Panel Discussion: “Writing the Intersection and Divisions Between Rural and Urban America” with Rachel Monroe, Chris La Tray, Nick Bowlin, Chelsey Johnson in discussion with Brian Calvert.
Rachel Monroe’s writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Wired, and the Atlantic, where she is a contributing writer. Her first book, Savage Appetites: True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession (Scribner) was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and named a best book of the year by Esquire, the Chicago Tribune, and Jezebel. More on Rachel.
Chris La Tray is a Métis writer and storyteller. His first book, One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays From the World At Large (2018, Riverfeet Press) won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award. His next book, Becoming Little Shell, will be published by Milkweed Editions in Spring 2022. Chris is an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians and lives near Missoula, Montana.
Chelsey Johnson’s debut novel Stray City came out with Custom House/HarperCollins in 2018, and her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, Gulf Coast, The New York Times, and NPR’s Selected Shorts, among others. She received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford, as well as fellowships to the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Signal Fire Arts. Born and raised in rural northern Minnesota, she now lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, where she is an associate professor of fiction at Northern Arizona University’s MFA and undergraduate programs. A second novel is in the works.
Nick Bowlin is a correspondent for High Country News and a freelance writer. His stories have been published in The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The Nation and elsewhere. Before HCN, Nick worked for E&E News in Washington D.C., and at a local newspaper in the Philadelphia suburbs. He was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Brian Calvert is a writer and editor based in Southern California. He holds an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from Western Colorado University and a BA in English from the University of Northern Colorado. He is a former Ted Scripps Fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism and the former editor-in-chief of High Country News. He hosts workshops, panels and events for environmental ethics in non-fiction and poetry and for equity and inclusion in journalism.