photo: MICHAEL GALLACHER, Missoulian

Bill Kittredge, beloved teacher of generations of graduate students (like myself) at the University of Montana, died yesterday in Missoula. Not only was he one of the the preeminent Western writers in America, defining a particular moment and

place with his anthology “The Last Best Place,” he was a personal supporter of mine. It is hard to take our minds back to 1994 in Missoula, Montana. But imagine that moment when the state legislature was considering adding all homosexuals to the “sex offender” list, and I, as a

grad student, was told not to reveal my sexual orientation to my students, and had my car vandalized with the word FAG scratched into the hood. That time. And now imagine a rancher raised in rural Southern Oregon, weary of decades of teaching graduate students, with only a few

years left before his retirement. He asked me to come to come to his office hours. He took out a story I had brought to workshop (“Come Live With Me and Be My Love” in my first collection, How It Was for Me) about a gay man and a lesbian in the 1960s who get married as covers for

one another. He gave me a long baseball metaphor I did not understand about a famous left-handed pitcher who was forced to pitch with his right hand, I believe, but insisted on pitching with his left (some reader will know). I had written experimental fiction until this story.

And Bill said, “Pitch with your left.” He meant: this is what you’re good at, do this. He meant: write with emotion, not cleverness. And I have done that ever since. He sent the story to his friend Richard Ford, who was editing Ploughshares magazine, and a few weeks later I came

home to my tiny cold apartment (whose bathroom could only be reached through the closet) and saw a message on my answering machine (yes, an answering machine). “This is Richard Ford, and I want to publish your story.” It is hard to describe what hearing those words meant to me.

And what it meant to me for a nearly-retired rancher to see, in a gay man telling gay stories at that awful time, something worth finding the energy to pursue, to support, all the way to ensuring my publication for the first time. I saw him many times over the years, and he has

always been kind and made certain I understood he was proud of me. I am so grateful for what he did for me. It was a strange time, and a strange place for me: Montana. But Bill, like many great artists, stood outside of his time and place. I wept when I heard about his death this

morning from my fellow writer, Maile Meloy, who shared a class with me. He also supported many other writers: Amanda Eyre Ward, J. Robert Lennon, David Gilbert. His gregarious, moody, sometimes drinking sometimes not, gossipy, confrontational, jovial, pensive,

artistically exacting spirit will be sorely missed. I miss you, Bill.