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About the Store

Gary and Kathy Robson
Hanging the sign at the current location, 11 North Broadway.

Red Lodge Books began in 1986 under the name Broadway Bookstore. The original store was about a block away from its current location, and about a quarter the size. The original owners had a metaphysical focus, the next owner ran it as a used bookstore, and the third owner had a mix of new and used books with a focus on Montana history.

Gary and Kathy Robson purchased the store on October 15, 2001, and moved it to larger quarters in May 2002. They expanded again and moved the store to its current location in February 2010. In addition to new and used books, they opened a tea room and brought in magazines, journals, maps, toys & games, local coffee, and quality cigars.

Red Lodge Books is a member of the American Booksellers Association (ABA), the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association (MPIBA), and the Red Lodge Area Chamber of Commerce.

About the Owners

Gary Robson

Gary and Kathy Robson
Gary & Kathy Robson
Gary is a writer and accessibility technology consultant who has written 23 books and hundreds articles for magazines, encyclopedias, newspapers, and Web sites. All of his in-print books are available here at Red Lodge Books (of course). He has served on the boards of a number of area nonprofits, including the Red Lodge Festival of Nations, Red Lodge Area Chamber of Commerce, Beartooth Elks Lodge #534, and the Beartooth Nature Center. Whenever there's a Scottish event going on in town, Gary is always involved and often the emcee.

Kathy Robson

Kathy performs realtime television closed captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. She can write at over 250 words per minute on her special shorthand machine with better than 99% accuracy. If you turn on the captioning on your television, you'll see her mostly on baseball, football, and rodeo, but also on a variety of other sports, news, and talk shows. She chaired the Belfry, Montana school board, and is currently on the Beartooth Nature Center Board of Directors. She is also active with the Downtown Merchants Association.

Events

Red Lodge Books regularly hosts book signings, talks, and classes. Here are pictures from a few of our recent events.


A double signing with Mark Spragg (Bone Fire) and Laura Bell (Claiming Ground), which was followed by a talk and release party at the Elks lodge.
New York Times bestselling author Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea) talking about building schools in Pakistan.

Craig Johnson came in for a reading and signing when his sixth Walt Longmire book (Junkyard Dogs) came out. His books are perennial favorites at Red Lodge Books.
Radio personality Krysti the Wordsmith (Verbivore's Feast, Part 2) talks about word and phrase origins.