Thanks to all of you who submitted entries to this year’s Ode to a Dead Salmon contest! The judges have deliberated and the three finalists will be announced in our blog post on Monday, August 6 – be sure to vote for your favorite. Thank you again to our illustrious judges, Nancy Lord and Bill Sherwonit, who have supported this contest since its inception. And thank you too to Ray Troll, who is donating one of his signed fishy t-shirts to our lucky winner. Entries can be viewed at the
Ode to a Dead Salmon blog.
49 Writers member,
Morgan Grey, a second year graduate student at UAA, will be completing her MFA practicum with us. She has already started to assist with community outreach and collaboration activities that help us to build our writing community, and we will be notifying you soon of upcoming events that she is organizing.
Talking of events, be sure to join us at the Anchorage Museum auditorium on Friday,
August 10 at 7:00 pm for Synergies with poet Dan Beachy-Quick and musician Emily Kurn. We look forward to this exciting combination of talent. If you have family or friends visiting, what better way to introduce them to the Anchorage cultural scene! We will also be selling the last six signed limited edition
John Haines broadsides, featuring “Poem of the Forgotten” – an early poem that first appeared in
Winter News (Wesleyan, 1966). Proceeds go to the John Haines/49 Writers Poetry Fund, to benefit Synergies and other opportunities for Alaska poets. Show your support for poetry and gain something beautiful in return!
Congratulations to 49 Writers co-founder, Andromeda Romano-Lax, who reached and exceeded her goal of raising $5,500 to secure matching funds from
USA Projects for research for her novel-in-progress,
The Expert. It’s wonderful to know how much support exists for Alaska literature.
Tomorrow is the day! Perform your best sunshine dance…
The Hope Libary invites you to visit Hope for summer fun on Saturday, August 4, 11am to 4pm. Check out their poster for the fabulous line-up of authors.
Don’t forget that
Pitchapalooza is coming up,
August 16-18 – billed as “a statewide week of literary mayhem!” Contact
Amy Marshall at Craig Library for more information about connecting into these events by video-conference via the AlaskaOWL network. In Anchorage, you can join the events at the Alaska State Library conference room. Contact
Sue Sherif at the Alaska State Library for information about VC participation from Anchorage.
Alaska Crew Training, Inc. is offering a three-day course in Anchorage on Practical Screenwriting,
August 16-18. This intensive, hands-on program is designed to cover all the key elements of creating a compelling, entertaining, and saleable screenplay. As part of the course, students will also get the opportunity to develop a logline, verbal pitch, and workable treatment of a screenplay project. Instructor Craig Heller is a four-time Emmy award winning writer and teacher, who has also won the Writers Guild of America Script of the Year Award. Course fee is $350. To sign up
click here.
Soak up wilderness and mountain views at the 2013 Writers in Residence program at Denali National Park. Deadline is September 30. All three writers chosen in 2012 are Alaska residents.
Fairbanks Arts Association hosts the Tanana Valley State Fair Creative Writing Award winners at 7 p.m. Aug. 18 at the Bear Gallery, Pioneer Park, 2300 Airport Way.
Anchorage essayist and author Bill Sherwonit will teach a nature-writing workshop Labor Day weekend (Aug. 31-Sept. 3) at Stillpoint Lodge in Kachemak Bay’s Halibut Cove. Through readings, writing exercises, discussions, and quiet time spent in the company of nature (all of which are elements of the nature writer’s life), participants will discover—or perhaps in some instances, relearn—the ways that “writing down the wild” can lead to an intimacy with the larger, wilder world we inhabit. The cost of $495 includes round-trip transportation from Homer, three nights lodging, gourmet meals, tuition for the workshop, outdoor activities, and more. To sign up for the workshop or to get more information, go to http://www.stillpointlodge.com/workshops/8-31.htm or call 907-296-2283.
Do you know someone who has shown exceptional generosity to the next generation of writers? Nominate him or her for the 2013 George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature. The winner receives a lifetime membership in AWP and a $2,000 honorarium, along with travel, accommodations, and registration to attend AWP’s annual conference, where the award will be publicly conferred. We welcome letters of nomination postmarked through September 15.
Congratulations to Andrew Ladd, whose manuscript, What Ends, has been chosen by judge Kathryn Davis as the winner of the AWP Prize for the Novel. New Issues Press will publish the book. Ladd holds a BA from McGill University in Montreal and an MFA from Emerson College in Boston. His master’s thesis, an earlier draft of What Ends written under the guidance of Margot Livesey, was nominated for the Emerson Dean’s Award and, most recently, was a semifinalist in the 2012 Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award.
AWP will announce the winner of the AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction soon. For more information on the Award Series, please visit our website.
Consider nominating your favorite independent publisher for the 2013 AWP Small Press Publisher Award. The award includes a $2,000 honorarium and a complimentary exhibit booth, including two complimentary conference registrations, at our Annual Conference & Bookfair in the year following the recipient’s recognition. In even years the award will be given to a journal, and, in odd years, to a press. Please visit our website for criteria and eligibility requirements. Letters of nomination will be accepted by email through midnight on September 15.
