Editor’s Note: Thank you to Lisa Alexia for this review of Floating Coast by Bathsheba Demuth. Bathsheba will be teaching a nonfiction workshop for 49 Writers during her time in Anchorage. You can sign up on our web site. Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, by Bathsheba Demuth (W.W. Norton & Co, […]
Lisa Alexia | Crossing Borders: Review of Floating Coast by Bathsheba Demuth Read More »
There is a question that I get every time I mention that I am an English major: what are you going to do with that? Sometimes it worries me because what can I do with that? I made the decision to become an English major because it was my only interest in my high school
Tidal Echoes: What to Do with an English Major? by Kelsey Walsh Read More »
Editor’s Note: Please Join us in Anchorage on Friday, November 15, 2019 at 7 PM at The Writer’s Block Bookstore & Café in Anchorage. 49 Writers, Alaska Quarterly Review, and the Center for the Narrative & Lyric Arts present two engaging and provocative stories from the new AQR edition: Lee Conell’s “Ex Party” and Debbi Urbanksi’s
Mary Odden | Old Guns, New Guns in AQR Read More »
Susan Orlean is best known for her books The Orchid Thief, Saturday Night, Rin Tin Tin, and most recently, The Library Book, published in October, 2018. Now out in paperback, it’s a story she was compelled to tell about the largest library fire in US history and how it renewed a lifelong love and appreciation
AVP 11: Susan Orlean Read More »
What we like can do so much for our writing, including challenging us to come at our fiction in novel ways. So don’t segregate your likes into the “for fun” column and forget about them when you get down to work. Investigate your likes. Interrogate them. Ask yourself: Why do you like what you like—and how can it help you become a better writer?
Jamey Bradbury | No Accounting for Taste: Finding Form in What You Like Read More »
Who among us doesn’t have a dead novel or memoir that resisted all CPR efforts? Who hasn’t wondered if some part of it couldn’t be saved or repurposed? With that in mind, I’ll share a few lessons I learned from my experience doing a “page one rewrite” of my novel currently titled “Annie and the Wolves.”
Andromeda Romano-Lax | Page One Rewrite, Part Two Read More »
In August 2017, I had one of the strangest experiences of my writing life. I opened a file in a folder associated with a novel I’d given up on five years earlier, read a few unfamiliar paragraphs, What’s this?, and then a few pages more, I know I wrote it; I just don’t remember writing it. I kept going all the way to the end of the chapter, and found myself intrigued, What the heck is going to happen next?
Andromeda Romano-Lax | Page One Rewrite, Part One Read More »
Author Annie Boochever on Fighter in Velvet Gloves: Alaska Civil Rights Hero Elizabeth Peratrovich. Boochever collaborated with this story of Elizabeth Peratrovich’s life for young readers with her son, Roy Peratrovich Jr. This highly recommended work arrives at a time when issues of race and racism are clearly unsettled.
AVP 10: Annie Boochever Read More »
When not spending time in endangered and beautiful places or teaching writing, Pam Houston lives with horses, goats and dogs in her cherished home of almost 30 years, an off the grid ranch in the high country of Colorado. In this episode, Pam tells host and producer Katie Bausler that it is metaphors that get her through
AVP 09: Pam Houston Read More »
Sometimes writers need to get away from the people and things that fill their days so they can create. Each spring and fall, 49 Writers secures space at the National Shrine of Saint Therese for a writer’s retreat. The May 2019 retreat took place in The Lodge, a two-story log building that can sleep 24
Dan Branch & Katie Bausler | 49 Writers Spring Retreat Reflections Read More »
