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EVENTS and ANNOUNCEMENTS
Still time to registration for two 49 Writers classes, one in Anchorage and one online. Learn more and register here.
SOUTHCENTRAL
ANCHORAGE | Saturday, October 29 at the UAA/APU Consortium Library room 307 | Author Ernestine Hayes presents her new book The Tao of Raven: An Alaskan Native Memoir. In The Tao of Raven, using the story of Raven and the Box of Daylight and relating it to Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Ernestine Hayes expresses an ongoing frustration and anger at the obstacles and prejudices still facing Alaska Natives in their own land, while sharing her own story of attending and completing college in her fifties and becoming a professor and a writer. Ernestine Saankalaxt’ Hayes belongs to the Kaagwaantaan clan of the Eagle side of the Lingit nation. Her first book, Blonde Indian: An Alaska Native Memoir received the American Book Award in 2007 and was chosen as the 2016 Alaska Reads selection. Ernestine Hayes received her MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Arts from UAA and is an assistant professor of English at UAS.
ANCHORAGE | November 3, 2016 | The Salmon Project presents Salmon Life: Stories, a salmon storytelling event in Anchorage on the last night of the Salmon and People Workshops. Storytellers, short films and great company. Get your tickets today! This event will likely sell out.
ANCHORAGE | November 4-6, 2016 | Anchorage Public Library fall book, music, and movies sale. Details here.
EAGLE RIVER | November 9, 2016 | The Living Room reading series meets monthly, every second Wednesday from September through April at Jitters Coffee House, 7-9 pm. Sign up in advance to read, or just come listen. Learn more. Seven readers per evening, 5-10 minutes each.
SEWARD | November 9, 2016 | Cirque Reads with Friends – Writers and poets from Seward, Anchorage, and beyond read original work. Poetry, prose, music, prizes, and a special menu at The Cookery and Oyster Bar. Doors at 5, program begins at 6.
ANCHORAGE | Thursday, November 10, 2016, | 49 Writers Reading and Craft Talk Series presents Bryan Allen Fierro – Place and Images: Writing Home. Fierro is the author of Dodger Blue Will Fill Your Soul (The University of Arizona Press). We’ll be at a *new venue*, also in the Metro Mall: Indigo Tea Lounge (530 E Benson Blvd, Anchorage, AK 99501). Bryan Fierro received his MFA in fiction from Pacific University in Oregon in 2013. He won the Poets and Writers 2013 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award in Fiction, and placed in both the 2013 Hemingway International Short Story Contest and Masters Workshop at the Tucson Book Festival. His stories have appeared in the literary journals Copper Nickel and Quarterly West. Originally from Los Angeles, California, he has lived in Alaska for thirteen years, and currently works as a firefighter/paramedic for the Anchorage Fire Department. Dodger Blue is his debut book of stories.
ANCHORAGE | Friday, November 11, 2016, 7:30 pm, Anchorage Museum | Polar Nights: Charles Wohlforth’s Beyond Earth Book Launch – Author Charles Wohlforth presents his new book, Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets. A leading planetary scientist and an award-winning science writer offer groundbreaking research and argue persuasively that Titan (a moon of Saturn with a nitrogen atmosphere), a weather cycle, and an inexhaustible supply of cheap energy offers the most realistic and thrilling prospect of life without support from Earth. Included with Museum admission.
ANCHORAGE | Wednesday, November 16, 2016 | Poetry Parley featuring Jeremy Pataky reading original work and others reading poems by marque poet W.S. Merwin. Location and time TBA.
ANCHORAGE | March 31-April 1, 2017 | Organized by the graduate students within the English department, the Pacific Rim Conference on English Studies invites submissions in literature, rhetoric and composition, linguistics, anthropology, history, journalism, gender studies and other related fields. See the call for proposals here.
