I left McCarthy late last week, Juneau-bound for 49 Writers meetings. With other stops along the way, it’s proven to be an inspiring whirlwind. I head back to the Wrangells filled up by this huge place full of creative, hardworking artists, where even the distances that separate us are wild and beautiful. I arrived in […]
Jeremy Pataky | Our Creative Community Read More »
49 Writers envisions “a vibrant community of Alaskan writers coming together to inspire, create, and share.” While that vision informs all our mission-driven pursuits, it doubles as a pretty great description of this blog, too. All sorts of 49 Writers programs and events have grown over time out of the steady, consistent, and galvanizing energy
On Your Mark. Get Set. Post! Read More »
Birds demand notice this time of year, showing up in numbers, raucous to rufous ones all making noise, alighting in all the places. Literature, like life in springtime Alaska, is rife with them. Entire anthologies pair birds and poetry. Writing about birds can be subject to an ironic valence now in this post-Portlandia “put a
I laid down in bed early on Saturday, exhausted after a busy but memorable week without enough sleep. Instead of passing right out, though, my mind wouldn’t turn off. There’s plenty on it, lately, but I was surprised when the mental autopilot eventually swiveled to Roethke’s poem “The Waking”. It’s a villanelle that I love
Jeremy Pataky | “I learn by going where I have to go…” Read More »
We Alaskans tune into weather, seasons, subtle shifts in light, and most recently, the dramatic arrival of Spring. Change is in the air – you can smell, see, and feel it. What will you do with your extra hours of light? Here at 49 Writers, summer is a time to plan, reflect on our past
Springtime: Beginnings and Change Read More »
Summer in Alaska is a full-steam ahead, get-it-all-done, hangout/work-outside kind of time. If you’re anything like me, you end up sliding in September exhausted and maybe a little disoriented. Did you write anything this summer? Did you manage to make the time to devote to your novel or poetry or creative nonfiction essays? Maybe not.
Get Back to Your Writing This Fall Read More »
I watched the ferry chug off toward Alaska every week from Bellingham, Washington while I was in college. I loved northwestern Washington, and the proximity of the Canadian border twenty miles up the road. Every time I watched that blue ferry leave, though, magnetic bits inside me pulled for points north. I’d studied the maps,
Jeremy Pataky: 30 Years Later—An Island Institute Retrospective Read More »
Jeremy Pataky Southeast Alaska is rainforest country, where water substantiates the world—even trees, there, are shown to contain molecules from out at sea delivered inland in salmon. Its lush fecundity translates into a literary watershed, too—many great writers and scholars hail from Gustavus, Haines, Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan, and points between. Lately, the roster of 49
Jeremy Pataky: Heading to Southeast Alaska with Overwinter Read More »
FROM HERE YOU SEEM A BRAIDED RIVER You wore shorefast ice, birds were starting, spring high water was still white snow in mountains. Ice still rimmed your banks. We would come to know gibbous light. We would come to know snow light. We would come to know ice light, star, animal light, window light, want
Spotlight on Alaska Books: Overwinter, by Jeremy Pataky Read More »
Joan Kane (photo by Seth Kantner) Joan Kane is Inupiaq with family from King Island and Mary’s Igloo, Alaska. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and her MFA from Columbia University. Kane’s awards include a 2007 individual artist award from the Rasmuson Foundation, a 2009 Connie Boochever Fellowship from the Alaska State Council on the
Jeremy Pataky Interviews Joan Kane Read More »
