It is hard to love the high, cold plains of the American West. They are vast and harsh and demanding. And perhaps because they are so hard to love, prairies challenge the imaginative mind and the adventurous heart. The Wide Open reveals how some of the most interesting and accomplished writers and photographers in the country have met that challenge and given the genius of the prairie a vision and a voice. Their stories are as diverse as the tellers, ranging from fiction by Barry Lopez, Richard Ford, and William Kittredge, to the childhood histories of Mary Clearman Blew and Judy Blunt and the nonfiction narratives of Jim Harrison, Gretel Ehrlich, and Rick Bass. There are works by Native American prairie dwellers such as M. L. Smoker and James Welch and the photographic interpretations of Lee Friedlander, Lois Conner, and Geoffrey James. Personal or poetic, journalistic or scientific, these works eloquently attest to the prairie’s abundance in all its human and natural variety, offering pictures as wide open and rich as the land they depict.

Annick Smith is the author of several books, most recently In This We Are Native: On Going Away and Coming Home and Homestead. She is coeditor of the Montana anthology The Last Best Place and an award-winning story writer.

 

Susan O’Connor, a philanthropist and arts advocate, is on the board of the American Prairie Foundation and is involved with other literary, environmental, and social justice nonprofit organizations. She lives in Missoula, Montana.

 

Contributors: Rick Bass, Mary Clearman Blew, Judy Blunt, Lois Conner, David James Duncan, Gretel Ehrlich, Dan Flores, Richard Ford, Lee Friedlander, James Galvin, Ian Glennie, Jim Harrison, Richard Hugo, Fredericka Hunter, Geoffrey James, William Kittredge, Barry Lopez, Richard Manning, Peter Matthiessen, Thomas McGuane, Susan O’Connor, Annick Smith, M. L. Smoker, Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs, and James Welch.

"From the pens of writers such as Judy Blunt, Rick Bass, Thomas McGuane, Barry Lopez, Richard Ford, Gretel Ehrlich, Peter Matthiesen, Richard Hugo, and James Galvin and through the stark lenses of photographers Lee Friedlander, Lois Conner, and Geoffrey James, we deeply inhabit the American prairie, a seemingly immutable place of hard-scrabble ranches, rivers, bears, birds, and wolves—a land so patiently alive we might miss it."—Maurice Manning, Bookforum

"The Wide Open is a beautiful memoir of the short-grass prairie of the northern Great Plains, which has channeled its voice through the writers and photographers found within the book."—Tom Wylie, Bloomsbury Review

"Smith and O'Connor have done an excellent job in putting this collection together. In the end they have in fact presented a literate portrait of the prairie and the animals and folks who cooperatively attempt to make it home."—Pete Warzel, Montana Quarterly

"A superb evocation of the prairie and its life."—ForeWord Magazine

"Using photographs, fiction, and nonfiction, the editors have skillfully assembled a complex portrayal of the West's high, dry, and cold plains into a beautiful book."—Orion

“Few things have defined the American experience as fully as the open prairie. In this volume, some of our very finest modern writers and photographers provide perhaps the most rounded view we've ever had of this great landscape and the enduring culture it gave rise to. A true gift, for people of every region.”—Bill McKibben, author of The Bill McKibben Reader

Gold Winner of the 2008 Book of the Year Award - Anthology Category, sponsored by ForeWord Magazine

Finalist for the 2009 High Plains Book Award - Nonfiction and Zonta Best Woman Writer Categories

Publication of this book was made possible in part by a grant from the Prop Foundation of Missoula, MT.