About Me
My name is Myers Reece. I live in Kalispell, Montana, near Glacier National Park, and I'm an original founder of the Flathead Beacon, which is perennially named the best weekly newspaper in Montana. Outside Magazine featured the Beacon as one of the 100 best places in the nation to work, while the Columbia Journalism Review said it has "the best newsroom in Montana." I served as senior writer until 2013 when I left to pursue freelance opportunities, although I stayed involved with the Beacon-owned Flathead Living magazine, for which I'm now the managing editor.
In July 2016, I rejoined the Flathead Beacon and serve as managing editor. I continue to write freelance for a number of magazines, including The Drake, a national Colorado-based fly fishing publication for which I'm a regular contributor. In addition to my role as managing editor of Flathead Living, I write features for the award-winning quarterly magazine, which the Montana Newspaper Association annually names the best magazine in our division.
My journalism, fiction and essays have been published in a number of magazines and literary journals, including Condé Nast Traveler, Hatch Magazine, Flyfisher, The Drake, Big Sky Journal, Redbone Journal, Whitefish Review, and Montana Quarterly, as well as newspapers across the country. My work has appeared in two anthologies, Unearthing Paradise: Montana Writers in Defense of Greater Yellowstone, a finalist for the 2017 High Plains Book Awards, and Montana: Warts and All, a collection of the Montana Quarterly's best writing from the last decade. The Society of Professional Journalists has named the Quarterly the best overall magazine in the Northwest U.S. three times in recent years.
My writing has won dozens of awards, including a number of first-place honors from the Montana Newspaper Association. In 2012, I earned the state's top public service award for a series on law enforcement corruption. I've also received first-place recognitions for my outdoors, educational, environmental, business and investigative reporting. While at University of Montana, I received the Pat Burke Memorial Scholarship after writing a series on debt and dysfunction within the athletics department.
Through my political reporting, I've interviewed and covered politicians of all stripes and backgrounds, from governors to U.S. senators to local city councilors. My writing has been read on the U.S. Senate floor and submitted as foundational material for state legislative hearings. In 2012, I co-moderated a crucial gubernatorial debate between Democrat Steve Bullock and Republican Rick Hill. I've also worked as an Associated Press stringer on election night.
I have extensive editing experience, from first reads to final copy edits and proofreads, in addition to managing a newsroom and overseeing personnel. As an original founding member of the Beacon, I was part of a small team that started the publication and grew it from the ground up into the state's largest independent media company and weekly newspaper. I've also managed and curated the Beacon's website, and been involved with a weekly news podcast and serial crime podcast.
In order to buy food more nutritious than ramen, I have supplemented my editorial work with commercial copywriting and editing, including promotional material, website content and press releases for industries ranging from real estate to book publishing to health care.
My father is Parks Reece, an eccentric North Carolina hillbilly turned globally acclaimed artist, who has held exhibits from Hollywood to Shanghai but prefers to keep it close to home in Montana. My mother is a small but determined Japanese woman who's regarded in knowledgeable circles as one of the finest unpaid chefs in Montana, and undoubtedly the best party host. Friends start stories about my wedding with drooly descriptions of her sushi before mentioning that it was also kind of cool that I got married.
When I'm not writing, I'm usually fishing or running or finding other ways to enjoy Montana's wonders, almost always accompanied by my lovely wife, Kate, a licensed clinical social worker who spends too much of her free time offering me free therapy, along with our two sons, Fisher and Gus.
They've all learned to ignore me when I have manic conversations with my computer screen, demanding that it cough up good sentences. I've assured them it's essential to the creative process. And they don't question it, because they're eternally supportive like that.
Email me at myers@myersreece.com or fill out the form on my contact page.