Life
Sharfeddin was born Heather Mason in remote Rosebud County, Montana to a forester father and an artist mother. In 1968, the Mason family moved to Riggins, Idaho on the Salmon River and later to nearby Lucile, where they lived in the remodeled Cow Creek pioneer schoolhouse. In those early years Sharfeddin and her two sisters enjoyed the remote Idaho back-country, collecting Indian artifacts and roughing it with local ranch kids. Sharfeddin remembers visiting such legendary places on the Salmon River as the Shepp Ranch and the Polly Bemis home, which were inaccessible by automobile.
In 1977, Lynn Mason moved the family to East Lansing, Michigan where he obtained his master's degree in forestry at Michigan State University. They were happy to return west to Missoula, Montana in 1979. Sharfeddin attended Hellgate Junior High and Big Sky High School, graduating in 1984. She moved to Portland, Oregon in 1986.
Heather Sharfeddin holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and PhD in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University in Bath, England.
Works
Her first novel Blackbelly, published in 2005 by Bridge Works Publishing, is set in central Idaho where she grew up. She draws her imagery and characters from those early years and the folklore of the Salmon River.
In 2006, her second novel Mineral Spirits was published, also by Bridge Works Publishing, and is set in remote Mineral County, Montana. Sharfeddin has called her work "contemporary western", which she defines as stories about the rural west that take place during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She promotes this genre through talks and seminars.
In 2009, her third novel Windless Summer was published by Random House (Delta imprint), and is set in the Columbia River Gorge in the fictional town of Rocket, Washington.
In 2010, Blackbelly was released in paperback under the title Sweetwater Burning by Random House (Bantam imprint).
In 2011, Sharfeddin's fourth novel Damaged Goods was published by Random House and is set in rural western Oregon. It follows the relationship of a brain-damaged auctioneer and a child sex-abuse survivor.
In September 2016 Sharfeddin's fifth novel "What Keeps You" will be released by Martin Brown Publishing.
Sharfeddin is contributor at Dirt & Seeds, a literary website, where she serialized an experimental novel, Between.
She regularly writes book reviews for Colorado Review, Center for Literary Publishing.
The Salmon River, also known as "The River of No Return", is a river located in the U.S. state of Idaho in the western United States. It flows for 425 miles (685 km) through central Idaho, draining a rugged, thinly populated watershed of 14,000 square miles (36,000 km2). The river drops more than 7,000 feet (2,100 m) from its headwaters, near Galena Summit above the Sawtooth Valley in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, to its confluence with the Snake River. Measured at White Bird, its average discharge is 11,060 cubic feet per second. The Salmon River is the longest undammed river in the contiguous United States
The Clark Fork, or the Clark Fork of the Columbia River, is a river in the U.S. states of Montana and Idaho, approximately 310 miles (500 km) long. The largest river by volume in Montana, it drains an extensive region of the Rocky Mountains in western Montana and northern Idaho in the watershed of the Columbia River. The river flows northwest through a long valley at the base of the Cabinet Mountains and empties into Lake Pend Oreille in the Idaho Panhandle. The Pend Oreille River in Idaho, Washington, and British Columbia, Canada which drains the lake to the Columbia in Washington, is sometimes included as part of the Clark Fork, giving it a total length of 479 miles (771 km), with a drainage area of 25,820 square miles (66,900 km2). In its upper 20 miles (32 km) in Montana near Butte, it is known as Silver Bow Creek. Interstate 90 follows much of the upper course of the river from Butte to Saint Regis. The highest point within the river's watershed is Mount Evans at 10,641 feet (3,243 m) in Deer Lodge County, Montana along the Continental Divide.
North Central Idaho is an area which spans the central part of the state of Idaho and borders Oregon, Montana, and Washington. It is the southern half of the state's Panhandle region and is rich in agriculture and natural resources. Lewis and Clark traveled through this area on their journey to the Pacific Ocean in September 1805, crossing Lolo Pass and continuing westward in canoes on the Clearwater River. They returned the following spring on their way eastward.
Mary Dorcey is a writer, feminist, LGBTQIA+ activist, and elected member of the Aosdána. She was a writer in residence at Trinity College Dublin from 1995 to 2005, and has taught at University College Dublin.
Polly Bemis was a Chinese American pioneer who lived in Idaho in the late 19th and early 20th century. Her story became a biographical novel, and was the subject of the 1991 film Thousand Pieces of Gold.
The Gilmore and Pittsburgh Railroad (G&P), now defunct, was an American railroad located in southwestern Montana and east-central Idaho. Constructed in 1909 and 1910 between Armstead, Montana, and Salmon, Idaho, the G&P served mining and agricultural areas in Lemhi County, Idaho, and Beaverhead County, Montana. The line was financially backed by the Northern Pacific Railway (NP) and later became its subsidiary. Never financially successful, the G&P ceased operations in 1939, and the railroad was dismantled the following year.
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Sacagawea was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who, in her teens, helped the Lewis and Clark Expedition in achieving their chartered mission objectives by exploring the Louisiana Territory. Sacagawea traveled with the expedition thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, helping to establish cultural contacts with Native American people and contributing to the expedition's knowledge of natural history in different regions.
Grace Edgington Jordan was an American writer and journalist who wrote primarily about her adopted home state of Idaho. She was the wife of former Idaho governor and United States Senator Leonard B. Jordan.
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The Little Salmon River is a tributary of the Salmon River in Idaho. The river is approximately 51 miles (82 km) long and drains 576 square miles (1,490 km2) of land.
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