Dear Butte is the former home of beloved Butte writer Edwin Dobb. Ed wrote many of his centennial pieces in this house on Walkerville hill. As our friendship developed since the early 2010’s we always thought this home would be a wonderful place to host resident writers. Ed sold me this house in the summer of 2015 with that mutual understanding. I then spent a number of years rehabbing the 1894 miners four square cottage to its original vintage condition. Ed has since passed away but the dream of a writers in residence program in Butte became a reality.
Dear Butte and the sister non profit, Working Quiet, were formed in 2018. We have been hosting songwriters, prose, poetry, nonfiction, journalism, and more at the residence since January 2021. Our model is simple, providing a solitary, comfortable, no cost workspace to the resident, in return the Dear Butte resident will host any form of community engagement that fits their area of expertise. We have offered live music performances, author readings, poetry readings, and writers workshops.
Dear Butte also partners with our local community radio station KBMF where residents are interviewed live on air. Traditionally the conversation is a ‘get to know you’ and residents share a reading of their work or a song they have been writing during their stay. Dear Butte is a word of mouth success story, each round of open applications grows in interest by would be residents all across the U.S. We hope to continue to grow, allowing more placement for residents over the years as well as expanding our community programming to reach more of the city of Butte, MT.
Director of Dear Butte and Working Quiet 501 c3
Christy Hays Pickett
Butte, MT
Butte, MT is a town of roughly 33k people sitting atop the continental divide in south western Montana. Butte was once the largest city between Chicago and San Francisco at the turn of the 19th century due to the massive lode of copper found in its granite mountains and the subsequent extraction that created immense wealth and industry. It is a town of staggering history and architecture, a post industrial city that is continually finding its footing since it was named the first superfund cleanup site by the federal government in 1984. Butte residents are generous, tough and hard scrabble folks. Wonderfully unique and caring and uttery prideful in their community.
There is a wealth of information about this city, here are a few examples I enjoy.
‘Pennies from Hell’ by Edwin Dobb
My Story
I spent a good portion of my adult life as a working songwriter, I continue to write and perform and release albums. I have been coming to Butte since 2006 and fell in love with the town right away. I live happily in Walkerville with my husband, dog and cat.