INTERIOR
FAIRBANKS | The University of Alaska Fairbanks English Department will host the 2016 Dead Writers event Friday, Oct. 28, at the Blue Loon. Dead Writers, now in its 26th year, is an annual Halloween event that raises funds for the Midnight Sun Visiting Writers Series, which brings talented writers to Fairbanks for readings and workshops. The doors will open at 6 p.m., with performances beginning at 7 p.m. The reading features university students, professors and community members performing, in costume, as their favorite deceased writer. Grand prizes will be awarded for the best performances of the night, and door prizes will be offered throughout the evening. Spectators are welcome, but must be 21 or older to attend. Tickets are $12 if purchased in advance or $15 at the door. Tickets can be purchased in advance at the UAF Wood Center or by contacting Micah Allen, English student and Dead Writers organizer. “Dead Writers is the quintessential liberal arts experience. It is the ultimate fusion of literature, performance art and degeneracy,” says James Campbell, a past first-place winner. “Performers dress up under such illustrious names as Julia Child, Emily Dickinson, William ‘Shakesbeer’ or Carl Sagan and read a piece of the dead author’s work, modify it to suit a theme, or make it up on the fly, always in the interest of pushing good taste. It is an annual community-fed rabble-hall for the creative and the morally bankrupt alike.”
FAIRBANKS | Writers of all ages and experience levels will find advice and resources at the Celebration of Writing hosted by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Department of English from 11 am to 3 pm in the Noel Wien Library on Saturday, Oct. 24, 2016. The celebration’s open house-style writing workshop will feature numerous interactive sessions on writing, from the initial idea stages to sharing work with an audience. Writers of all ages and experience levels are welcome. Activities range from group discussions to personal storytelling, puns and word games. This year’s event introduces an interactive space called the Black Room, which features guided discussions on race and culture in which participants are invited to articulate perceptions using images and word associations. The Black Room demonstrates how language can be used to challenge social perceptions that are often taken for granted in a way that is open, respectful and productive. Writers are encouraged to bring a laptop computer or pen and paper to participate in writing activities. This event is family-friendly, free and open to the public. The interdisciplinary nature of this day’s activities are led by the Department of English, which will have about a dozen faculty members and graduate and undergraduate students on hand to lead exercises and participate in the events. Learn more.
FAIRBANKS | Fairbanks Arts Association hosts the oldest literary reading series in the state. Every month, writers reading their own work publicly at a community meet-up where people can connect with other lovers of literature. Readings are held on the day after First Friday, usually the first Saturday of the month at 7 pm. Most reading are held in the Bear Gallery in Pioneer Park, although occasionally in the summer (June, July, and August) the weather is beautiful reading are held outside to another spot in Pioneer Park. Upcoming:
November: Nicole Stellon O’Donnell
December: TBA
Additional readings and events may be held, but the First Saturday Literary Reading Series is monthly at 7 pm the day after First Friday (except February).
SOUTHEAST
JUNEAU | Frank Soos and Margo Klass speaks at 7 pm at UAS Egan Lecture Hall Thursday October 27, 2016. 
SOUTHWEST
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ARCTIC
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CONFERENCES, RETREATS, and RESIDENCIES
The entirety of Southeast Alaska is encompassed by the Cascadia bioregion. The fourth Cascadia Poetry Festival occurs November 3-6, 2016 in Seattle, Washington. http://cascadiapoetryfestival.org/
Alaskans interested in becoming an Audiobook Narrator can join Professional Narrator Basil Sands at The Alaska Audiobook Narrator’s Workshop with top rated Voice Acting Coaches Christa G. Lewis and Sean Pratt. Saturday, December 10, 2016, 9-5, Sandman Production Studios of Alaska, $100 per person, 15 Student Max. Learn more.
OPPORTUNITIES and AWARDS for WRITERS
The Governor’s Awards for the Arts and Humanities ceremony will be held in Juneau on Thursday, January 26, 2017. Visit ASCA’s website here for information about last year’s Governor’s Awardees, and here for the Alaska State Writer Laureate program.
Tidal Echoes out of Juneau and Alaska Women Speak are both accepting submissions.
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