A River Dream
The Writing and Art of Russell Chatham's Clark City Press
Will be published approx. on 18. December 2025
Book
Hardback
264 pages
978-1-56792-799-3 (ISBN)
Description
An anthology and tribute to a unique independent publisher, Clark City Press.
In 1987, the painter and author and fly fisherman Russell Chatham, renowned for his stunning landscape paintings and his appetite for life, decided to take control of his own career by creating a publishing house in Livingston, Montana.
As one does, at least if they are Russell Chatham. "Control" was probably the wrong concept-for the next five years, Clark City Press was the chaotic home of beautifully produced works by an eclectic, talented collection of writers and artists, many of them given a painting in lieu of a publishing advance. What began as an effort to publish Chatham's own work and that of his friends (a large and varied group) in elegant trade paperbacks morphed into something grander and more wayward.
Chatham could talk almost anyone into anything, and before the press imploded, all sorts of people said yes: Barry Gifford signed on for A Good Man to Know, a fictionalized memoir about his gangster father, Jim Harrison traded paintings for The Theory & Practice of Rivers and Just Before Dark, and Rick Bass wrote about the first wolves to resettle the continental United States in The Ninemile Wolves. Clark City Press published Thomas McGuane on fishing and memory, Guy de la Valdene on hunting woodcock, Richard Hugo's only mystery, James Crumley's short stories, and Peter Stackpole's Life photos from the golden age of Hollywood.
In A River Dream, Clark City's former editor, novelist Jamie Harrison, has collected some of the best of the press's prose, art, and poetry, in a glorious celebration of a small and lost world.
In 1987, the painter and author and fly fisherman Russell Chatham, renowned for his stunning landscape paintings and his appetite for life, decided to take control of his own career by creating a publishing house in Livingston, Montana.
As one does, at least if they are Russell Chatham. "Control" was probably the wrong concept-for the next five years, Clark City Press was the chaotic home of beautifully produced works by an eclectic, talented collection of writers and artists, many of them given a painting in lieu of a publishing advance. What began as an effort to publish Chatham's own work and that of his friends (a large and varied group) in elegant trade paperbacks morphed into something grander and more wayward.
Chatham could talk almost anyone into anything, and before the press imploded, all sorts of people said yes: Barry Gifford signed on for A Good Man to Know, a fictionalized memoir about his gangster father, Jim Harrison traded paintings for The Theory & Practice of Rivers and Just Before Dark, and Rick Bass wrote about the first wolves to resettle the continental United States in The Ninemile Wolves. Clark City Press published Thomas McGuane on fishing and memory, Guy de la Valdene on hunting woodcock, Richard Hugo's only mystery, James Crumley's short stories, and Peter Stackpole's Life photos from the golden age of Hollywood.
In A River Dream, Clark City's former editor, novelist Jamie Harrison, has collected some of the best of the press's prose, art, and poetry, in a glorious celebration of a small and lost world.
Reviews / Votes
"A River Dream is itself a beautiful dream of life by the best writers I know. It is also very, very funny. Buy it for all the people you love."-Terry McDonell, author of The Accidental Life: An Editor's Notes on Writing and Writers
"Small presses often take up the creative space abandoned by mainstream houses imperiled by overhead, algorithms and the hope that previous best sellers will give birth to new ones resembling their parents. Readers needing fresher stuff will turn to a place like Russ Chatham's Clark City Press and its abundant rewards."
-Thomas McGuane, author of The Longest Silence: A Life In Fishing
"Russell Chatham was a dreamer, dedicated to high art-highest art. His paintings possess a grandeur matched only by the subjects he painted and the landscapes he called home and loved. He did not fit this world but left beauty with his every gesture and in his every step. If he had fears, I think they must have been those of living a small life. But he didn't just dream, he did. Thanks to Jamie Harrison for being part of that journey, and carrying it forward."
-Rick Bass, author of With Every Great Breath
"Dan Gerber, Tom McGuane and Jim Harrison are among the great writers represented in this anthology who gave us the lovely books that came out of Livingston, Montana's Clark City Press during its brief but uncannily artful and productive existence. Here edited in the capable and caring hands of Jamie Harrison and punctuated with Russell Chatham's iconic illustrations, Godine now gives us these treasures anew."
-Richard Howorth, Square Books
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Lincoln
United States
Product notice
With printed dust jacket
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
522 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-56792-799-3 (9781567927993)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
11/2025
David R. Godine, Publisher
€42.49
Available for download
Person
Jamie Harrison became the editor at the Clark City Press in 1987 and has now lived in Montana for more than thirty years. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and other publications. She is the author of seven novels, including The Center of Everything, The Widow Nash, and the critically acclaimed Jules Clement series. Ms. Harrison is the recipient of the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association "Reading the West" Award and was a finalist for the High Plains Book Award.
