Arts & Culture

  • Isle of Books Presents Last Best Books Winter 24/25

    Peterson, author of "The American West Reimagined" and "American Trinity: Jefferson, Custer, and the Spirit of the West," composes studies of the West that are fascinating and philosophical in ways that most history texts are not.
  • "I Await the Devil's Coming": Mary MacLane, Butte's Prodigal Daughter

    By Lindsay Tran
    From her family’s house on North Excelsior Street, MacLane could see the Anselmo headframe and watch the miners change shifts. In "I, Mary MacLane," she explains her relationship with language in a way that recalls both the synesthesia of the poetic mind and the laborious process of mining.
  • Montana’s Vintage Neon Signs—an Endangered Species

    By Teresa Otto
    It started with a random photo of the Top Notch Lunch sign in Great Falls. Originally an ice cream parlor, the sign was added in 1938 when the place became a diner. As I sat in a booth near the back of the cafe, enjoying a sloppy joe that was too big to pick up, I knew this sign was just the beginning.
  • I Didn't Die in Montana: Hank Williams Jr. on Ajax Mountain

    By Nick Mitchell
    Sliding, he picked up speed. Snow that had frozen, melted, and refrozen into shards tore at his skin while rocks, jutting out of the snow like land mines, struck his head and body, leaving large gashes but failing to slow his descent
  • Richard Hugo Reminds Us

    By James Grady
    Hugo’s a bulldog. Horseshoe balding. Steel squint. Open collar shirt. A sports jacket strains across the shoulders of this former semi-pro baseball catcher. He’s gruff but with self-deprecating humor and genuine laughs. He listens. More than that, he senses. Feels. Searches for the heart of this moment.
  • Montana Media: the Ballad of Little Jo and Revisioning the West

    By Kari Bowles
    The Ballad of Little Jo arrived right at the moment when the Western re-emerged after a protracted period of stagnation back into popular appeal. Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves (1990) and Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) both won the Best Picture Academy Award for their respective years of release.
  • The Landscapes of Norman Maclean: Forest, Mountains, Water

    By Bryan Spellman
    Norman Maclean was not born in Montana, nor did he die here. His published work is slim, especially when compared to A.B. Guthrie or Ivan Doig. But I wager that if you asked people what piece of writing best exemplifies Montana, many would respond A River Runs Through It. 
  • Our Interview With Author Gwen Florio

    By Lindsay Tran
    Distinctly Montana spoke with Florio about her favorite places in Montana, works-in-progress, what she’s reading, and eating camp stove ramen on book tours. It was a lively and funny conversation that underscored how much she has to offer readers who crave the fast-paced and gritty stories that she tells so well.
  • Montana Media: The 50th Anniversary of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

    By Kari Bowles
    The business where Lightfoot gets employment before the heist is Pinski Bros. Plumbing and Heating, which was an actual business in Great Falls, one that had been a fixture in the community for several years. One of the most crucial locations, the drive-in movie theater where the bank robbers hide out after the job, was provided by Great Falls’ 10th Ave Drive-In.
  • Montana Media: What Dreams May Come

    By Kari Bowles
    Even 25 years down the line, What Dreams May Come still stands as an impressive visual achievement, as well as an option for viewers in search of an earnest romance. And it’s not every day that Love Across the Supernatural Divide is aided by Glacier National Park. 
  • If You Aint' Got a Cowboy Hat, You Ain't ****

    By Dan Vichorek
    When they let me out of high school I didn't have a hat. That was okay. John Kennedy showed you you didn't need a hat to be successful. Kennedy was the first president since Abe Lincoln who was never photographed in a cowboy hat or Indian war bonnet. He got elected anyway, and girls liked him too. So much for hats.
  • Wild West Words: "Pasty"

    By Chrysti the Wordsmith
    For centuries, the traditional meal of Cornish tin miners was the pasty. Made daily by wives and mothers, pasties were the perfect portable meal: a miscellany of vegetables and meat encased and baked in a D-shaped pastry shell. 
  • Military Veterans in Bronze

    By Holly Matkin, Photos by Holly Matkin
    When I first met Lyle, he was hard at work in his studio at the back of the gallery. I initially thought my misstep into his creative space made me a frustrating distraction and I attempted to duck back out, but Lyle immediately welcomed me.
  • Montana's Serb Fest

    By Christopher Muhlenfeld
    Plan a road trip to Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Christian Church at 2100 Continental Drive in Butte! Montana's relationship with Serbia stretches back to the dusty, horse-drawn carriage days when Montana was still a territory and Serbia was still a kingdom. 
  • 7 Montana Towns That Never Existed!

    By Sherman Cahill
    Harmonville is also a town where magical, impossible things can happen without anyone seeming to notice, like when Costner fires his six-shooter 16 times without reloading, and no one declares it a miracle.
  • Hogan's Army Heads East

    By Nick Mitchell
    So Hogan didn't exactly hijack the train with his band of pirates. He did the next best thing, meeting with the mayor and county commissioners and asking them to help him enlist the support of the Northern Pacific, which was itself bankrupt and in receivership.
  • Behind “Into the Wild Frontier” with Armorer Dennis Borud

    By Charlie Denison, with photos provided by Dennis Borud
    When it comes to getting it right, Dennis is a perfectionist, as his wife, Mary, can attest. “We’ll be watching a movie and she’ll say, ‘Dennis, don’t say what’s wrong with this one,’” he said. “I’m not trying to be a critic – I just notice things that are inaccurate – be it the way someone is holding a firearm or the way someone is dressed.”