Poet Laureate To Serve As Distinguished Kittredge Writer

Montana Poet Laureate Chris La Tray will serve as the 2025 Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer in environmental studies at the University of Montana.

His memoir, Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home, was published by Milkweed Editions earlier this year. La Tray is a Métis storyteller, a descendant of the Pembina Band of the Red River of the North and an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

“So many great writers and members of our wide community of raconteurs have been presented with this invitation, and I am eager to join the tradition with gusto!” La Tray said. “UM is such a beautiful place, even — if not especially! — in winter, and I am very much looking forward to sharing ideas with a cohort of spirited and intrepid students.”

“Chris La Tray is not a conventional nature writer – his work is even more important than that,” said Mark Sundeen, a UM associate professor of environmental studies. “His new book explores how the land was wrested from Indigenous people and how they are now reconnecting to it in Montana. This should be the starting point for any conversation about protecting and conserving land today.”

La Tray is no stranger to the literary world along the Clark Fork. He lives on the outskirts of Missoula near Frenchtown, where he grew up. At UM, he will teach a graduate workshop in environmental writing during spring semester 2025.

“I have no doubt I will be uplifted by the experience, and I anticipate plenty of interactions and revelations both in and outside of the classroom,” La Tray said. “Miigwech, thank you, to everyone involved in making this happen.”

His first book, One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award. His book of haiku and haibun poetry, Descended from a Travel-worn Satchel, was published in 2021 by Foothills Publishing.

Appointed as Montana Poet Laureate in 2023, he writes the weekly newsletter An Irritable Métis.

Previous UM Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writers in Environmental Studies include Terry Tempest Williams, Rebecca Solnit, Craig Childs and, most recently, Amy Irvine.

Graduate students interested in La Tray’s writing workshop can email mark. sundeen@umontana.edu.