Watch a recording of this event:
49 Writers Inspiration Series: Emily Wall
Recorded: Tuesday, May 10 | 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
via Zoom
Inspiration is a 49 Writers series in which Writer Laureate Heather Lende will interview some of Alaska’s premier writers about their work, process, and the writing life.
Emily Wall is a Professor of English at the University of Alaska. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry and her poems have been published in journals across the US and Canada, most recently in Prairie Schooner and Alaska Quarterly Review. She has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and her most recent book, Flame, won the Minerva Rising chapbook prize. She has two books published with Salmon Poetry: Liveaboard and Freshly Rooted. She also has two books being launched this year. Her chapbook Fist will come out this fall and her full-length book Breaking Into Air: Birth Poems is coming out in June. Emily lives and writes in Douglas, Alaska. She can be found online at www.emily-wall.com.
Heather Lende is the Alaska State Writer Laureate and the author of four bestselling memoirs from Algonquin Books, the 2020 Alaska Reads pick, Find the Good, If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name, Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs, and most recently Of Bears and Ballots about her contentious 2016-19 term on the Haines Borough Assembly. Her many essays and stories, mostly about life and sometimes death, have been distributed widely. Heather is a former Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Dispatch columnist and contributing editor at Woman’s Day magazine and has written hundreds of obituaries for the Chilkat Valley News in Haines where she lives with her husband Chip. They have five adult children. She is the recipient of the 2021 Middlebury College distinguished alumni award, the Alaska Governor’s Award for Arts and Humanities, the Episcopal Bishop of Alaska’s Bishop’s Cross award, and the Jason Wegner Memorial Writing Award from UAA, where she earned an MFA in Creative Writing.
Topic: State Laureate Writer and NYT best-selling author Heather Lende will talk with poet and university professor Emily Wall about the contemporary world of publishing. They will discuss working with a variety of publishers and presses–from small, “boutique” presses, to large publishing houses. They’ll discuss the differences in publishing poetry and prose and explore how literary journals fit into the publishing process. Both Heather and Emily recently launched new books, so they’ll talk about the joys and challenges of the process of bringing a new book out into the world.