Author Taylor Brorby returns to the West with new MSU faculty position

When Taylor Brorby would visit Bozeman to ski in the ‘90s, the town ended at the Lewis and Clark Motel. This year, Brorby returned to Bozeman to teach at MSU, and it’s safe to say that the city looks much different than it did before. 

Brorby is MSU’s new assistant professor of English, and is also the inaugural Haynes Faculty Fellow. For the next three years, he will use funds donated by Reta K. Haynes to support creative writing and instruction in the English department. 

“This money that I get for that position is to help further my own research and particularly research that would impact my teaching here,” Brorby said. “I tend to do a lot of writing around the environment or disability or queerness. So it might be going to archives, it might be traveling to do new research on, say, glaciers.”

Brorby said he plans to write a nonfiction book about glaciers and their environmental impact. 

“I want to watch icebergs that are soon leaving,” Brorby said. “Glacier National Park will eventually be an oxymoron. They will not be there.” 

Brorby hails from North Dakota, which, according to him, was shaped by glaciers, serving as further inspiration for his book.

Before coming to MSU, Brorby spent the last decade teaching around the country, including schools in New England and the University of Alabama. He said that he was drawn to MSU because of its ties to the Western genre. 

“I've really seen myself long-term as a Western writer, and wanting to teach the next generation of Western writers,” he said. “I have students from New Hampshire and Missouri — but I also want rural students who might be coming from Montana to know your stories are worth writing down, too.”

Brorby wants all students, regardless of background, to see themselves as authors. 

“I grew up in Western North Dakota, in a county without a stoplight, in a trailer house, without any books. So, it sort of even shows people like me can become writers,” Brorby said. 

Brorby said that his passion for the Western landscape is reflected in MSU’s vision. 

“Dean Thomas, he had said during my interview, ‘I want to make this the hub of nonfiction writing in the American West,’ and for someone who does memoir or essays like I do, that is music to your ears,” he said. “At a time when so many places in a higher ed are cutting programs, to be at a place that's actually building something and want to bring in distinguished writers or help support student research at whole new levels, that’s exciting.” 

Having a tenure-track nonfiction professor is new for MSU, Brorby said. 

“I feel part of what's exciting about being here at MSU is it's sort of the sky's the limit for a person like me, because it's new and we're building things,” he said. 

Brorby said that one of his goals as a professor is to make his students more engaged with the act of writing. 

“Part of my job, almost consistently, is trying to push them to be more observant and aware,” he said. “So much of our culture is trying to get us to not be present, and that's even the hardest work right now. [What] I'm trying to do with them is to get them physically writing rather than even on a screen.”

Brorby said he hopes that his classes can equip students with the skills needed to work through the writing process. 

“My hope is that you come in my class at a certain level and you leave at a different one, more aware that language can work like this. It doesn't even mean better. It's just that you're more aware and you know what skills are needed,” he said. 

Brorby said he is excited to work with a whole new class of readers and writers, and is excited to do it here at MSU. 

“I just feel like I've finally come back home to teach my people how to be better readers and writers, 'cause I think we need that now more than ever in this country, people that read and write and then think critically. Those are all things I'm excited to help people learn and teach them and be challenged by,” he said.