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Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed house on January 20th, 2026, at The George and Jane Dennison Theatre. The theme was “Self-Evident”.
In our first story, Francis Davis is an aspiring novelist who receives a letter that promised to change everything: he had won a prestigious $50,000 arts grant. As he celebrates the windfall with his fellow dreamers and artists in the South Philly arts scene, a strange coincidence involving a famous jazz writer and a second piece of mail begins to cast a shadow over his sudden fortune. Francis calls his story “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”.
Francis Davis was born and raised in Philadelphia and has lived most of his adult life in the West. He has an M.F.A. in fiction from the University of Montana and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska. Francis loves American working-class literature and teaches college writing, creative writing, and literature at Gallatin College in Bozeman. He’s also a certified hot yoga instructor and teachers at Headwaters Hot Yoga in Missoula and Vibrant Lives in Dillon, Montana. Francis published a collection of short stories, West of Love, and his stories have appeared in Story, Natural Bridge, and Weber: The Contemporary West, among many other publications. Francis Davis has also worked as a journalist throughout the state of Montana and has earned a variety of writing fellowships from around the country. He is married to Sally Cobau and the father of three children. He splits his time between Dillon and Missoula, Montana.
Adria L. Jawort spent years as a functional alcoholic in order to bury her true identity. Adria finds herself in an intensive treatment center where the ultimate lesson is learning to love yourself enough to survive. Her journey toward recovery leads her to confront a childhood memory in a Kmart clothing aisle and a deep-seated fear of being, quote, an “abomination,” leading to an act of truth-telling that accidentally goes viral on a global scale. Adria calls her story “Prestigious Education”.
Adria L. Jawort is a Northern Cheyenne fiction writer and transgender/2 Spirit journalist. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, and Indian Country-Today, among other publications. She is the Executive Director of the nonprofit Indigenous Transilience. You can also find her on Substack and Instagram.
Mark Matthews is a freelance journalist assigned by The Washington Post to cover a high-profile assassination attempt at the U.S. Capitol, he thinks he’s found the scoop of a lifetime in a small Montana mining town. After tracking down the shooter’s best friend and securing what he thinks of as a “bag of gold”, in the form of a delusional, handwritten manifesto, Mark discovers that in the world of big-city journalism, landing the story is only half the battle. Mark calls his story “Front Page News”.
Mark Matthews was born in 1951 in Lynn Massachusetts. During the 1980s he lived in a fishing shack perched on a dock at South Freeport Harbor in Maine. In 1989 he moved to Montana. Mark has spent the last 50 years of his life sculpting, painting, writing, making music and teaching people of all ages, the community inspiring patterns of American folk dances.
Christian Bazzano is hoping for clarity and a “Deadliest Catch” style adventure. He heads to Bristol Bay, Alaska, to work on a fishing boat. Between 20-hour workdays, stinging jellyfish, and the relentless, melancholic gray of the ocean, Christian discovers that the intellectual endeavor he planned is quickly dissolving into a battle to keep his own sanity from cracking. Christian calls his story “Lessons from The Last Frontier”.
Christian Bazzano moved to Montana almost six years ago from his home in Tennessee. He spent many years of his life doing seasonal work in various roles across the northwest; from whitewater guide to sawyer to ski operations to Alaskan commercial fisherman. Christian has his master’s degree in philosophy and works for an environmental education non-profit.
