Have you picked up your copy of Nancy Lord’s Rock, Water, Wild 
Lucky me: without even the requisite six degrees separation, I’ve nabbed a back-door link to Alaska’s celebrity author. As reported this week in the New York Observer, Bookforum editor (also my brother) Chris Lehmann, has sold Rich People Things to Colin Robinson at Or Books. Expanding on his column of the same name for The Awl, Chris says it will be a sort of “bestiary of the permanent institutions of American capitalism.” You may recall Or Books launched last year with the best-selling anti-Palin anthology Going Rouge.
Anchorageites making the First Friday rounds tonight won’t want to miss Parque?Poetry Installed, an evening of recently published work by poets Olena Kalytiak Davis and Kary Wayson arranged by the Still North Reading and Performance Series. Alaska based Kalytiak-Davis and Seattle based Wayson will read their
poems within an installation by visual artists Jimmy Riordan and Craig Updegrove, the owner/operators of Rabbit Rabbit Press. The fun begins at 7 p.m. tonight, February 5th, at the MTS Gallery, 3142 Mountain View Drive; readings begin at 8 p.m. Catering is by Crush, with music by Reverse Retro.
Alaskan poet Erin Hollowell has started a new blog on writing and life called Being Poetry. “So far I’ve examined purpose, patience, grief and cabin fever all through the window of poetry,” Erin says. “I’m working up to featuring some Alaskan poets; Joan Kane is on the horizon. But mostly, the blog is a reflection on how poetry informs my life, and some writing and reading suggestions.”
In addition to her February 16th Poisoned Pen Launch Party at the Grand Ballroom of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel for A Night Too Dark
- February 17th, Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego, 7 p.m.
- February 18th, Powell’s Books, Portland, 7 p.m.
- February 19th, Barnes & Noble, Anchorage, 7 p.m.
- February 20th, Fireside Books, Palmer, 12 noon
Palmer has declared February 16th, 2010, publication day of A Night Too Dark, to be Kate Shugak Day. Dana will also speak as part of a panel March 5, 10:40 a.m.- noon at the Alaska Library Association Annual Conference, Hotel Captain Cook, Anchorage, on The Mysteries Behind Alaska Sisters in Crime. She’ll keynote Oklahoma Writers’ Federation Writers Conference April 29 – May 1, and she’s also featured at a Poisoned Pen conference in Scottsdale June 24-27.