Late October brought the first snowstorms of the season to Missoula, luring us back inside to cozy up with the books, music, and movies that are carrying us through autumn. Here’s what we loved:
Emily Nelson
Second-Year MFA candidate in fiction
Fiction Editor
Listening: October is for Timber Timbre and very little else in my household. Their music is spooky and witchy without being cheesy, and while their more recent albums are more experimental and jazz-oriented, their first two records, "Creep on Creepin' On" and "Timber Timbre" are wall-to-wall spooky season bangers. Also my beloved Waxahatchee and Jess Williamson started a project called Plains and their debut album, "I Walked With You A Ways," is pure Americana perfection.
Reading: (Galley brag incoming) Allie Rowbottom’s Aesthetica, a delicious novel about perfection and image in the social media age. I also loved Daisy Alioto's 2021 essay on TikTok and the Suburban Gothic for Dirt, which delves into the literature of the suburbs and the uncanny nature of suburban life.
Evan Martinak
First-year MFA candidate in fiction
Watching: Saturday, Fiction. Watched this on an international flight; I hate flying. It was one of the cleverest movies I’ve seen in years; it depicts an aspect of WWII I previously knew nothing about, namely the Japanese occupation of Shanghai and the semi-autonomous European quarters of the city known as concessions. The way the movie is shot is really breathtaking, even from that tiny little screen. Plus, I’m a sucker for a movie with Fiction in the title. For about two hours I almost forgot that I was trapped in an aluminum atmospheric coffin rocket.
Reading: I wouldn’t be living up to my status as one of the few but vigilant Mavis Gallant torch bearers if I didn’t mention her. I picked up the NYRB edition of her early and uncollected works, introduced by Jhumpa Lahiri. Mavis Gallant is a legend, people. On the order of Chekhov. The short story Travelers Must Be Content, also a Shakespeare reference to As You Like It, is one of the most delicately constructed, funniest little masterworks of fiction I’ve ever read…and I feel this way every single time I encounter a Gallant short story.
Listening: (On repeat) Brandy / Borderline: A song about being bipolar that chills me out better than actual brandy; Jeff Buckley / Lilac Wine: Sorry Nina but his version is so lovely it’s almost unbearable; Sza / Good Days: For the biblical references. “Feeling like Job when he lost his shit.”
Anthony Cardellini
First-year MFA candidate in fiction
Watching: Compilations of Kevin de Bruyne on YouTube mixed in with old Roger Federer highlights
Listening: Diminish, Return’s classic album Holy Moly Mountain
Robin Bissett
First-year MFA candidate in fiction
Online Managing Editor
Reading: I read Tell Me I’m An Artist by Chelsea Martin!
Lily Emerick Valentine
First-year MFA candidate in poetry
Art Editor
Reading: Fevered Star, the second installment in Rebecca Roanhorse's fantastic trilogy (Between Earth and Sky), which re-imagines the pre-colonial Americas as the backdrop for epic fantasy.
Watching: Outlander Season 3 and becoming obsessed with Scotland.
Listening: NPR's Radio Ambulante podcast—Latin American stories in Spanish.