Montana State University English professor Gretchen Minton spent years traveling to every corner of Montana to trace the Big Sky Country’s two-century love affair with William Shakespeare. The result was her book, Shakespeare in Montana: Big Sky Country’s Love Affair with the World’s Most Famous Writer, which was recognized with the 2020 Montana Book of the Year and the 2020 High Plains Book Award.

Brad Orsted’s story is a classic American tale of healing and redemption. Emotionally wounded by the loss of a child, he is driven to near madness accompanied by drugs and alcohol. Fortunately, encounters with the wild help him not only recover, but lead him to a new profession as an author and wildlife filmmaker.

Chris La Tray is Missoula-based poet and essayist and an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. His first book, One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large, was the Winner of the 2018 Montana Book Award. The book was a finalist for Best Book by Indigenous Writer at the 2019 High Plains Book Award and won for the Best First Book.

Mario Lopez is the John W. & Carol L.H. Green Executive Director for the Billings Symphony, and he joined the staff in January 2023. Lopez has a background in leadership, education, and fundraising, working with Sarasota Orchestra and the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra.

Elizabeth Guheen is chief curator and director of the Bair Family Museum in Martinsdale, Montana. The museum, which displays the collection and private residence of the Charles M. Bair family, is not in the business of acquiring art, yet they recently procured a painting by Joseph Henry Sharp titled The Young Chief that tells a very big story.

Born in 1935, Barbara Van Cleve has spent her life in Montana photographing the ranching life around her. The Cleve family established the Lazy K Bar Ranch in 1880 near Melville on the eastern slopes of the Crazy Mountains. Barbara’s first camera, a Brownie Box Junior, was given to her at age 11, and since then, she’s been documenting the vastness of Montana’s landscape, including its working ranchers, beloved horses, and cattle, ever since.

Bryce Andrews is a Montana-based rancher, conservationist, and author whose unique set of experiences gives him uncommon insights into our universal relationship with the American West.He is the author of three books including Down from the Mountain which won the Banff Mountain Book Competition and was a Montana Book Award Honor Title.

Passage is an exhibition currently showing at the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings that explores the mystery of nature through the transformation of materials, texture, and form. Bozeman-based artists Christine Joy and Sara Mast, first exhibited together in 2022 at Aunt Dofe’s gallery in Willow Creek, Montana and have incorporated new works for this special exhibition.

Manette Rene Bradford’s work explores the ecology and history of Montana, unfolding in large-scale watercolor paper collages on canvas, as well as dimensional pieces that fuse stoneware with watercolor. Originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, Manette was born into a family of visual artists, and being exposed to art at a young age taught her about the relationship between craftsmanship and the creative process.

Thomas Minckler spent a half-century on a personal journey to collect 19th and early 20th century letters and documents, vintage photographs, rare books, paintings, and territorial imprints on Montana and the northern plains.