Festivities

Join Us for the 2025 High Plains International Book Awards

October 4th, 2025
Billings Public Library & MSU Billings Glacier Room

Celebrate the best in literature from and about the High Plains region. Don’t miss a full day of author panels, book sales, and our evening awards ceremony.

• Author Panels: 11:30 AM – 4:30 PM @ Billings Public Library
• Awards Presentation: 7:00 PM @ MSU Billings Glacier Room
  (Open to the public, free admission)

HPBA Panel Discussions: October 4th, 2025@ Billings Public Library

11:30 am - Incorporating Animals Into Story

• Sneed B. Collard III, Kevin Grange, Sheila Ruble, and Edie Vogel will talk about why they all chose to write about animals and what challenges they encountered in the process.

12:30 pm - Place As Character

• Marc Beaudin, Lynne Spriggs O'Connor, Joe Wilkins, and Randall K. Wilson will discuss the importance of place in narrative arc and why they chose the specific places they write about in their work.

1:30 pm - Crafting Alternative Narratives

• Diane K. Boyd, John Henry Haseltine, James Persichetti, and Bruce Roseland will gather to explore the four very different paths they chose for presenting their stories in non-standard ways.

2:30 pm - The Joys and Frustrations of Complicated Characters

• L. K. Dominguez, Lisa Guenther, Patrick Thomas Henry, and Maria Kelson will address the question of why readers (and writers!) are often drawn to characters we don't particularly like.
  

3:30pm - Writing About Real People

• Leslie Budewitz, David Charpentier, Melissa Kwasny, and Sally Thompson will chat about why they have all written books incorporating people who actually lived and why they each chose the genre they did.