Author Talk with Maya Jewell Zeller
Schedule
Tue, 17 Mar, 2026 at 06:30 pm
UTC-06:00Location
301 2nd Ave N, Great Falls, MT, United States, Montana 59401 | Great Falls, MT
Maya Jewell Zeller joins us on March 17 at 6:30 PM as she talks about her new book, "Raised by Ferns", with local author Jamie Ford. Cassiopeia Books will be on site to sell copies of the book.
"Raised by Ferns" offers a vital, compelling new take on the forces that shape identity and the choices that define home. It is a story of survival, but more importantly, of questioning for what—and who—it is worth surviving for.
Born in a Pacific Northwest gas station to itinerant, countercultural parents, as an adult Maya Jewell Zeller finds herself with the formidable title of “professor” in the field of academia-- a space that, no matter her professional accolades and knowledge of craft, the author finds uncomfortable. Combining those factors with middle class social status and parenting in late capitalism, the narrator of Raised by Ferns lives in a constant state of dissonance. In her memoir, she brings us back in time to the damp, fern-and-moss-laden landscape where she came of age and where poverty, wildness, and self-reliance intertwined. In essays that at times humorously converse with HOA bylaws, USDA fire ratings, and SAT questions, Jewell Zeller renders rural America with intimate complexity and attention, exploring what it means to live between worlds—material scarcity and cultural wealth, inherited distrust and institutional legitimacy. From leaking rentals to library stacks, from pre-legal marijuana to scholarship and marital strife, Raised by Ferns offers a compelling new take on the forces that shape identity and the choices that define home. This book is a story of survival, but more importantly, of questioning for what—and who—it is worth surviving.
A Venn Diagram of Jamie Ford and Maya Jewell Zeller overlaps somewhere in the intersection of rural America, irony, socioeconomic code switching, and the arts. Ford and Jewell Zeller will engage in dialogue around Raised by Ferns and the two authors’ common interests in community, wonder, and the power of language.
Where is it happening?
301 2nd Ave N, Great Falls, MT, United States, Montana 59401
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