Guest Posts

Guest Blogger Kathleen Witkowska Tarr | Listening to a Literary Monk

Listening to a Literary Monk: Balancing Writing with Silence Thomas Merton chose to live on the margins. As an isolated Trappist monk, he joined a strict and austere religious order as a deep and profound act of cultural resistance. He entered the Abbey of Gethsemani on December 10, 1941 at age 26, a newly confirmed […]

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Guest Blogger David Ramseur | Lessons from a First Book Experience

I confess to being a little intimidated when 49 Writers Executive Director Jeremy Pataky asked me to write four weekly blogs about writing, subject to harsh dissection by Alaska’s best writers. I lack a fine arts degree, never begin my day composing an original poem, and don’t even keep a journal—other than a log of

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Guest Blogger David Ramseur | Crazy Russian Stories Alone Don’t Make a Book

  Spritzing vodka on an Alaska Airlines jet when de-icing fluid couldn’t be found in the Russian Far East. Alaska’s First Lady forgetting her passport on the first high-profile visit to the USSR in 40 years. Launching notes of friendship across the Bering Strait tied to weather balloons instead of messages in a bottle to

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Guest Blogger Lizbeth Meredith | What Hybrid Publishing Is and Why I Chose It

In the 21 years it took me to complete my book and pitch it to an agent, the publishing world had changed dramatically. No longer were the big six publishing houses paying hefty advances to newbie authors. No longer did agents clamor for unknown memoirists. “Why don’t you self-publish?” I was asked repeatedly. The reasons

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Guest Blogger Lizbeth Meredith | How Turning My Book from a Baby into a Product Helped Restore My Sanity

It’s easy to see why authors compare launching their books to birthing a baby. The gestation period between signing my contract and publishing my memoir, Pieces of Me: Rescuing My Kidnapped Daughters was precisely nine months. The sleepless nights as I tossed and turned before the book’s release were as constant as they were during

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Guest Blogger Lizbeth Meredith | Three Things I Wish I’d Known as an Expectant Author

“Please keep in mind; this is just my first book.” This is what I began telling friends and family several months ago when I was still up to my eyeballs in anxiety and final edits of my memoir, Pieces of Me: Rescuing My Kidnapped Daughters. I followed the announcement with a bunch of reasons why

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Guest Blogger Lizbeth Meredith | Grants: Beyond the Cash Benefit

A few months before publishing my memoir, I was drowning in book-related expenses. And while some of them were discretionary—contests, book marks and cards, shipping of the paperbacks I wanted to sell directly during events, and website upgrades, to name a few—they seemed important to my book’s success. I considered a second job, but didn’t

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