Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your outpouring of support in response to our annual appeal!  We so appreciate your help in sustaining and growing our programs  for Alaska’s literary community.  If you haven’t given yet, there’s still time – our appeal ends May 31.  Just fill in the amount of your gift and click “My Donation” in the sidebar to the right to be redirected to our secure credit card site.

Thanks are also in order for Rich Gannon of Front Range Web and Mariah Oxford of Alaska Moxie, both of whom volunteered time to bring a fresh, updated look to our website.  We’re always adding content, including an update early next month with a fresh list of donors from our annual appeal, so bookmark us and stop by often.  And if you’re not following us on Facebook and Twitter, we hope you’ll add us to your favorites there, too.  Social media volunteer Max Wentzel loves hearing from you.

Our Raven Words Summer Youth Writing Workshops got a big boost this week from New Jersey-based traveler writer Jenna Schnuer, who will be volunteering her time to teach a travel-writing course for kids ages 10-13 during the week of July 18-22.  Thanks to her generosity, we’ll be able to offer five scholarships to young writers.  Stay tuned for details, and in the meantime keep directing young writers to Jumpstart Your Write Brain, Comic Adventures, and Ravens and Tigers and Bears.  It’s all part of the fun at Raven Words, with summer workshops July 18-29 at Winterberry Charter School in conjunction with the Alaska Writing Consortium. 

If you’re interested in helping us grow our Raven Words Youth Writing program, we’d love to have you join our planning team.  Our first meeting is tentatively scheduled for June 22 at 7 p.m. at 645 W. Third Ave.   Email 49writers@gmail.com if you’re interested.  And speaking of teams, thanks to our fabulous volunteer grantwriting team, which took on the challenge of writing six grants for various programs and needs without so much as a proverbial eye-batting.

Ela, your friendly round-up coordinator, is coming up to Anchorage from Homer to participate in the “Live and Moving: Poets in Full Meter” event on June 9 (see below). She needs to get back to Homer on the 10th for the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. Are there any folks interested in carpooling down from Anchorage for the Conference? Please contact Ela directly if you have space for her (she’ll gladly chip in for gas), or comment here if you’re interested in talking carpool more generally.

The event “Live and Moving: Poets in Full Meter” is part of the Spenard Jazz Festival: Thursday, June 9 at 7pm (aim to arrive around 6.30pm). Hugi-Lewis Studio, 108 W. Northern Lights Boulevard, Anchorage.

Seventeen poets on the tip of your tongue. Taste. Slurp. Toast. Poems memorializing John Haines will introduce eight crafted schematics. Functions will shift, braiding music and movement with the work of the poets in theme houses, such as protest, witness, love and loss, mother (and all she’s done), and other (often mystical) phenomena. Curated by Sandra Kleven. Assistant Curator: Elizabeth Thompson; Creative Consultant: Gabrielle Barnet; Partner: Teeka A. Ballas; Publisher F. Magazine. Central Committee Members: Michelle Stephens, Joshua Lopez.

Tickets: $15/$10/passes/punch cards

On Saturday May 28 at 11.30am, come to Fireside Books, Palmer, to meet Michael D. Travis, author of Melozi: a coming-of-age memoir set in the ’70s, when the teenage Travis took a job helping an older couple build a lodge at Melozi Hot Springs.

On Tuesday June 7, from 1.45-3.45pm, the UAA Campus Bookstore will host a panel on Language Changes, both Written and Oral, in Alaska.

Panelists will include UAA Faculty Members D. Roy Mitchell (Anthropology), David Bowie (Linguistics), and Paul Ongtooguk (College of Education) with special guests Diane Benson (Poet and former candidate for Alaska Lieutenant Governor) and Joan Kane (Poet and recipient of the prestigious national Whiting Writer’s Award).

Themes to be addressed include: how people express themselves in multilingual environments, how formal English affects that expression, and how academic institutions manipulate ways of thinking and expression. Free and open to all, with free parking. More information: Rachel Epstein 786-4782.

Congratulations to Alaska-born Melinda Moustakis, who won the Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction, for a collection of stories based in Alaska. See this feature on her in the Kalamazoo Gazette.

Her story collection Bear Down Bear North: Alaska Stories is available for pre-order from UGA Press  (release is September 15) Stay tuned for an interview with Melissa on 49 Writers soon.