Interview

Judy Blunt talks about how she came to write her autobiography, Breaking Clean, about her life on a rural cattle ranch in Montana. Amongst other things, she discusses how her relationship to the landscape has influenced her writing, the pressing issues that face rural communities today, and offers advice to aspiring writers.

Q: How did you come to write this book?

A: I wrote the title essay, Breaking Clean, in one evening as a classroom assignment when I was a second year journalism major at the University of Montana. It was for a literature class called Montana Writers, led by the passionate and energetic Professor William Bevis. As part of our mid-term project, he assigned us to "write your Montana experience" in four pages or less. As a thirty-something ex-ranchwife, third generation Montanan, my story was perhaps more difficult to capture in four typewritten pages than those of my classmates, most of whom were under twenty and could count the months of their "Montana experience" on their fingers. Still, I gave it a shot. Ever attentive to duty, I squeezed the first three decades of my life onto four pages--only by fudging the line spacing and margins did I make it fit--and in the process of compressing scenes, I accidentally wrote an essay. I turned it in, and went on with my journalism studies. A couple of weeks later, I felt exposed and a bit reluctant when Professor Bevis approached me in class and asked permission to read my essay aloud. He was kind but adamant, and finally I agreed.

What happened next changed my life. He ...