Whitefish Review launches Issue 31, 'Seeds'

The Whitefish Review will celebrate the release of its 31st issue, “Seeds,” on Friday, May 22 at 101 Central in downtown Whitefish. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., with live music beginning at 7 p.m. and readings at 8 p.m. 

For Issue #31, the nationally acclaimed literary journal partnered with Land to Hand Montana to publish work exploring the hope and possibility contained within a simple seed. Their mission is to build a strong community food system that fosters socially just ways of accessing food. 

“We are living in a time of great uncertainty,” said Brian Schott, founding editor of Whitefish Review. “Despite the chaos, the arts and creative spirit remind us of the beauty that can bloom inside each of us every day.” 

The issue features work from 25 writers and artists, including Montana Prize for Fiction winner Henry Hietala, selected by Rick Bass. Fiction, poetry, essays, photography and visual art span voices from a local high school student to a poet in India. 

“Seeds” also includes an interview with legendary Montana author and fisherman Tom McGuane, who reflects on creativity and his enduring love of fly fishing at age 86. Tristan Scott and Kellyn Brown of the Flathead Beacon join the journal editors for a lively conversation with renowned television journalists Connie Chung and Maury Povich, an accomplished and charmingly mismatched married pair who helped seed the award-winning newspaper in 2007, the same year Whitefish Review was founded. 

The cover features striking colored micrographs by Rob Kesseler, Emeritus Professor of Arts, Design & Science at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Using advanced microscopy techniques, Kesseler creates intricate composite images of plant structures that reveal unexpected beauty within the natural world. 

Siri Saeteren’s music explores grief, home, and the fragile balance between people and nature, finding poetry in what’s broken and meaning in what remains. Her debut EP will be released June 21, 2026. 

Kate Cooke will read from her first published essay featured in the issue. Colleen O’Brien will present from her new novel, Baited, a mystery set in Glacier National Park during the grizzly bear DNA study. Rick Bass will discuss the “Green Curtain” — a loosely connected corridor of carbon-storing old-growth forests stretching across the northern United States — and the story behind the Black Ram guitar, crafted from a 315-year-old spruce destroyed in Montana’s Yaak Valley. 

The evening is sponsored by 101 Central, Whitefish Credit Union and Larch House. A suggested $10 donation will support the nonprofit journal. More information is available at WhitefishReview.org.