Editors’ Note for February 2015
With thanks to our readers and contributors, Western Writers Online is ceasing publication after this month’s issue. The closing of a journal is usually the result of a combination of factors both institutional and personal, and this one is no exception. We are pleased with what we created, and more than pleased with all of have had a part in it, from student helpers to anonymous reviewers. At this time the editors believe we can make better use of our energies in other directions. For Spring 2015, our goal is to archive the contents of this site so they will remain accessible when we discontinue use of this url.
Before we take our curtain call, we add a peer-reviewed article on Montana author Thomas Savage. Between 1944 and 1988, Savage wrote more than a dozen novels, eight of them set in the high mountain landscape near Dillon, Montana, where the author spent his youth. From his time to ours, Savage has maintained admirers, though he is not well known today. According to O. Alan Weltzien, a professor of English in Savage’s hometown of Dillon, Savage’s eight intermountain novels “critique . . . the limited roles available to men and women in the high landscapes” of the northern Rockies. Weltzien reads selections from Savage’s novels against the “psychic turmoil” of the author’s personal life to illuminate the author’s protest in particular against the “stark” options and “excruciating” experiences of western homosexual men.
Happily, the editors retire under no such feelings of turmoil or protest. We have experienced support where others had it to give, and for this we express our gratitude. We hope you enjoy our last offering.