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War Novels, Combat Women, and the Beautiful Souls Narrative by Kristen Ritter

January 19, 2022 / By 49 Writers

I was watching Christopher Nolan’s war epic, Dunkirk, and I found myself performing a familiar exercise: trying to imagine the soldiers as women. Without changing any details of plot or the actors’ essential movements, could I imagine a female in the boy-soldier’s place? What about the boat captain? The sailor? The English commander? What would […]

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A Tribute to Dan Branch

January 13, 2022 / By 49 Writers

DANIEL NELSON BRANCH, age 70, died peacefully on January 5, 2022, at his home in Juneau. It can be a cliché to say a man lived a full life, but Dan did that and more. He left an indelible mark on people across Alaska with his work as a state attorney, his passion as an

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An Interview with Playwright Julia Izumi

January 12, 2022 / By 49 Writers

49 Writers had the honor of interviewing Julia Izumi, an award-winning playwright, Theater Alaska workshop instructor, and Brown University playwriting professor. Below, she shares her thoughts on the writing process, what she’s learned from her mistakes, and the limits of American theater. How do you approach a new play? What is your process? I’ll get

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In Search of Lost Time, 2022: Not Another Productivity Post by Andromeda Romano-Lax

January 5, 2022 / By 49 Writers

I put away my scale for the month of January. Generally, I believe in weighing myself daily, which research supports as helping with weight control. But I could tell I was investing too much in the flashing numbers, being buoyed or dismayed by small fluctuations instead of putting emphasis on real health: how I feel,

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With Gratitude to the Writing Spirit, and to You

December 29, 2021 / By 49 Writers

It’s a quiet morning in the tall pines. Six inches of snow have fallen, and the breezes of the past few days have died down. Oregon juncos – like Alaskan ones but with peachy patches on their breasts – gather in small flocks outside the window. A bright varied thrush rests in a high branch

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Spectacle and the Art of Blowing Things Out of Proportion by Carey Seward

December 22, 2021 / By 49 Writers

When I was considering what to write for this blog post, I thought about what superpowers playwriting can share with other writing genres. One major difference between most forms of writing and playwriting is that a play is incomplete on the page. As a novel requires a reader and their imagination to participate in consuming

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Writer Spotlight: Murasaki Shikibu

December 15, 2021 / By 49 Writers

“Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.” ― Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu was born sometime in the 970s to an aristocratic Japanese family. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, considered to be possibly the world’s first novel. In The Tale of Genji,

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The Universal He by Kristen Ritter

December 8, 2021 / By 49 Writers

In many popular books on the craft of writing, a common pattern emerges: the reader, writer, and protagonists are purposely defaulted to male. John Vorhaus in The Comic Toolbox writes, “A lot of times I call these people he, though of course I mean both he and she. Language lags behind social change, and the

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Kindle Vella, Serial Time Killer? by Dan Walker

December 1, 2021 / By 49 Writers

Whether you are pro-Amazon or hate the powerful marketing juggernaut, you have to admit it the company is the master of sales, delivery, and marketing of everything from books to bras to bonbons. Now Amazon has introduced the serialized novel as part of their Kindle bookshelf. It’s called Kindle Vella and it allows the reader

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Vacation Returns by Sean Ulman

November 24, 2021 / By 49 Writers

As the year turns in Alaska, outdoor rituals mark shifting seasons. Picking berries, harvesting gardens, splitting wood, first frost… Upon my family’s return from an overdue trip to Cape Cod, I’ve been thinking about how vacation fits into this puzzle. And what a boon it can be for a writer. For many, vacation is a

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