Zarzyski, the recipient of the 2005 Governor’s Arts Award for Literature, has been writing poetry for 35 years. In the early ’70s, he heeded Horace Greeley’s “go west young man, go west” advice and received his Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from the University of Montana, where he studied with Richard Hugo. In the same breath, he took up a second vocation – bareback bronc riding – and rode the amateur, ProRodeo, and senior circuits into his early 40s.
Zarzyski has been a featured performer at the Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering for 22 consecutive years, has toured Australia and England, and has recited at the National Book, Folk, and Storytelling festivals, the ProRodeo Hall of Fame, the Library of Congress, and with the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra. He was also featured in 1999 on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, aired from the Mother Lode Theater in Butte, Mont.