Writing & Critiquing Since 1979

Contained in this volume are reincarnations of historical personages as well as entities who inhabit other worlds. Characters in this prose may bid sad farewells to grandmothers or puzzled hellos to oriental mystics. They find stories in their socks as well as in The Satisfy Café. Stained glass windows and river rapids sing to them, and they find Rome's Coliseum in a tipi ring, hear history in "the remembering wind."

Experienced, these writers gnaw every bit of flavor from the most gristly details of their lives, and can still laugh and solve the problems of the world while rolling hay into long, tight windrows. "Hang on, hang on," they say in a dozen ways, because "lonely is a state of mind." Each page offers a new treasure, a unique viewpoint, a glimpse of what we might say about lives that might look ordinary to others. With "a firm hand and a no-nonsense look," they give us reasons to go on, to "sing on the waters" as we float through our lives.

These writers are, in fact, you and me, all of us: ranchers and artists, teachers, lawyers, professors of English, musicians and librarians, nurses and extension educators, a UPS driver, college students, corporate and private business persons- and they all encourage and support each other in their efforts to understand and capture what is most important in their lives. These ordinary men and women, in creating this writing collection, demonstrate in one more way their awareness of the exquisite fragility of this world. They understand deeply that they live and work "in the shadow of the Bearlodge."

Linda M. Hasselstrom, Author

Between Grass and Sky