Gary Svee - 1943
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I. Biography
Gary Svee was born in Billings, Montana, on November 11, 1943. His father served in the Coast Guard in WWI. He said he wanted to have a child on Armistice Day and strangely enough Svee's younger brother was born two years later that very day. He grew up along the banks of the Yellowstone, Stillwater, and Rosebud rivers in Stillwater County. He spent a lot of time in the hills around Columbus and the Beartooth Mountains. At an early age he was working for his father cutting coral pines in the Beartooths. A high school English teacher convinced him to become a writer, so he went to the University of Montana to pursue a writing career. He got a degree and also met his wife, Diane Schmidt, there. He first found work at the Billings Gazette. He left in 1976 to pursue a business venture with a friend, and columnist, Roger Clawson. They bought a newspaper in Bridger and sold it a year later. He then moved to Missoula and found work as a feature editor for The Missoulian.
There he renewed a friendship with an old friend Dorothy Johnson. She got him excited about fiction writing. He and Diane missed Billings so Svee applied for the opinion page opening in The Gazette. He got he job and they moved back. He says that the job has its difficulties, but he likes expressing his ideas. His first book was Spirit Wolf, a story of the hunt for the last Pryer wolf. His father actually participated in this hunt, although the story is completely fictional. His second book, Incident at Pishkin Creek, is based on a true story involving a mail-order bride. His third book, Sanctuary, is set in the fictional town of Sanctuary, Montana, and occurs in the same time frame as the other two. He finds fiction therapeutic because while writing for The Gazette has restrictions, writing fiction has no limitations.
He and his wife have two children, Darren and Nathan.
Svee, like many other authors, says that writing is a way to bring him anywhere he desires. Because reading was his only entertainment, he poured through the local library's books. He also remembers his dad bringing home comics for him to read. He first realized that he wanted to write around age twelve. A few people really motivated him to write.
The first was his high school English teacher, the second a college professor, Dorothy Johnson. Svee has done many different things in his life, and recommends that aspiring writers do the same. He believes that this helps make their writings more realistic. He has published four books and some short stories. Recently, he has become interested in short stories and plans to write more. He knows a lot about Montana, which helps make his books more accurate. Svee believes that there are so many Montana authors and so many books about Montana because there is so much to write about there. He says there is so much beauty and so many tales of the olden days.
Another reason for the abundance of stories is that people see the change of the times and want to write down their stories so that people will not forget them in the generations to come. One of Svee's beliefs is that reading and writing are one in the same. Both let you enter a new and fascinating world. Svee reads many books as well. He will often pick an author and read everything that author has written. His favorite authors are Steinbeck and Grisham.
III. Literary Works
Spirit Wolf
Incident at Pishkin Creek
Sanctuary
III. Svee on the Web
http://www.billingsgazette.comThis essay was submitted by a student of Steve Gardiner, a teacher at Billings Senior High School in Billings, Montana.