Vivian McDermott: Stories of Montana, Resilience, and the Human Spirit

Montanan Novelist from Shelby in Toole County.

My grandmother Mazelle taught me to write when I was eight years old. Not thank-you notes, but real letters filled with voice, local gossip, weather reports, and genuine worry. That early practice shapes how I write today: conversational, character-driven, and intimate, like you are sitting right across from me at my kitchen table.

I was born in Culbertson, that small border town in the northeast, and grew up moving across northern Montana. After graduating from Conrad High School in Pondera County, I headed to Montana State in Bozeman with a clear plan: earn a degree in secondary education, marry Gary McDermott, raise a family in Shelby, and stay put.

I did. And staying put is my greatest credential for writing authentic small-town Montana domestic fiction.

I didn't publish my first book until my sixties. It began with The Crone's List, a collaboration with my longtime friend Sheralynn Ries. That project unlocked a door, and I walked through it fast, publishing six books in ten years.

“ For 50 years I thought I was just clumsy. Turns out there was a reason. ”

I tend to write about women who have to improvise family. When the traditional nuclear family breaks down, whether through war, death, or life's sharp turns, who steps in to take you in? In my stories, it is the grandmothers, midwives, neighbors, and single mothers who pool their households and resources. That is simply what I have watched strong women do here on the plains.

VIP stands for Visually Impaired Person. That is me. This is my Retinitis Pigmentosa memoir series, told through Diana Tucker, who is essentially me under a different name. It is a rare first-person account of progressive blindness from the perspective of rural America: funny, candid, and entirely focused on refusing to just sit and wait to go blind.