AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: Lynne Spriggs O'Connor

Before moving to the rural West at age forty-two, Lynne Spriggs O’Connor curated exhibitions of folk and self-taught art at the High Museum in Atlanta. She spent ten summers on northern Montana’s Blackfeet Indian Reservation while pursuing fieldwork for her PhD in Native American Art History at Columbia University. She also worked in the film industry as Production Coordinator for Spalding Gray and Jonathan Demme on the iconic Swimming to Cambodia. After landing in Montana, she curated Bison: American Icon, a major permanent exhibit for the C.M. Russell Museum on bison in the Northern Plains. For the past fifteen years, she and her husband have lived on a cattle ranch in an isolated mountain valley in northeastern Montana, where her life centers on writing, animals, and family. Elk Love is her first memoir.
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Q: ​How would you describe Elk Love in one (or maybe two) killer sentences?
Answer: Let’s see….. A world-weary museum curator and a bereaved rancher find love amidst the dazzling beauty of a cattle ranch in a hidden Montana mountain valley – a wide-open, wind-filled place where loneliness gives way to the wonders of bugling elk, dancing birds, and the wisdom of nature.

It’s about that dream we all have of escaping our everyday lives for a chance to experience something entirely different while falling very deeply in love.

How’s that?!

Q: What sparked the idea for this book?
Answer: Personal experiences – those involving a lot of grace, healing, and wonder – that have been transformative gifts in my own life, and that I imagined might also offer some hope and inspiration for others.

Q: It seems like Elk Love would make a great movie. Have any films influenced you?
Answer: I LOVE film and I’ve been lucky enough to work on a few! Some personal favorites that have influenced my writing include: Moonstruck, As Good As It Gets, Something’s Gotta Give, Jeremiah Johnson, My Octopus Teacher, All That Breathes, A River Runs Through It, Days of Heaven, Out of Africa, and My Life as a Turkey on PBS.

Q: Do you listen to music while you write, and if so, what kind?
Answer: If I listen to any music, it’s classical. Otherwise, I’m inspired by our valley’s howling winds, the springtime sound of our roaring creek, seeing and listening to flocks of birds feeding outside a window, the sound of my dog snoring next to me, a crackling fire in the wood stove, observing the way snow falls and light changes everything in wintertime without a sound.

Q: Do you have a target reader?
Answer: Women (and some men) 30-80 – who might yearn to escape the crush of their busy lives and, for a time, wander into a lost garden to explore a secret love of nature and animals. Anyone who is curious about the healing capacities of stepping outside one’s comfort (or discomfort!) zones and into the generous wisdom of what is wild - both precious and disturbing – in all of us.

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Visit Lynne on her website: 
https://lynneoconnorauthor.com/
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LINK for BOOK:
https://www.amazon.com/Love-Montana-Memoir-Lynne-Spriggs-OConnor/dp/1647426405

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