William Kittredge taught at the University of Montana for 29 years, retiring as Regents Professor of English and Creative Writing in 1997. Kittredge’s books include a memoir, Hole in the Sky; two collections of essays, Owning It All and Who Owns the West, Balancing Water:  Restoring the Klamath Basin, The Best Stories of William Kittredge; and The Willow Field, a novel published in 2006.  The Last Rodeo: Best Essays of William Kittredge will be published by Graywolf Press in fall 2007.

Kittredge and Annick Smith edited The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology and were co-producers of A River Runs Through It. Kittredge received the Montana Governor’s Award for the Arts, was co-winner of the Montana Governor’s Award for Humanities and co-winner of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Charles Frankel Award for service to the humanities, awarded by President Clinton. In 2006 he was given the Chiles Award for Service to the Great Basin, and in 2007 the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angles Times. In 2008 he will receive a Lifetime Achievement award from the Western Literature Association.

– information provided by the author