Best wishes of the season to all our blog followers! We hope your winter break with family and friends is both relaxing and restoring.
As the year draws to a close, take a moment to put our January events on your calendar. On January 1, we open registration for our spring semester. Although spring might seem rather remote from current reality, taking one or more of our classes will help the winter pass much more quickly! We have a varied lineup with something for everyone – be sure to sign up early for the class that interests you to avoid disappointment.
On Friday, January 11, 7 pm, we will be holding our annual Resolve to Write event – look for more information next week. If you live outside Anchorage and would like to organize a Resolve to Write in your community, just let us know and we can connect you to members in your area. It’s a great way to start off the year with some writerly camaraderie and encouragement for your 2013 writing goals!
On Sunday, January 20, 2-4 pm, 49 Writers is co-sponsoring a writers panel at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium, in the Endeavor Room of the Hotel Captain Cook. “Writing Science Creatively: what inquiring minds want to know” features local panelists Sherry Simpson, Nancy Lord, and Andromeda Romano-Lax, as well as Judith Connor of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute – writers whose science writing spans the spectrum from outreach for science institutions and interpretation of natural resources on public lands to creative nonfiction, novels, and poetry. Participants will receive practical writing advice, a reading list, ideas for places to publish, and an opportunity to participate in a new Alaska science writing blog. Admission free.
Later that week, on Wednesday, January 23, 7 pm, Bill Streever features in our January Reading & Craft Talk at Great Harvest Bread Company. His topic: Storytelling and Science: Writing About All Things Hot and All Things Cold.
Alaska writers continue to gain recognition in the wider literary world. This month Publishers Weekly has reviewed the soon-to-be-published works of two local authors, giving Bill Streever’s Heat a starred review. The book was one of their Top 10 science books this season: “In this worthy companion to Cold, Streever is able to mix the pop science, personal experiences, and historic asides into a fun and informative commentary on a subject that few people think about despite its inherent life and death implications.” Publishers Weekly also warmed to Cinthia Ritchie’s “quirky debut,” Dolls Behaving Badly, concluding that “Ritchie’s tale of female triumph makes for a fun read.” Cinthia is the featured author for our Reading & Craft Talk on Monday, February 11, 7 pm.
David Stevenson, director of UAA’s Creative Writing and Literary Arts Program, has been announced by Whitefish Review as the $1,000 prize winner of the first Rick Bass/Montana Prize for Fiction award for his story, “The Bear Outside the Door.” David writes often about the mountaineering experience, and has published in journals such as Ascent, Alpinist, Isotope, and in The American Alpine Journal, where he has been the book review editor since 1996.
If you have news to share of publishing success, a book signing, or any other literary activity in your area, feel free to email us at 49writers@gmail.com and we’ll help to spread the word.
Here’s another opportunity to support a fellow writer: Kris Farmen has initiated a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the travel and fieldwork phase of a non-fiction book about surfing in Alaska. His goal is $10,000 by January 7. Your support can he
lp make this project happen! Kris has a publisher lined up for this book but it’s a small house without the funds for a travel advance. For more information or to make a contribution, click here.
Thank you to those of you who have already made a year-end financial gift to 49 Writers in response to our annual appeal for support. Direct contributions from the community make up one-third of our budget, and Alaska’s writers and readers have always been generous in their giving. Visit our website for more information about the programs and activities we provided for Alaska’s writing community in 2012. It’s easy to donate online – just click here! And look for information in next week’s eNewsletter about some of the great things 49 Writers has in store for you in 2013.
Submissions for the WC&C Scholarship Competition are now being accepted through March 30, 2013. Two scholarships of $500 each are available to emerging writers of fiction and poetry who wish to attend a writers’ conference, center, retreat, festival, or residency. The 49 Alaska Writing Center is a WC&C member, and this scholarship could be applied to the registration fee for our Tutka Bay Writers Retreat, September 6-8, 2013.
F Magazine is still soliciting entries for its 3rd Annual
Statewide Youth Art & Writing Competition – deadline January 20, 2013, click here for more
information. This year’s winners will be published in a special issue of F
Magazine and the top two will
go to Sitka Fine Arts Summer Camp! Creative teens in grades 7-12 are invited to
submit work in a variety of categories of art and writing. The submissions are
judged locally and 49 Writers will jury the writing entries. In March, Out
North Contemporary Arts House in Anchorage will showcase the statewide winners
of the competition with a reading of their work by experienced readers and actors
and the entire event will be streamed online for students unable to attend. ASYAWC
is supported, in part, by Out North and grants from the Alaska Humanities
Foundation and the Alaska State Council on the Arts/National Endowment for the
Arts.