“Guess what, Auntie C?” my niece tells me on the phone. “My class visited Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherst! We saw her room—her bed and her desk and everything. It was amazing.” Tamar is 13, an avid reader, and one of my favorite people. I ask her if she’ll go again with me when we …
Guest Blogger Christine Byl | Investigating Emily Read More »
#GivingTuesday connects individuals, communities, and organizations around the world for one common purpose: to celebrate and encourage giving. 49 Writers sees #GivingTuesday as a chance to help equip Alaska’s current and future thinkers, writers, and citizens to be as creative, thoughtful, and skilled as they can be. Please join us in that work by renewing or …
In celebration of National American Indian Heritage Month, Leslie Hsu Oh interviewed Ilarion Merculieff, author of Wisdom Keeper: One Man’s Journey to Honor the Untold History of the Unangan People. Ilarion is Unangan (Aleut) of the Pribilof Islands. He’s served his people for four decades in roles such as City Manager of St. Paul Island …
One year into what for many Americans is a bewildering change in the leadership of our country, we gathered around Thanksgiving tables to share food and gratitude. At many gatherings was a heightened sense of thankfulness for community and family in tumultuous times. In 2017 we lost good people standing for what they saw as …
Active Voice | Katie Bausler: Hate and Love, Power and Privilege Read More »
SOUTHCENTRAL ANCHORAGE | Thursday, November 30, 2017 at 7 PM | 49 Writers Reading & Craft Talk Series presents Crazy Russian Stories Alone Don’t Make a Book with author David Ramseur | Just five years after a Soviet missile blew a civilian airliner out of the sky over the North Pacific, Russia and Alaska citizen diplomats braved Cold War tensions to join hands across …
Heartfelt thanks to our members, volunteers, supporters, students, and instructors. We’re grateful to live in an amazing, authentic place peopled by caring, creative communities.
On a recent road trip to visit family in the Southeast, a rural church billboard caught my eye: “Grateful people are happy people.” I don’t generally look to church yard proclamations for advice, but this quote stayed with me. It’s far from a novel idea—myriad scientific studies support the correlative relationship between articulated gratitude …
Guest Blogger Christine Byl | Thanks & Giving for the Arts Read More »
Thanksgiving’s just two days away. The calendar will flick that domino into the year’s remaining days, triggering the ol’ chain reaction. It would be easy to let time slip right by till the New Year ball drops. Don’t let it. On the cusp of the holidaze, I’m chiming in with a friendly reminder to take …
In graduate school, I began annotating the books I read. Unlike lots of things from graduate school that I should still be doing, this habit stuck. I do it to this day. I love making that short entry in my tiny notebook when I finish reading something—an intentional assessment of resonance, failings, delights—and I find …
Guest Blogger Christine Byl | What Shall I Read Next? Read More »
I’m not sure what the hell I was thinking when I applied to begin the MFA program at UAA in 2013, but I seemed to ignore the “creative” half of the “creative nonfiction” box when I indicated a genre focus. My idea of nonfiction was that one began at the chronological beginning, and concluded at …
