Arts & Culture

This week, join Lauren in a conversation with Colorado-based poet and scholar Khadijah Queen, author of Anodyne. Their conversation covers a lot, from imagining change, our dying planet and “confessional” poetry to the ethics of care — plus much, much more!

This week, Lauren is in conversation with novelist Jamie Harrison, author of The Center of Everything. Their conversation meanders through family mythologies; her father is renowned Montana poet and writer Jim Harrison. Jamie ruminates on her lure to water — particularly to the Yellowstone River in Livingston, Montana — and the slippery nature of memory.

"The House That Rob Built" is the inspiring story of Rob Selvig, pioneering coach of the University of Montana’s Lady Griz basketball team. In an era when gender discrimination in sports was the norm, Coach Selvig built a “house” of inclusion and empowerment by recruiting female athletes from the ranches, farms and Native reservations of Big Sky Country. For nearly 40 years, these athletes would establish the preeminent women’s basketball program west of the Rockies.

Hear from Selvig and the film's director-producer-writer, Megan Harrington.

You’re just going through your day, doing your normal stuff then – WHOA! an overwhelming feeling; You’ve done this before, but you haven’t, but you feel like you have – but you haven’t … Déjà Vu!

What is Déjà Vu? Is it good? is it bad? Why does it happen? What’s going on in our brain?

I often feel that new words come to me at the exact right moment. This fall, I had one of those moments of synchronicity, when I began to see the word "irruption" in various places - a word that until then was unfamiliar to me.

Montana isn't all cattle herds and fields of waving grain. This sprawling state is also full of food deserts — places without many affordable, healthy food options. The lack of access to healthy food for residents of many of the state's Indian reservations contributes to some horrible demographic statistics. The life expectancy for Native American women is 62, a full 20 years less than for non-Native women. For Montana's Native American men, it's 56. One 27-year-old woman of Blackfeet and Cherokee heritage is on a mission to improve Native people's lives through healthy diet and a return of indigenous food systems.

Host Lauren Korn and poet-essayist Paisley Rekdal, author of Appropriate: A Provocation, dive into the nuances of cultural appropriation in literature. What is the difference between depicting a character unlike one’s self and appropriating their culture and identity? What is the difference between one’s politics and one’s ethics? They explore these topics and more, this week on The Write Question.