April 2013

Kiana Carr wrote the following poem after her last visit to Alaska in 2011. She was born in Fairbanks and lived in the small village of Bettles until she was seven years old, when her family moved to California. She says Alaska will always be her home. Aspen leaves brilliant yellow contrast with white bark The sun’s […]

Tomorrow at Snow City and in remote places around the globe –well, at least North America–it begins: the Third Annual 49 Writers Write-a-thon.  The first year we held this event, I was terrified it might not work, and remember how hard it was to explain the concept, though we’d studied similar events in other cities.

Every spring I teach an intro creative writing workshop, and every single year, in the first batch of submissions, someone turns in a poem written with a rhyme scheme. In class two, when we workshop the poem, we always have a rousing debate about the merits of a rhyme scheme.  Usually I’m alone in my

I’ve just returned from the annual Associated Writing Programs conference, this one held in Boston. It’s a massive gathering – 12,000 writers, editors, publishers, and agents. Heavy on the writers. One of my panel presentations, on “Wild Writing Residencies,” mercifully took that roomful of writers out of the sterile Hynes Convention Center, off the busy streets of

The Conference has become an important feature of the state’s writing community. How and when did it start? It began in 2002 after the Kachemak Bay Campus had been holding a Visiting Writers Series for several years. There was great interest in expanding it to become a statewide conference. The Campus was then the benefactor

Shame face: These ones happen to be all male, and all politicians, but that’s not intentional. I was making this face yesterday, too. Here is why I put off signing up for 49 Writers Third Annual Write-a-thon until yesterday. One day I started to try but realized I didn’t have my wallet on me (to complete

Welcome to Emily Wall, our featured author for the month of April — which happens to be poetry month! (Go to the Salmon Poetry site to find audio readings of her poetry.) I hate to open a blog this way, but I’m going to brag a little bit. I’m a lucky poet. I get support

Series editor of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, Nancy Zafris visits Alaska this week; her appearances include a reading in Homer on Thursday, April 4, followed by a 49 Writers Crosscurrents event on Friday, April 5, and a 49 Writers workshop April 6 & 7. Her most recent book, The Home Jar (Switchgrass Books), a collection