UNP will be at the South Dakota Festival of Books!
This year, the festival takes place from Friday, September 26, to Sunday, September 28, in Spearfish, SD. The festival is the state’s premier literary event, celebrating literature in South Dakota and beyond by connecting the very best regional and national writers with local readers for conversations, presentations, panel discussions, book signings, and special events.
Be sure to visit UNP’s booth in the Exhibitors’ Hall to find your next read! Information on our authors’ panels can be found below. Click here to view the full Festival Schedule.
Pamela Smith Hill
Pamela Smith Hill is a New York Times best-selling editor, author, educator, and expert on Laura Ingalls Wilder. She has taught young adult literature and creative and professional writing at universities in Washington, Oregon, and Colorado, as well as classes on Laura Ingalls Wilder through Missouri State University. Hill has been interviewed for multiple documentaries on Wilder and has appeared on C-SPAN, NPR, PBS, and the BBC for her expertise. As well as three novels for young adults, her books include Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life, and Too Good to Be Altogether Lost.
- Friday, Sept. 26 @ 3:15 p.m. – Author Signing Event – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Ponderosa, Cottonwood, Oak, & Cedar Rooms
- Saturday, Sept 27 @ 2:00 p.m. – Little House . . . at 90: Reassessing a Controversial Children’s Classic – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Spruce Room
- Saturday, Sept. 27 @ 4:30 p.m. – Author Signing Event – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Ponderosa, Cottonwood, Oak, & Cedar Rooms
Tiffany Midge
Tiffany Midge is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and was raised by wolves in the Pacific Northwest. She is a columnist for High Country News and formerly Indian Country Today. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Brooklyn Rail, McSweeney’s, and more. She is the author of Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s (Bison Books, 2019) and the poetry collection Horns. Midge aspires to be the Distinguished Writer in Residence for Seattle’s Space Needle and considers her contribution to humanity to be her sparkly personality.
- Friday, Sept. 26 @ 3:15 p.m. – Author Signing Event – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Ponderosa, Cottonwood, Oak, & Cedar Rooms
- Saturday, Sept. 27 @ 3:15 p.m. – In the Good Way: Looking at Tribal Humor – Holiday Inn Convention Center, ‘76 Room
- Saturday, Sept. 27 @ 4:30 p.m. – Author Signing Event – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Ponderosa, Cottonwood, Oak, & Cedar Rooms
Jim Reese
Jim Reese is an associate professor of English and director of the Great Plains Writers’ Tour at Mount Marty University in Yankton, South Dakota. He spent fourteen years in residency for the National Endowment for Arts’ interagency initiative with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, where he established Yankton Federal Prison Camp’s first creative writing and publishing workshop. He is the author of eight books, including the nonfiction collection Bone Chalk, and has received several awards for his writing and public service.
- Friday, Sept. 26 @ 3:15 p.m. – Author Signing Event – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Ponderosa, Cottonwood, Oak, & Cedar Rooms
- Saturday, Sept. 27 @ 9:00 a.m. – Researching & Writing Nonfiction – Woodburn Hall 331, BHSU
- Saturday, Sept. 27 @ 2:00 p.m. – Coming to a Neighborhood Near You: The Repercussions of Crime & Punishment – Holiday Inn Convention Center, ‘76 Room
- Saturday, Sept. 27 @ 4:30 p.m. – Author Signing Event – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Ponderosa, Cottonwood, Oak, & Cedar Rooms
Gail Shaffer Blankenau is a professional genealogist, historian, speaker, and author. She holds an MA degree in history from the University of Nebraska–Kearney, and in 2023 she received the James L. Sellers prize for her article about the Grayson sisters in a volume of Nebraska History magazine. Blankenau is from Nebraska and currently lives in Lincoln.
- Friday, Sept. 26 @ 3:15 p.m. – Author Signing Event – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Ponderosa, Cottonwood, Oak, & Cedar Rooms
- Saturday, Sept 27 @ 2:00 p.m. – The Grayson Freedom Seekers and Why Their Story Matters – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Aspen Room
- Saturday, Sept. 27 @ 4:30 p.m. – Author Signing Event – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Ponderosa, Cottonwood, Oak, & Cedar Rooms
Donna L. Erickson is a consultant on open-space conservation in the Rocky Mountain West and was an associate professor of landscape architecture and planning at the University of Michigan for sixteen years. Erickson has published extensively in design, planning, and conservation journals and is the author of MetroGreen: Connecting Open Space in North American Cities.
- Friday, Sept. 26 @ 11:30 a.m. – Ranching at the Edge of Western Towns: Challenges & Opportunities – Meier Hall 210, BHSU
- Friday, Sept. 26 @ 3:15 p.m. – Author Signing Event – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Ponderosa, Cottonwood, Oak, & Cedar Rooms
- Saturday, Sept. 27 @ 4:30 p.m. – Author Signing Event – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Ponderosa, Cottonwood, Oak, & Cedar Rooms
Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve, an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, has published 29 books for all ages, as well as short stories, articles, and poems. A retired K-12 and college educator, she received the National Humanities Medal in 2000 and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from South Dakota State University in 2008.
- Friday, Sept. 26 @ 12:45 p.m. – Special Places, Sacred Circles: Stories of a Life – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Aspen Room
- Friday, Sept. 26 @ 3:15 p.m. – Author Signing Event – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Ponderosa, Cottonwood, Oak, & Cedar Rooms
- Saturday, Sept 27 @ 3:15 p.m. – The Summer of the Bone Horses: Writing Family Stories for Children – Grace Balloch Memorial Library
- Saturday, Sept. 27 @ 4:30 p.m. – Author Signing Event – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Ponderosa, Cottonwood, Oak, & Cedar Rooms
Stephanie Anderson is the author of From the Ground Up: The Women Revolutionizing Regenerative Agriculture. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, TriQuarterly, Flyway, Hotel Amerika, Terrain.org, The Chronicle Review, Sweet, and others. Anderson holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Augustana University in Sioux Falls and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where she now serves as Assistant Professor of Creative Nonfiction.
- Friday, Sept. 26 @ 11:00 a.m. – LIVE Radio Broadcast: In the Moment with Lori Walsh with Stephanie Anderson, Barbara Mayes Boustead, and Sarah Stonich – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Aspen Room
- Friday, Sept. 26 @ 3:15 p.m. – Author Signing Event – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Ponderosa, Cottonwood, Oak, & Cedar Rooms
- Saturday, Sept 27 @ 9:00 a.m. – From the Ground Up: Women, Regeneration, & Our Food System – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Willow Room
- Saturday, Sept. 27 @ 4:30 p.m. – Author Signing Event – Holiday Inn Convention Center, Ponderosa, Cottonwood, Oak, & Cedar Rooms
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