poems as far as I can tell now, are about late-life fatherhood, they’re about aging and mortality, they’re about trying to see clearly. They’re about trying to discover what I think. They’re exercises in self-pity and self-absorption. They are coins tossed off the back of a train. … They’re doorstops you trip over and Rorschach oil spills you slide across. Most of all, though, they’re the rubberized ceiling straps you grab onto when the bus lurches away from the curb.”
Elk River Books is located at 122 S. 2nd St. in downtown Livingston. The free event begins at 7 p.m., and a book signing and reception will follow. For more information, send an email to call (406) 333-2330.