When I was a teenager, just getting interested in poetry, I acquired a volume of the Collected Poems by Winfield Townley Scott. “Winfield Townley who?” you may ask. In fact, he was a known (maybe not very well-known) writer back then. He’d won the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America in 1939, […]
John Morgan | Collected Poems Read More »
Imagine driving into the woods on a dirt road you have never traveled, looking for a boarded-up cabin, and hoping that it might be a shelter for your family after six weeks on the road. The grass and fireweed is head high, and only the roof is visible from the dirt trace someone called a
Spotlight on Alaska Books | Letters from Happy Valley by Dan L Walker Read More »
I crested the last green rise and was level with the turquoise lake and the slim twist of water flowing out of it. Here the creek is so narrow that I jumped over it. I turned my gaze toward the cirque in front of me, rimmed by cliffs on three sides. Dall sheep traversed vertical
Spotlight on Alaska Books | It Happened Like This: A Life in Alaska by Adrienne Lindholm Read More »
Crouched on the riverbank, I’m looking into the eyes of several large chum salmon, their heads and slithering bodies well above the water. Chum salmon are hefty fish, second only to king salmon in size. The spawning males have hooked jaws with sharp, canine-like teeth. Their mouths gape as they fin their bodies forward. Some
Spotlight on Alaska Books | A Wild Promise: Prince William Sound, by Debbie S. Miller Read More »
Three abreast, rows of well-groomed horses extended over hills and around bends farther than I could see. Riders carried banners from their home regions: Rio Nef, Rio Del Salto, Puerto Bertrand, Villa Castillo. We moved not as band of trail-weary, beaten-down campesinos with hundreds of kilometers behind us. Instead, we marched with flags flying as
Spotlight on Alaska Books | Riding Through the Heart of Patagonia by Nancy Pfeiffer Read More »
I live in one of the best places, bar none, to appreciate the wild natural environment. I also live in one of the most politically difficult places to work on its behalf: Alaska. I arrived in Alaska thirty-nine years ago with a Master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. From my
Spotlight on Alaska Books | The Great Unconformity by Kate Troll Read More »
The cold was back with a vengeance; she almost expected to see her breath hanging in the air like a frosted cloud. Very carefully, Ivy looked around the room, peering into the corners and shadows. She only saw her various twinned shadows twitching as she turned her head, tiny whirlpools of dust spinning at her
Spotlight on Alaska Books | Court of Twilight by Mareth Griffith Read More »
IT WOULD BE hard to return to sleep this late in the day, but Poppy yawned and turned over to try anyway. No dice. First the front door slammed, and someone stomped their boots on the mat. Then there was a lot of urgent-sounding jibber-jabber through the wall. Then the door slammed again. More boot
Spotlight on Alaska Books | Upon this Rock by David Marusek Read More »
My daughter seemed to see everything in her world through a lens of dog culture, much of it learned from her daily and personal interactions with Metoo. Cole’s hair flows to past her knees, and when she French braided it, Lynx would say “Mommy has her tail on.” When I used the chainsaw, she would
Spotlight on Alaska Books | Life with Forty Dogs, by Joseph Robertia Read More »
I’d spent years watching the sun set on a skyline of volcanoes, orange light streaking across Cook Inlet and into the windows of my home, twenty-six miles up the coast in the village of Seldovia. So why not walk there? Why not walk even farther? Why not begin at the tip of the Kenai Peninsula
Spotlight on Alaska Books | Mud Flats and Fish Camps by Erin McKittrick Read More »
