SOUTHCENTRAL
WASILLA | Friday, August 17th, 3-5 PM | Mary Havens will present her book, The Shadows in My Heart, at Wasilla Public Library. She will be sharing tips for writing a memoir, have books for sale, and be signing copies. See author’s Facebook page here.
ANCHORAGE | July-Sept, 2018 | 49 Writers presents Danger Close Alaska: programming meant to build a literary community of civilians and veterans. One night per month for six consecutive months (three remaining), Danger Close will focus on food, drink, discussion, and writing on different topics, shared between veterans and civilians. 8/22 event is SOLD OUT.
- August 22, 2018: Fifth Session | 5:30-7 PM plus optional thirty minutes for additional sharing/discussion | Co-teachers Kathleen Tarr (author of We Are All Poets Here) and Antionette Johnson (Air Force veteran) will be at Hearth leading an evening of food, discussion, and writing around the topic of belief. Fee: $10 or $5 for veterans; includes pizza; drinks available for purchase. Advanced registration required. Click link above for details and registration.
ANCHORAGE |August 22nd, 6-7:30 PM| Mary Ann Thomas is the brown queer daughter of Indian immigrant parents, a travel nurse, bike tourist, writer, and former Anchorage resident. She has bicycled over 10,000 miles in the last five years: in 2014, she bicycled solo from San Diego to Montreal; in 2017, she biked across India from the Himalayas to Kerala, the state at the tip of the subcontinent where her family is from. Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and travel platforms, which include Autostraddle, She Explores, Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, The Rumpus, and On She Goes. She has been featured on several podcasts, including The Dirtbag Diaries, Musafir Stories, and The Ethical Traveler. She’s bicycled over 10,000 miles in the last five years: in 2014, she rode solo from San Diego to Montreal; in 2017, she biked across India with a friend, from the Himalayas to Kerala. She’s also authored newly released chapbook called Asking for Elephants, co-authored with her travel partner, Daniel Baylis. The chapbook contains writing and photographs from around India. Presently on a three-month tour, Mary Ann will appear at the Anchorage REI on August 22nd, 6-7:30 PM. She’ll present on bikepacking. Books will be available. More info here.
PALMER | Alaska State Fair 2018 dates: August 23 – September 3 | Alaskan authors, illustrators, and publishers can have their books available to 300,000 Fair participants, and we’re looking for more books to showcase! There will be multiple avenues for book marketing and promotion in addition to sales at the booth. For more information check out: www.akbooksandmusic.com
ANCHORAGE | Thursday, September 6, 2018 from 7-9 PM | Cold Front: A Zine Release Party. Alaska Rising Tide has compiled a new zine entitled Cold Front to be printed and distributed through our movement networks in Alaska and the lower 48. The goal of this project is to share reflections from the decolonization and climate justice movements working in Alaska through written pieces, art, poetry, photography and creative work that captures our communities and the local climate justice movement. Learn more at their Facebook event or on their Indiegogo page.
ANCHORAGE | Sept 11, 2018, 6-9 PM | 12 cap Carr Gottstein building CH2MHill Boardroom
Alaska Public University, price: $25 / $19 | 49 Writers presents: Cutting the River(s) | A Poetry Workshop co-taught by Jon Davis and Joan Naviyuk Kane. This workshop will invite participants to generate drafts through close observation/recollection. We will ask poets to begin to engage the imagination as they work to distance themselves from the originating impulse of their poems. Poets at all levels are welcome, but this is not the workshop for people who like to say what they mean, mean what they feel, feel what they mean, and then write a poem about it. Instead, it will create space to move in and out of the lyric mode. Participants will generate drafts, revise new work, and investigate form. Enrollment capped at 12. Supported in part by APU. REGISTER.
ANCHORAGE | Sept 12, 2018, 7 pm | FREE, Carr Gottstein building Lecture Hall, Alaska Public University |49 Writers presents: Trading Fours * Live Poetry by Jon Davis and Joan Naviyuk Kane. 49 Writers is pleased to present poets Jon Davis and Joan Naviyuk Kane reading together live. Thereading will be followed with a Q and A and signing. Free parking. Supported in part by APU.
Jon Davis is the author of four full-length poetry collections—Improbable Creatures (Grid Books, 2017), Preliminary Report (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), Scrimmage of Appetite (University of Akron, 1995), and Dangerous Amusements (Ontario Review Press, 1987); five chapbooks; and Heteronymy: An Anthology (LaNana Creek Press, 2016), a limited-edition letterpress book in collaboration with the artist Jamison Chas Banks. Davis also co-translated Iraqi poet Naseer Hassan’s Dayplaces (Tebot Bach Press, 2017). He has received a Lannan Literary Award in Poetry, the Lavan Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the Off the Grid Poetry Prize, and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. After teaching at the Institute of American Indian Arts for 23 years, he founded the IAIA MFA in Creative Writing and directed it from 2013-2018.
