Rooted at the Edge: Writing About Place

A Reading and Writing Workshop with Donna Erickson

'Rooted at the Edge: Ranching Where the Old West and New West Collide' author Donna Erickson shares and discusses her work and guides attendees in a writing workshop about place.

This event will feature a reading from the author's new book and an audience Q&A, followed by generative writing prompts that will inspire attendees to write about place.

About the book:

Rooted at the Edge paints a portrait of a ranching community steeped in history, conflict, and beauty. In this narrative nonfiction work, Donna Erickson explores the hilly skirt of ground at the northern boundary of Missoula, Montana, separating the town from the wilderness beyond. In the movie A River Runs Through It, opening credits scan across the 1950s town, the North Hills, and the wilderness beyond. The North Hills region represents the critical—and often highly personal—issues at play at the edge of many western towns.

The urban-rural fringe is both valuable and vulnerable. Across the West, a way of life and a way of work are vanishing. Ranchland is simultaneously cherished by families for the lives they’ve made there and coveted by urban neighbors for open space. Community residents may love a place for its scenery and wildlife habitat while others wish it converted to a commercial parking lot. Complex ecological relationships can be bulldozed in a single afternoon. Rooted at the Edge conveys, in a way that statistics cannot, what’s at stake when ranches at the urban fringe are threatened.

Learn more about the author on her website.

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