Coming soon (January 2009) from Inupiat elder and activist Willie Hensley is Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People . We caught up with Willie as he’s preparing for his first book tour. Deb: Fifty Miles from Tomorrow is your first book. What inspired you to write it? Willie: I […]
ALASKAN AUTHORS INTERVIEW: WILLIE HENSLEY Read More »
Nancy Lord is the author of three collections of short stories and three literary nonfiction books, FISH CAMP: Life on an Alaskan Shore, GREEN ALASKA: Dreams from the Far Coast, and BELUGA DAYS: Tracking a White Whale’s Truths. She settled in Homer, Alaska in 1973. I have to add a personal note, that I first
Forget Golden Apples. There’s no greater reward for a teacher than seeing a student make good with her talent, so I couldn’t have been more pleased than to read former student Nancy Slagle’s “Fahrenheit Be Darned,” subtitled “A Fairbanks Woman discovers the joy and pain of running in winter,” in the December/January issue of Alaska
ALASKAN AUTHORS WEEKLY ROUND-UP Read More »
Before the massacre in publishing began last week, there was some talk that books were recession-proof. Thankfully a small shred of evidence now points that way. Nielsen BookScan shows that for the week ending November 30, bookstore sales are up 6% as compared with Thanksgiving week 2007. For the most part, that’s without the literally
ARE BOOKS RECESSION-PROOF? Read More »
Phew, look at those last three posts — heavy poem, heavy suicide stories, heavy publishing news. I’d better end the day with something lighter. A friend, writer Judith G. from Colorado, sent me this quote, which pertains to my own current revision work and perhaps pertains to something in your life as well: “I do
The news is everywhere, and it’s grim. Yesterday, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publisher and v-p Becky Saletan quit abruptly. Today, more firings and layoffs at HMH, Simon and Schuster, and elsewhere were announced, as was a massive restructuring at Random House, affecting a complex web of imprints. Oh yeah — and locally, poor forecasts for Alaska
“Black Wednesday” in Publishing: How does if affect you? Read More »
How much will you say about your work in progress? It’s a weird writer thing, the perception that only novices talk – and sometimes, indeed, talking supplants actually writing. We have a big need to feel safe, and telling too much means putting ourselves out there. Someone might expect us to actually perform, and from
From a wannabe Alaskan author, here’s a portion of a poem inspired by – you guessed it – our fair governor. The poem was posted on a website called TeamSarah.org, a hang-out for Obama-haters and Sarah-lovers. “We are the people that don’t watch the news,except for FOX.We are the people that even after the election,are
The New York Times reports: “In his first story collection, set mostly in Alaska, David Vann exorcises demons born from the suicide of his father. … In the novella, “Sukkwan Island,” the powerful and supremely vexing centerpiece of the collection, Roy and his father make a final attempt at reconciliation. The father has bought a
“Legend of a Suicide” — a new Alaska book sighting in the NYT Read More »
When poet and playwright Arlitia Jones was interviewed last month, she agreed to share one of her newest poems. Bible StoryYou are no longer the childfollowing your father’s proud back following the word made commandmade to bring you to climb the high mountain beyond broad fields of tall cropswhere childhood’s bees droned their patriot hymns
Starting the week with a poem Read More »
