Wild Mercy Reading Series: A Celebration of Writing and Community
“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace.
Wild mercy is in our hands.” —Terry Tempest Williams
Whether you write to remember, to forget, to protect, to fight, to inspire, to rage…the truth of your story holds power. The power of story is important in the community of writers here in Missoula, Montana. That’s why each winter, The Wild Mercy Reading Series packs a room with writers and lovers of the written word every Thursday evening mid-February to mid-March.
In 2004, Phil Condon, professor of environmental writing in UM’s Environmental Studies department, started Wild Mercy following an Earth Day reading event on UM’s oval featuring two of his students. Though the students read to virtually no audience, Condon saw a powerful opportunity in allowing them to share their work. Pulling from the line wild mercy from Terry Tempest Williams book Red, he organized the series at Missoula’s Liquid Planet downtown. The readings moved around various locations over the years and eventually found a home at the UM Flat Studio.
The series hosts a variety of writers from the community and graduate students in the EVST writing program. Each week, two writers read to a cozy room, dark from the northern winter’s absence of light. The room is warmed by a pellet stove, bottomless tea, and a committed audience. Blizzards and negative temperatures have failed to keep people away over the years.
The 2020 Wild Mercy Reading Series kicked off last week with former Camas editor Sydney Bollinger reading about graveyards, depression and her obsession with the Virgin Suicides. Blair Libby, first-year EVST student, recalled his time thru-hiking the PCT.
Photo: Nicholas Triolo
The coming weeks include appearances from local writer Chris La Tray, Kittredge Distinguished Writer Ana Maria Spagna, and the fantastic graduate students in EVST’s writing program.
Nicholas Triolo online editor of Orion and EVST alum once said about Wild Mercy:
“The Wild Mercy Reading Series reflects an age-old practice of storytelling that humans have been enacting since antiquity. I think it helps us remember what it means to be human. It helps us remember the recipes, the essential ingredients of animal life: to share, to eat, to commune, to empathize, to listen, to tell, to confess an unknowing, to create.”
Please join us in remembering what it means to be human through the voices of our community. The series runs each Thursday evening at 6:30 p.m. through March 12 at the UM Flat Studio, 633 South 5th Street East. Come as you are for light refreshments and sweet treats.
Camas would like to thank the continued support of the Environmental Studies program and UM Flat; both keep Wild Mercy in motion each winter.
