This week on The Write Question, Lauren chats with Missoula-based writer Deirdre “Dee” McNamer about Aviary, a novel based in an unnamed mountain town a lot like Missoula. The novel, which is McNamer’s first since 2007’s Red Rover, centers a neglected retirement community, Pheasant Run, and the aging residents who live there. This is a conversation with one of Montana’s most beloved novelists and writing teachers, and it’s one you won’t want to miss!
About Deirdre:
Deirdre McNamer is the author of five novels: Aviary, Rima in the Weeds, One Sweet Quarrel, My Russian, and Red Rover, which was a winner of the Montana Book Award and was named a best book of the year by Artforum, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Her essays, short fiction, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, the New York Times, and Outside, among other venues. She was a visiting writer at Cornell University, the University of Oregon, the University of Alabama and Williams College before joining the MFA faculty of the University of Montana’s creative writing program in 1995. She taught there until 2020 and now holds a faculty position with the Bennington Writing Seminars’ MFA program.
Deirdre recommends:
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe (Knopf Doubleday)
The Glass Hotel (Vintage Books) and Station Eleven (Knopf Doubleday) by Emily St. John Mandel
Anything written by Alice Munro
Lauren recommends:
Red Rover (Penguin Books) and One Sweet Quarrel (HarperCollins) by Deirdre McNamer
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (Puffin Books)
Site Fidelity by Claire Boyles (W. W. Norton & Company)
This episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
This conversation between Deirdre McNamer and Chad Dundas (Montana Book Festival)
