Rick Bass

Acclaimed author Rick Bass will return to Chapter One to read from his newest book, "The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons At Home In Montana." "The Wild Marsh "is Rick Bass's most mature, full account of life in the Yaak and a crowning achievement in his celebrated career. It begins with his family settling ... (more)in for the long Montana winter, and captures all the subtle harbingers of change that mark each passing month -- the initial cruel teasing of spring, the splendor and fecundity of summer, and the bittersweet memories evoked by fall. It is full of rich observation about what it takes to live in the valley -- ruggedness, improvisation and, of course, duct tape. "The Wild Marsh "is also tremendously poignant, especially when Bass reflects on what it means for his young daughters to grow up surrounded by the strangeness and wonder of nature. He shares with them the Yaak's little secrets -- where the huckleberries are best in a dry year, where to find a grizzly's claw marks in an old cedar -- and discovers that passing on this intimate local knowledge, the knowledge of home, is a kind of rare and valuable love. In his account of life in Montana, Bass emerges not just as a writer but as a father, a neighbor, and a gifted observer. His passion for the place he calls home ensures that though the wilderness is increasingly at risk, the voice of the wilderness will not disappear.

We are most delighted to have back over this way, from the beautiful, rugged corner of Montana that holds the Yaak Valley, one of this country's most acclaimed writers, Rick Bass. He makes this welcome return, as he has for the better part of two decades now, for an extraordinary series of works of both ... (more)fiction and nonfiction. Tonight is occasioned by his newest book, one of the latter, Why I Came West (Houghton Mifflin).

WHY I CAME WEST: A MEMOIR Award-winning author of many acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, Rick Bass visits to introduce his new book, which eloquently explores how he fell in love with the West—in particular his beloved Yaak Valley in Northwestern Montana— and describes his role as a reluctant ... (more)environmental activist, unwilling to stand by and watch this treasured place disappear. Bass offers a clear-eyed view of the challenges facing environmentalists and of how our relation to the wilderness is essential to our being human.