A memoir is a particular slice of a particular life, a story set in a place and a time. Join Steve Wing on Wednesday, July 12, for a Brown Bag Lunch at the Butte Archives as he discusses his new memoir, Secret Geographies: Growing Up and Out of Butte, Montana. The time stretches through the 1950s and the 1960s, before ending in the mid-1970s. For both the city and the nation, this was an era of seemingly inexorable changes. In Butte, the growing Berkeley Pit seemed ravenously ready to devour the city itself. At much the same time, America was shaking with the social transformations that blindsided so many of us who were around then. Secret Geographies can be considered one result of those colliding forces.

Wing grew up in Butte, Montana, where his family has lived since the 1880s. He attended the University of Montana, where he studied poetry and fiction with Richard Hugo, William Kittredge, and Rick DeMarinis. Something of a nomad as a young man, he eventually settled in Spokane, Washington, where he and his wife Pierrette raised their family. He went to work as an environmental consultant, retiring from that position in 2017.

Over the years, Wing has published essays and short fiction in a number of outlets, including The Seattle Times, The Montana Standard, The Pacific Northwest Inlander, The Iowa Review, Under the Sun, Salon, and Terrain.org. In the past year, standalone excerpts from his memoir were published in Concho River Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and Under the Gum Tree. Secret Geographies is his first book.

The presentation will begin at noon and run for about an hour at the Archives, 17 W. Quartz. Guests are encouraged to bring a sack lunch. Coffee and water will be provided. Brown Bag Lunches are held on the second and fourth Wednesdays of every month. For more information, contact the Archives at 406-782-3280.