Joan Naviyuk Kane’s books and chapbooks of prose and poetry include The Cormorant Hunter’s Wife (2009), Hyperboreal (2013), The Straits (2015), Milk Black Carbon (2017), A Few Lines in the Manifest (2018), and Sublingual (2018). She is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, has won a Whiting Writer’s Award, the Donald Hall Prize in Poetry, the USA Projects Creative Vision Award, an American Book Award, the Alaska Literary Award, and fellowships from the Rasmuson Foundation, Alaska State Council on the Arts, Alaska Arts and Cultures Foundation, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, the School for Advanced Research, and the Aninstantia Foundation. Kane was a Harvard National Scholar, and the recipient of a graduate Writing Fellowship from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. Inupiaq with family from King Island and Mary’s Igloo, she raises her children as a single mother in Anchorage, Alaska.
SOUTHEAST
WRANGELL | Flying Island Writers & Artists group meets every other Monday 6:30-8 PM. Contact Vivian Faith Prescott for more information doctorviv@yahoo.com
CONFERENCES, RETREATS, and RESIDENCIES
TUTKA BAY LODGE | The 9th Annual 49 Writers Tutka Bay Writers Retreat with Hannah Tinti will take place September 7-9, 2018. This generative writers retreat blends craft talks, in-class writing, readings, and discussion with unstructured time to experience the immersive natural environment or concentrate further on writing. Your weekend of instruction and inspiration will take place at Tutka Bay Lodge, named by Fodor in 2012 as one of the World’s Top 100 places to stay. Tutka Bay is a remote and rugged fjord characterized by soaring mountains, secluded beaches, old growth forest, and dramatic tidal fluctuations. To get there you fly or drive to the fishing community of Homer on the Kenai Peninsula (225 miles south of Anchorage) then take a 20-minute water taxi ride across Kachemak Bay. On the way you will observe a variety of shore and water birds, and there is always the possibility of sighting sea otters, orcas, and humpbacks. Apply now!
Hannah Tinti is the author of three books of fiction. Her short story collection, Animal Crackers, has sold in sixteen countries and was a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway award. Her best-selling novel, The Good Thief, is a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, recipient of the American Library Association’s Alex Award, winner of the The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and winner of the Quality Paperback Book Club’s New Voices Award. Her new novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, was published in March 2017 by The Dial Press (U.S.A.) and Tinder Press (U.K.), and has been optioned by director Matt Reeves/6th & Idaho, producer Michael Costigan/Cota Films & Endemol Shine. It has been nominated for an Edgar Award, and was named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, The Washington Post and Paste Magazine.
CENTRAL
Denali National Park & Reserve (MP 231 Parks Hwy) | Monday, August 27, 2018 from 7-8 PM | Author Adrienne Lindholm of coming-of-age memoir It Happened Like This will be holding a 30-min talk and slideshow. She’ll cover wild places, personal growth, loss and healing, and writing books, and be open to questions and answers after. For more information, see her website and book trailer.
OPPORTUNITIES and AWARDS for WRITERS
Deadline: Sunday, August 19, 2018 at 9:59 PM AST | The 2018 Alaska Literary Awards Application is open! The Awards recognize and support writers of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, playwriting, screenwriting, and mixed genres. Any Alaska writer over the age of 18 who is not a full-time student is eligible to apply and quality of the submission is the primary consideration for the award. Deadline for submission is Sunday, August 19, 2018 at 9:59 PM AST. For more information and to submit, visit the Alaska Arts & Culture Foundation website here.
Alaska Writers Guild‘s quarterly writing contest, open to members and non-members alike, is open for children’s lit through August 24, and poetry through November 16, 2018. Sadly, submissions for fiction are closed. More details: https://www.alaskawritersguild.com/writing-contest
The Alaska Writers Guild’s Lin Halterman Memorial Grant: applications open through September 5, 2018. For 2018, the Lin Halterman Grant will offer three separate monetary awards of $500 for use toward literary pursuits. See their website for more details and to apply.
Wildheart, an Alaskan women’s magazine, is accepting submissions through October 14, 2018 for their Winter issue. The theme will be Change: stories of weather, scenery, mind, mood, and heart. See their website for details and to submit.
Hometown Reads is in Anchorage! A website dedicated to locating authors near you, Hometown Reads has a section for Anchorage. Sign up to have your book displayed and join the Facebook page to brainstorm ways to advertise and sell books locally. Check it out at https://hometownreads.com.
What’s missing? Submit your announcement for the next Roundup. Send an email with “Roundup” as the subject to 49blog@gmail.com
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