Thanksgiving’s just two days away. The calendar will flick that domino into the year’s remaining days, triggering the ol’ chain reaction. It would be easy to let time slip right by till the New Year ball drops. Don’t let it. On the cusp of the holidaze, I’m chiming in with a friendly reminder to take care of the writer in you.
Make/find/sequester/demand/beg/borrow/steal/squirrel/conjure/carve/3D print yourself some time for writing and reading… and get a boost by taking one of our remaining 2017 writing workshops coming up in Anchorage, and/or attend an event or three.
Our next Reading & Craft Talk Series event is coming up on Thursday, November 30 at Indigo Tea Lounge, 7 pm, with David Ramseur, author of Melting the Ice Curtain: The Extraordinary Story of Citizen Diplomacy on the Russia-Alaska Frontier (University of Alaska Press 2017… um, note the ad to your right). This presentation, Crazy Russian Stories Alone Don’t Make a Book, will give you a look under the book’s hood… and behind the [ice] curtain. He’s been busy promoting his hot new book from Nome to Washington, DC and points between, and copies have been selling like hotcakes. He’s an engaging and interesting presenter and writer, and we’re looking forward to this one. Learn more on our website, and signal your plan to go/invite your friends on the Facebook event page.
Next, writer, editor, and board member Matthew Komatsu will teach a short nonfiction intro class to open forms essays on Saturday, December 9th, 4:30-7:30 PM, and seats remain. (Don Rearden’s class scheduled earlier that day is full and waitlisting.) Learn more about Matt’s class, called Disrupting Nonfiction: Adventures in Open Form Essays, in his blog post from a while back and check it out and register on our website (scroll down). Gonna be a good one, folks, so don’t be shy, and don’t delay.
A week later and also in Anchorage, former Soldotnan and debuting YA novelist Meagan Macvie will 1) teach a two hour workshop and 2) give a Reading & Craft Talk Series event. She recently taught this class, called “I’m Just Being Myselfie: How Young Narrators Come Alive on the Page (Without Coming Off Like Posers)”, down in Washington to sold out groups of very pleased students. Reports were resoundingly positive. This will a fun and worthwhile class for anyone interested in writing fiction for young adults; sign up soon on our website. Meagan lives in the Pacific Northwest now, so don’t miss this chance to connect with a fantastic writer and teacher while she’s here. Her book is set in Soldotna in the Nineties.
Later that night, Meagan will present a Reading & Craft Talk Series event at Indigo Tea Lounge. That “Writing from a Big, Small Place” presentation will twist our usual format a little, including optional cameos from willing students who took her class earlier that day and falling on a Saturday. These ANC events are just two stops on her 49 Writers Southcentral Alaska book tour, supported through a minigrant from the Alaska Humanities Forum and our annual grant from the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Big thanks to them! More details to come on some of Meagan’s tour stops in Palmer, Seward, Cooper Landing, and Soldotna (and Anchorage, obviously)… including tickets for an author dinner with Meagan at Turkey Red via Fireside Books. Stay tuned. And sign up for her class in Anchorage if you’re even vaguely tempted. You’ll be glad.
We’ve had a hell of a year at 49 Writers and it ain’t over yet, folks. Sharpen your pencils, don your Yaktrax, and see ya soon.
Thanks,
Jeremy Pataky
49 Writers, Inc.