Brett Puryear is a fiction writer from Chattanooga, Tennessee — based in the great state of Montana.

Brett writes voice-driven, darkly comic fiction set in the American South and Mountain West. He also writes about outdoor sporting & conservation, travel and food for nationally distributed publications. He’s taught college English & Creative Writing, worked as an editor and ghostwriter, and writes scripts for a forthcoming eco-horror podcast series about werewolves.

He has bylines in Field & Stream, where he’s been a regular contributor, as well as Sporting Classics and Men’s Journal. He brought his fly fishing, travel and outdoors-writing know-how to Wildsam’s Pursuit series, as a lead writer for its Western Montana edition.

His fiction appears or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Writer’s Foundry Review, CutBank, Fiddleblack and Literary Orphans, among other places. He’s currently shopping his debut novel.

He’s taught at the University of Montana, where he earned his MFA in fiction, as well as American University and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He lives in Western Montana, and is an obsessive fly fisher and gigs as a country singer.

selected work

starry night, acolytes, iowa review, short story, fiction, literary journal, smoking, night, southern night

Short story published in The Iowa Review vol. 46 issue 3

Montana, American West, Western Writing, Western Montana, fly fishing, field guide, literary, outdoors, travel, travel writing, outdoor journalism

Essays and know-how on fly fishing an travel in Western Montana for Wildsam Field Guides –– read a sample of Brett’s writing here.

Southern Gothic, Southern Fiction, Funny Fiction, Montana, University of Montana, Missoula, literary fiction, short story, American West, antlers, cutbank, literary journal

Short Fiction in CutBank issue 91 –– read an excerpt or buy the issue