Recounting her childhood as the daughter of a gambler and a stripper, “amid the denizens of Anchorage‘s nightlife–pimps, con men, gamblers, prostitutes, heroin addicts,” Kim Rich’s acclaimed memoir Johnny’s Girl was made into a television movie. Though Rich now lives in Texas, she returns to Alaska this summer for a retreat weekend of writing, teaching, …
My friend, John Haines, died on March 2nd. I remember clearly reading his first book, Winter News, in 1966, the year it was published. I was a graduate student in New York City. The haunting and simple quality of the poems in that book appealed to me greatly. I was a city kid living in …
John Haines, An Old Friend Remembered: A Guest Post by David Budbill Read More »
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your outpouring of support in response to our annual appeal! We so appreciate your help in sustaining and growing our programs for Alaska’s literary community. If you haven’t given yet, there’s still time – our appeal ends May 31. Just fill in the amount of your gift and click …
Sitting in the orthodontist’s chair talking books this morning (I’m lucky that my orth is a big reader), and talk turned to Mark Kurlansky, author of Cod, a little book that ended up having significant staying power and influencing an entire generation of quirky, narrow-subject books. Back home today, on a summer afternoon that is …
It’s been a while since I saw a book trailer I actually wanted to watch multiple times. Bookish websites and even the New Yorker are all abuzz about novelist/satirist Gary Shteyngart’s book trailers for his Super Sad True Love Story. The first trailer featured Ph.D. lit student (oh yeah, and Hollywood star) James Franco, who …
Andromeda: Super Funny Shteyngart & Book Trailer Vogue Read More »
How long has 49 Writers been around? It depends on when you start counting. We began with an online community back in 2008, expanded in 2009, and in 2010 we incorporated as an Alaska non-profit. Last year at this time, we’d just signed a three-year lease on a cute historic house on L Street and …
The other day, my friend Jen wrote on her Facebook wall, “What in the name of my sainted Aunt Sally made me think I could write a novel? This is too damn hard.” Naturally, several of us threw ourselves into the task of encouraging her on. One friend suggested Jen bribe herself with Cheetos. Another …
Becoming Unstuck: A Guest Post by Gerri Brightwell Read More »
With school letting out for the summer today in Anchorage and around the state, it might seem odd that we’re getting excited already about our fall term of writing instruction here at 49 Writers. But we love reviewing course proposals (for fall, due June 1) from some of the state’s finest writers and putting together a …
Sick-lit, I discover today while net-surfing, is an entire misery-memoir subgenre. Its mainstay is the cancer memoir, and it relies on healthy doses of humor, as one can guess from titles like Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person, by Miriam Engelberg, and Lopsided: How Having Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting, by Meredith Norton. No, …
Andromeda: "A citizen of that other place" — on sick-lit Read More »
I finished writing my third book almost two months ago. I sent it to Cathie Woods, my editor, and she did her “thing” to it, although not as quickly as she had hoped. Yes, life takes precedent over words, or should. Then the text was back to me for final care. I combed out all …
