Today, A. B. Guthrie Jr. will be inducted into the Montana State Historical Society’s Gallery of Outstanding Montanans. In honor of his induction, here's a synopisis of why he's notable:

Shortly after graduating from college with a journalism degree, Guthrie took a job with the Lexington Leader, in Kentucky, and worked there for 30 years. In 1944, 18 years after he started at the paper (and when he was 43 years old), he received a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University, where he wrote his first novel, The Big Sky. Many other titles followed, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Way West, and The Blue Hen’s Chick and Murders at Moon Dance, both of which are available in Bison Books editions.

This spring, the University of Nebraska Press is also publishing a Guthrie biography, Under the Big Sky, by Jackson J. Benson. In this book, Benson describes the small Montana town where Guthrie grew up (and that later became the setting of many of his books). Benson also illuminates the critical details of Guthrie’s upbringing and education, the influence of his intellectually inclined father, his work as a newspaperman in Kentucky, and his time at Harvard University.

Guthrie died in 1991, after dabbling in many genres: historical fiction, essays, mystery novels, short story collections. His final book, published in 1990, was A Field Guide to Writing Fiction. For more on Guthrie, this page on University of Montana School of Journalism Web site provides a nice overview of a life well lived. And of course, there's Benson's biography of Guthrie.