Grace Stone Coates

Grace Stone Coates (1881-1976) was a Montana writer. She wrote short stories, novels, and poetry. Coates published her first poem, "The Intruder", in 1921 and her first novel, Black Cherries, in 1931. She co-edited and wrote for Frontier, a literary magazine edited by Harold G. Merriam, a creative writing professor, at the University of Montana.

History

Early Life

On May 20, 1881, Grace Genevieve Stone was born on a wheat farm in Kansas to Heinrich and Olive Stone. She was the youngest of four children. Grace and her older sister, Helen, were born to Heinrich and Olive. The two older children were born to Heinrich and his first wife. Heinrich had a rich classical background, he taught Greek in Berlin before coming to the United States. He channeled this love into his interactions with Grace, recited poetry to her, took her on long walks to learn the names of plants and trees, and read her mythology until she could recite it from memory. Her poetry was influenced by this background.

Her family moved to Wisconsin when she was in high school, where she attended Normal College. Coates also attended the University of Chicago, the University of Southern California and the University of Hawaii. She never finished a degree, but received her teaching certificate in 1900.

Montana

She moved to Stevensville, Montana to be closer to her sister Helen, and started teaching. Grace eventually moved to Butte, where she met her future husband, Henderson Coates. The two married in 1910 and moved to Martinsdale where her husband opened a general store with his brother. Grace taught in Martinsdale from 1914-1919. This is where she started writing. Her first poem, "The Intruder", was published in Poetry, a Magazine of Verse.

In 1927 H.G. Merriam asked Coates to help him with his magazine, Frontier. She started writing articles and poems for the magazine and before long became the assistant editor. Merriam encouraged her to get her work published, helped her find publishers, and in 1931 she published two books; her first novel, Black Cherries, and her first book of poems, Mead & Mangel-Wurzel. Coates worked for the magazine out of Northwest Montana, until it stopped circulating in 1939. During the Great Depression, Coates helped write the WPA Federal Writer's Project Montana state guidebook. Coates stopped writing seriously in the 1930's, but she continued to participate in her favorite form of writing, through letters. After her death, her letters were collected and used to illustrate her life in a biography written by Lee Rostad.

After her husband passed away, she started seeing things that weren't there and wandering around outside in the middle of the night. Coates had a hard time remembering when and what she ate, and suffered from malnutrition. Her nieghbors in Martinsdale got together in 1963 to move her to a retirement home in Bozeman. Where, with a healthy diet and adequate rest she was able to write a column for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. The column was named,Hillcrest Highlights, for the Hillcrest Retirement Home she was living in.Coates passed away in 1976, she was 95.

Works

Black Cherries, published in 1931 by Alfred Knopf

Mead & Mangel-Wurzel, published in 1931 Caxton Printers Ltd. out of Caldwell, Idaho

Portulacas in the Wheat, her second book of poems, published in 1932

She co-authored Pat Tucker's book, Riding the High Country, published in 1933

Books about

Honey Wine and Hunger Root, Lee Rostad, 1985, Falcon Press, Helena/Billings, Montana

Food of Gods and Starvelings, the Selected Poems of Grace Stone Coates, edited by Lee Rostad and Rick Newby, 2007, Drumlummon Institute, Helena, Montana

Grace Stone Coates, Her Life in Letters, Lee Rostad, 2004, Riverbend Publishing, Helena, Montana

External links

• [2]