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“There’s no end, really, or beginning to anything”: Callan Wink’s ‘Beartooth’ is a novel of grief, family, and the wild

Callan Wink, author of ‘Beartooth’ (Spiegel & Grau).

This week on The Write Question, host Lauren Korn speaks with Callan Wink, author of Beartooth (Spiegel & Grau). In an aging, timber house hand-built into the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains, two brothers are struggling to keep up with their debts. They live off the grid, on the fringe of Yellowstone, surviving off and in the wild after the death of their father. Beartooth is a fast-paced tale with moments of surprising poignancy set in the grandeur of the American West. Evoking the timeless voices of American pastoral storytelling, this is a bracing, masterful novel about survival, revenge, and the bond between brothers.

NOTE! Callan will be in Missoula at Fact & Fiction Books on February 5, 2025, with Chris Dombrowski; in Hamilton at Chapter One Bookstore on February 6th; and in Helena at MT Book Co. on March 6th with Micah Fields. These events are free and open to the public.

This conversation has been edited for time.

About Callan:

Callan Wink is the author of the novels, Beartooth and August and a collection of short stories, Dog Run Moon. He has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His stories and essays appear widely, including in The New Yorker, Granta, Playboy, Men’s Journal and The Best American Short Stories Anthology. He lives in Livingston, Montana where he is a fly fishing guide on the Yellowstone River.

Callan Wink recommends:

The Shepherd’s Hut by Tim Winton (Picador)

A Prayer for the Dying by Stuart O’Nan (Henry Holt & Co.; St. Martin’s Press)

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (Mariner Books)

Lauren Korn recommends:

Beartooth (Spiegel & Grau)

Old King by Maxim Loskutoff (W. W. Norton & Company)

Crazy Mountain by Elise Atchison (Sowilo Press)

The Write Question team is Lauren Korn, host, co-producer, and editor; and Chris Moyles, co-producer and sound engineer. This episode is supported by Chapter One Bookstore in Hamilton, Montana, a literary and community resource for the Bitterroot Valley—providing space to explore, discover, and share passions since 1974. More information can be found at Chapter1Bookstore.com.

The Write Question logo and brand (2022) was designed by Molly Russell. You can see more of her work at iamthemollruss.com and on Instagram @iamthemollruss.

Funding for The Write Question comes from Humanities Montana; members of Montana Public Radio; and from the Greater Montana Foundation—encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.

The Write Question is a production of Montana Public Radio.

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Lauren R. Korn holds an M.A. in poetry from the University of New Brunswick, where she was the recipient of the Tom Riesterer Memorial Prize and the Angela Ludan Levine Memorial Book Prize. A former bookseller and the former Director of the Montana Book Festival, she is now an Arts and Culture Producer at Montana Public Radio and the host of it’s literature-based radio program and podcast, ‘The Write Question.’
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