Content
PREFACE
Jamie Harrison
NONFICTION
Thomas McGuane
"Chatham v. the Facts" from Russell Chatham and "Casting on a Sea of Memories" from Silent Seasons: Twenty-one Fishing Stories
Guy de la Valdene
Chapter from Making Game: An Essay on Woodcock
Russell Chatham
"Hard as a Rock" from The Angler's Coast and "Eating Around" from Dark Waters: Essays, Stories, and Articles
William Hjortsberg
"The Fly Shop" from Silent Seasons: Twenty-one Fishing Stories
Stephen Bodio
Chapter from Querencia
Rick Bass
Chapter from The Ninemile Wolves
Jim Harrison
"Hunger, Real and Unreal" and "Night Walking" from Just Before Dark: Collected Nonfiction
POEMS & FICTION
Jim Harrison
"Homily," "Porpoise," and "Counting Birds" from The Theory & Practice of Rivers and New Poems
Keith Wilson
"XIV: Waterfront Bars," "CXXII: A School of Small Fish," and "CXXIII: The Trey of Spades" from Graves Registry
Greg Keeler
"Salmon Fly Hatch on the Henry's Fork" and "The Ghost of Richard Brautigan on Trail Creek" from Epiphany at Goofy's Gas
Dan Gerber
"Why I Don't Take Naps in the Afternoon" from A Last Bridge Home: New and Selected Poems, chapter from A Voice from the River, and "Yard Sale" from Grass Fires
Richard Currey
Chapter from Crossing Over: The Vietnam Stories
Barry Gifford
"My Mother's People from A Good Man to Know: A Semi-Documentary Fictional Memoir and chapter from New Mysteries of Paris
Richard Hugo
Chapter from Death and the Good Life
James Crumley
The Way of the Road
Chapter from The Muddy Fork & Other Things: Short Stories and Nonfiction
ART & MISCELLANY
Stephen Collector
Excerpt from Law of the Range: Portraits of Old-Time Brand Inspectors
Peter Stackpole
Excerpt from Peter Stackpole: Life in Hollywood, 1936-1952
Diana Guest
Jim Harrison's introductory essay to Stonecarver
THE LAST CATALOGUE
Red & Blue Days by Peter Matthiesen
Sworn Before Cranes by Merrill Gilfillan
The Massacre at Sand Creek by Bruce Cutler
Go by Go by Jon A. Jackson
Jamie Harrison
NONFICTION
Thomas McGuane
"Chatham v. the Facts" from Russell Chatham and "Casting on a Sea of Memories" from Silent Seasons: Twenty-one Fishing Stories
Guy de la Valdene
Chapter from Making Game: An Essay on Woodcock
Russell Chatham
"Hard as a Rock" from The Angler's Coast and "Eating Around" from Dark Waters: Essays, Stories, and Articles
William Hjortsberg
"The Fly Shop" from Silent Seasons: Twenty-one Fishing Stories
Stephen Bodio
Chapter from Querencia
Rick Bass
Chapter from The Ninemile Wolves
Jim Harrison
"Hunger, Real and Unreal" and "Night Walking" from Just Before Dark: Collected Nonfiction
POEMS & FICTION
Jim Harrison
"Homily," "Porpoise," and "Counting Birds" from The Theory & Practice of Rivers and New Poems
Keith Wilson
"XIV: Waterfront Bars," "CXXII: A School of Small Fish," and "CXXIII: The Trey of Spades" from Graves Registry
Greg Keeler
"Salmon Fly Hatch on the Henry's Fork" and "The Ghost of Richard Brautigan on Trail Creek" from Epiphany at Goofy's Gas
Dan Gerber
"Why I Don't Take Naps in the Afternoon" from A Last Bridge Home: New and Selected Poems, chapter from A Voice from the River, and "Yard Sale" from Grass Fires
Richard Currey
Chapter from Crossing Over: The Vietnam Stories
Barry Gifford
"My Mother's People from A Good Man to Know: A Semi-Documentary Fictional Memoir and chapter from New Mysteries of Paris
Richard Hugo
Chapter from Death and the Good Life
James Crumley
The Way of the Road
Chapter from The Muddy Fork & Other Things: Short Stories and Nonfiction
ART & MISCELLANY
Stephen Collector
Excerpt from Law of the Range: Portraits of Old-Time Brand Inspectors
Peter Stackpole
Excerpt from Peter Stackpole: Life in Hollywood, 1936-1952
Diana Guest
Jim Harrison's introductory essay to Stonecarver
THE LAST CATALOGUE
Red & Blue Days by Peter Matthiesen
Sworn Before Cranes by Merrill Gilfillan
The Massacre at Sand Creek by Bruce Cutler
Go by Go by Jon A. Jackson