Corby Skinner
Resounds: Arts & Culture On The High Plains HostCorby Skinner is an independent marketing professional with an enormous capacity for assessing issues and creating positive, effective messages.
His work is evident in all aspects of performing, visual and literary arts. He led the marketing and programming for the Alberta Bair Theater for 18 years, and served as Arts and Humanities Field Coordinator for the National YMCA of the USA for eight years.
Skinner has been the Director of The Writer's Voice since its beginning in 1991. Skinner has coordinated six Big Read programs for the National Endowment for the Arts and 15 consecutive High Plains Book Festivals
Corby Skinner received the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award in 2009, and the Philip N. Fortin Humanitarian Award in 2016.
He joined in the YPR staff as a community programmer co-hosting Resounds: Arts And Culture On The High Plains alongside Anna Paige in spring 2017.
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Novelist, essayist, and poet Joe Wilkins was raised on a sheep ranch north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana. His novel The Entire Sky recently won the 2025 High Plains International Book Awards for Fiction. -
Caroline Joan Peixoto is the co-founder and director of River Arts and Books. Her background in community arts and management aligns with her passion of creating spaces of beauty for people to explore and connect. She is an Azorean writer and mother living in the Beartooth Mountains. -
Giano Cromley is the author of two indie young adult novels novels, The Prince of Infinite Space, and The Last Good Halloween, and a short story collection, What We Build Upon the Ruins. He is a recipient of an Artists Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council and was a BookEnds Fellow with Stonybrook University. -
Photographer Todd Forsgren lives in Billings, where he is an Associate Professor of Art at Rocky Mountain College and also serves as the director of the Ryniker-Morrison Gallery. -
Matt Blakeslee was born and raised in Billings, MT. In 2015, Matt and his wife Kate started Art House Cinema, a new non-profit independent cinema to bring film and art opportunities to Billings. -
The Buffalo Bill Center of the West based in Cody homes five museums and a research library. The Plains Indian Museum, The Buffalo Bill Museum, The Draper Natural History Museum, the Cody Firearms Museum, and the Whitney Western Art Museum provide thousands of visitors with a range of perspectives and education of the American West. -
The Heart Mountain Interpretive Center preserves, memorializes, and provides education about the experiences of Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII. The Center operates a world-class museum, historic site, and conference center, drives national programming, and inspires nonpartisan solutions to problems of our modern democracy. -
Dr. Ilse-Mari Lee Hastings is the President and founder of the Montana Youth Symphony. She joined the faculty of MSU in the fall of 1989 and served as Dean of the Honors College. She holds a doctorate in Cello Performance and Pedagogy, as well as master’s degrees in Cello Performance, Music Theory, and Composition. -
Tami Haaland is the author of four poetry collections: If I Had Said Beauty, What Does Not Return, When We Wake in the Night, and Breath in Every Room, which was the winner of the Nicholas Roerich First Book Award. -
Precious McKenzie has an MFA in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in British Literature. In 2022, she served as a Fulbright Scholar in Ireland, teaching graduate students in the Public Humanities. She is the Director of Advancement for the Yellowstone Art Museum.She writes poems, short stories, and children’s books. Precious is the author of over 50 books for young readers, including Cinder Yeti (the 2020 Library of Congress Great Reads from Great Places selection for Montana), Ruffian, a novel for teens, and Infestation, a young adult novel.
