Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

This week we launched our new Write Young Alaska or WYAK website – check it out! Many thanks to Stefanie Tatalias, WYAK Outreach Coordinator, for the design and launch of the website, with input from the rest of our WYAK leadership team – Hillary Walker, WYAK Teen Coordinator, and Jen Walker, WYAK Contests & Anthology Coordinator. We are now soliciting submissions for the first writing contest, which has the Valentine’s theme of “Best Love/Anti-Love Haiku”—deadline February 19. The best haiku in each age category will be published in a print anthology later this spring.

Deb Vanasse, one of our WYAK instructors this term, is finishing up a two-week “writer-in-residence” stint in Bethel, where she has garnered great enthusiasm for a WYAK chapter there. Plans are in the works to Skype in young Bethel writers to the WYAK workshops being held this month at Teen Underground at the Loussac Library. Katey Schultz, visiting 49 Writers instructor, will be teaching Flash Fiction to teens on February 17 and 18.

Mark your calendar for our next Crosscurrents event at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Auditorium on February 22, 7:00 to 8:30 pm, “Fantastic, Historic, Unconventional: Crossing Literary Fiction Boundaries,” featuring debut author Eowyn Ivey and 49 Writers co-founder Andromeda Romano-Lax, whose latest novel, The Detour, will be published this month.

Our next Reading and Craft Talk, “In Other Words: Poetry in Translation,” takes place at Metro Books on March 6, 7:00 to 8:30 pm, when poet Joan Kane will talk about the function of translation work in generating new poems and revisiting bodies of writing. Joan is the author of The Cormorant Hunter’s Wife, a collection of poetry for which she received a 2009 Whiting Writers’ Award.

WYAK Writers in the Schools instructor, Carol Loftfield, has a feature article in the current issue of Alaska Wellness Magazine, “Sensing the Other,” which tells the poignant story of the inspiration for her Wellness through the Arts program.

For a comprehensive calendar of literary events throughout Alaska, visit http://www.alaskalitevents.com/.

Tomorrow, Saturday, February 11, 9-4,  Fairbanks Arts Association presents “Writing in the Dark,” an all-day workshop designed to help generate new material and rejuvenate your writing. It will be held at the Four Winds Foundation in Fairbanks. Poet John Morgan will be leading the workshop. For more information, or to sign up, visit the Arts Association’s website. Click on Literary Arts and scroll down.

Also tomorrow, Saturday February 11, 12-2,  Juneau author Lynn Schooler will be signing copies of his books at Barnes and Noble, 200 E Northern Lights, Anchorage.

Poetry Parley is coming up on Wednesday, February 15, at 7pm; Out North, 3800 DeBarr Rod, Anchorage.

The deadline for submissions to Alaska Women Speak is also coming up on Wednesday, February 15. Prose and poetry from Alaskan women are being solicited, preferably works of 1200 words or less. The theme is “Adventures in Foreign Lands.” Email attachments are preferred: send as text or as a Word attachment via email to alaskawomenspeak@yahoo.com. Submissions may also be mailed to: Alaska Women Speak, PO Box 210045, Anchorage, AK 99521-0045

The Wrangell Mountain Center have just opened registration for their acclaimed summer writing workshop. For more information, see  http://www.wrangells.org/ww.htm.