Essayist and fiction writer Mary Clearman Blew will be reading at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 16, at the Women’s Federated Clubhouse in Marquette. The event is free and open to the public.

            Blew was raised on a small cattle ranch in Montana, on the site of her great-grandfather’s 1882 homestead. Her memoir, All But the Waltz: Essays on a Montana Family, won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. The novel Jackalope Dreams appeared in 2008. Her awards include the Western Literature Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She teaches creative writing at the University of Idaho.

            Books written by Blew will be available for purchase and signing after her presentation. Her reading is sponsored by the Northern Michigan University department of English and Passages North literary magazine.  

            For more information, contact Rebecca Johns, Director of the NMU Visiting Writers’ Program, at 227-1795.