Resounds: Arts And Culture On The High Plains

The Montana Performing Arts Consortium (MPAC) formed in 1981. Since then, the nonprofit has connected the arts to communities across Montana.

The C.M. Russell Museum contains more than 3,000 pieces of Western art in a complex that covers an entire city block. The Western art complex, a National Historic Landmark, includes Charlie Russell’s fully restored home and studio, where he lived and created for 24 years alongside wife and business partner Nancy Cooper Russell.

Czech-American writer and American Book Award winner Shann Ray teaches at Gonzaga University and poetry at Stanford University. He is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and group Fulbright recipient to South Africa.

Fourth-generation Montanan Russell Rowland is a critically acclaimed author of eight books. For over thirty years, Billings-based artist Gordon McConnell has created works derived from Western film stills and informed by his sustained study of the history of the American West and its representations in literature, art, film, and photography.

Yetta Rose Stein is the Executive Director of Elk River Arts & Lectures based in Livingston. She also serves as the Board Vice President for Opera Montana. Previously, she served as the Managing Editor for Hunger Mountain Review. Stein is a graduate of Hellgate High School and has an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Novelist, essayist, and poet Joe Wilkins was raised on a sheep ranch north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana. His novel The Entire Sky recently won the 2025 High Plains International Book Awards for Fiction.

Caroline Joan Peixoto is the co-founder and director of River Arts and Books. Her background in community arts and management aligns with her passion of creating spaces of beauty for people to explore and connect. She is an Azorean writer and mother living in the Beartooth Mountains.

Giano Cromley is the author of two indie young adult novels novels, The Prince of Infinite Space, and The Last Good Halloween, and a short story collection, What We Build Upon the Ruins. He is a recipient of an Artists Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council and was a BookEnds Fellow with Stonybrook University.

Photographer Todd Forsgren lives in Billings, where he is an Associate Professor of Art at Rocky Mountain College and also serves as the director of the Ryniker-Morrison Gallery.

Matt Blakeslee was born and raised in Billings, MT. In 2015, Matt and his wife Kate started Art House Cinema, a new non-profit independent cinema to bring film and art opportunities to Billings.