Guest Posts

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 […]

As writers one of the key elements of our craft that we all know (and sometimes love) is the revision process. For the uninitiated, revising is normally done after the first draft of a story is written. It’s where the writer goes all the way back to the beginning of the story and makes changes

First published in 2004, Tidal Echoes is an annual Southeast Alaskan literature and arts journal administered by the University of Alaska Southeast. Although it originated as a university-specific journal only accepting submissions from students at UAS Juneau, the journal now publishes work from all over the southeast region. Over the last 17 years, Tidal Echoes

The first opinion piece I ever wrote for a newspaper was published on April 15, 1969. Unfortunately, it was disguised as a news story. Not too cleverly, I should admit. I was a freshman at Purdue University, in conservative Indiana (my oops for taking the scholarship and not thinking about much else). The dorm had

I have a confession to make: I never wanted to write a book. Individual stories, yes. But books (novels), never. Until fairly recently. Over all the years I’ve spent in writing classes and at writing conferences, I’ve tried to keep secret my embarrassing lack of interest in writing books. My lack of ambition. Year after