I’ve long followed Dan Blank of The Creative Shift and deeply appreciate his insights into applying our creativity to our sharing and promotional efforts, as well as his emphasis on building and supporting the creative community. So I’m sharing this recent quote from his Substack article:
“Support those who create before they are gone. Is there an author whose work you appreciate? Send them a thank you email. Is there a local bookstore you love, but you just don’t get there often enough? Take a trip this week and set the intention to spend a certain amount of money to support them. Is there a local nonprofit in the arts that you admire? Go to their website and see how you can support them, even if it is just showing up for an event or spreading the word.”
We’re big supporters of local galleries and art centers, and love going to openings — First Friday Art Walks are especially great in the summer. This week, I took Blank’s advice and wrote thank you emails to the authors of two books I recently read: Anthony W. Wood, author of Black Montana: Settler Colonialism and the Erosion of the Racial Frontier, 1877-1930, and Michael K. Johnson, author of A Black Woman’s Montana: The Life of Rose B. Gordon, the daughter of a former slave who was born in a small central Montana town in 1883 and lived most of her life there. I read both after I finished my short story collection featuring another early Black Montanan — All God’s Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection — coming in September, so they didn’t directly contribute to the writing, but both books helped me better understand Mary’s time and era in Montana, something that will be a big part of my book talks this fall.
Will either man reply? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. I simply wanted to acknowledge their work, something I suspect authors of books that lean toward the academic side don’t often hear! (Wood’s book is more academic than Johnson’s, but both are excellent explorations of a little known part of Montana history.)
So what can you do this week to support your creative community — local or otherwise?
(And no, I’m not fishing for thank you notes — spread the love around!)
The Agatha Awards are given every May at 
In 1885 Montana Territory, “Stagecoach Mary” Fields and Sister Louisine encounter a young mother and her daughter whose plight requires an inspired intervention. Mary is a historic figure who was born in slavery in Tennessee in 1832 and moved to Montana Territory to care for the ailing Mother Superior at St. Peter’s Mission near Cascade.