Convocations Lecture to Highlight Writings on the West

Published: October 27, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minutes

Author and poet Judy Blunt will present “Western Memoir: Writing from Place” as a part of Southern Utah University’s Convocations lecture series on Tuesday, October 28, at 11:30 a.m. in the University’s Auditorium Theater.

Blunt spent more than 30 years on wheat and cattle ranches in northeastern Montana before leaving that life to attend the University of Montana, where she is still teaching. Her book of poems, Not Quite Stone, was published in 1991 and won the Merriam-Frontier Award. Her best-selling memoir, Breaking Clean, was published by A.A. Knopf in 2002 and was met with wide critical acclaim and a 2001 Whiting Writers’ Award.

Blunt’s essays explore the complexity of growing up as a girl in cowboy country. She challenges the Hollywood mythology but honors the ranching community, paying tribute to a West few people know from the inside out.

In her current research, Blunt documents turn-of-the-century homesteaders’ narratives. These are the stories that showed generations how to live where the land didn’t want them, and they chronicle the rules of behavior, expectation and hope handed down from mother to daughter like recipes and old love letters.

This Convocation is presented in cooperation with the SUU Department of English.

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