I recently finished Tales of Burning Love, by Louise Erdrich. The book centers around a man named Jack Mauser, the women who love or have loved him, and their families. Jack is a womanizer—a woman-lover, one might say, as he approaches all his encounters with as pure a heart as a womanizer could. One of his (successive) wives is […]
When I was in third grade, I wrote a short story about a young girl and her family fleeing Earth because giant, intelligent cockroaches were taking over the world. Our class sat on the rug around our teacher, Mrs. Braaten, as she read the first page out loud, yelling the dialogue attributed to the cockroaches; I had handwritten their
Mary Catharine Martin cooks dinner along the Nisutlin River in the Yukon in September 2014. (Photo: Bjorn Dihle) Six years ago this summer, I hiked up Juneau’s Granite Creek Basin with my partner Bjorn, looking for berries. It was my first season of gathering in Alaska, and everything about it was thrilling. Red, yellow, and
When people Outside think of Alaska, they imagine snow, rugged mountains, sled dog races, grizzlies, homestead cabins and “The Deadliest Catch.” That people would be living up here in an urban context would probably not occur to them. Lucian Childs But over half of us Alaskans live in cities. What makes our experience unique is
Tomorrow is the culmination of almost three years of work on the part of myself and my co-editor, Martha Amore. Building Fires in the Snow: A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction and Poetry has just been published by the University of Alaska Press. To commemorate the day, I’d like to take a sentimental journey
Guest Blogger Lucian Childs | Reading My Way to a Gay Life Read More »
Some thoughts on revision with quotes from Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” Call me Clarissa. I like to give a good dinner party. I like a smart table full of good food, conversation, and laughs. What are the elements of a successful dinner party? Setting, a
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“He says, narrative is the aftermath of violent events. It is a means of reconciling yourself with the past. He says, the violence in the Odyssey is a story told afterwards, in a cave.” —Rachel Cusk, Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation I find it difficult to write about the present day. Specifically, it’s been hard
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49 Writers envisions “a vibrant community of Alaskan writers coming together to inspire, create, and share.” While that vision informs all our mission-driven pursuits, it doubles as a pretty great description of this blog, too. All sorts of 49 Writers programs and events have grown over time out of the steady, consistent, and galvanizing energy
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Everyone has rituals, things that we do in a certain way, at a certain time, or in certain settings. Some of the rituals we perform on special days of the month. Back home in Kake for example, before people go out to Grave Island on Memorial Day, family members clear off family graves and make
Guest Blogger Robert Davis Hoffmann: Journal as Ritual Read More »
I design in our Tlingit formline design style explained most eloquently by Bill Holm in Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form. I create paintings in acrylics, drawings in graphite, and carvings in alder and cedar. I get inspiration from our history, land, people – our culture. I am inspired by works of other
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