49 Writers Weekly Round-Up

Tired of all the press on Sarah's new book? We got some nice press of our own this week at 49 Writers. This month's Alaska Magazine has a nice large write-up on our Ode to a Dead Salmon contest, including a big ugly picture and a quote from the winning entry, with a link to the finalists on their website. Way to go, 49 Writers. Okay, it's not Oprah, but we're happy.

How much of ex-Gov Sarah Palin's multi-million dollar advance will actually hit her bank account? Not as much as you think. For the low-down on what a writer actually makes on a book, check out urban fantasy author Carrie Vaughn's tell-all, The Reality of a Times Bestseller. Of course, Palin does get that bus painted with the cover of her book, which should help her numbers over the average Jane Author's.

As Bill Sherwonit mentioned in yesterday's guest post, Publisher's Weekly reports that Graphic Arts North and Alaska Northwest Books are liquidating under Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Ingram continues to distribute the company's titles, and the court will appoint a trustee to oversee the liquidation process, including the sale of some 350 active backlist titles. Now don't I feel small for fussing over my scrawny check from Carus Publishing, which I did finally receive, by the way, ten months after publication.

From the happily solvent University of Alaska Press comes Linda Johnson's Kandik Map, exploring how Athabaskan Indian Paul Kandik and French Canadian explorer Francois Mercier surveyed the upper reaches of the Yukon River and its tributaries, creating the earliest known map of the region. The map, which lacks the international border, is a reminder that the inhabitants of the region were one people before being separated by an artificial boundary. Linda Johnson was director of library, archives, and records management at Yukon College, Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada.

Another new U of A release: James Wickersham's 1938 memoir, Old Yukon, based in large part on his diaries, newly edited by historian Terrence Cole. The publisher notes, "In this humorous and upbeat memoir, James Wickersham describes his career as a pioneer judge in the undeveloped Alaska territory and later as Alaska's sole congressional representative. It is considered by many to be one of the best descriptions of the gold rush period."

The U of A Press also reports The Alaska Journal of Anthropology (vol. 7, no.1 - 2009) has posted laudatory reviews of An Aleutian Ethnography and Wildflowers of Unalaska Island. An Aleutian Ethnography by Lucien M. Turner, edited by Raymond L. Hudson, was praised for the ethnographer's investigation of life on the Aleutian Islands in the late nineteenth century that uniquely lets the voices of the Aleut people shine through and for the editor's contribution. The reviewer of Wildflowers of Unalaska Island by Suzi Golodoff reports that the book will appeal to a wide range of readers, including those interested in Alaska Native ethnobotany.

As a follow-up to last week's thought-tickling MFA discussion (many thanks to all who took the time to weigh in), Barrow author Debby Dahl Edwardson notes that she also shared her MFA experience in an interview at Cynsations, a well-read blog on young adult books.

Author Bradford Matsen will be speaking about his new book Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King on Thursday, December 3 at 7 p.m. at Elliott Bay Books, First Avenue and South Main Street, Seattle.

Alaskan author Dana Stabenow guest blogged on Lipstick Chronicles about the not-so-dreaded rise of the eReader, declaring 'You don't scare me, Kindle.' On November 30th she'll be guest blogging on Murder by 4 about the genesis of the Kate Shugak television series.

A couple of on-topic but personal asides: in the mash-up of Sarah Press this week, I hope you caught my brother's live blog of the Oprah interview for The Awl. I admit to some bias, but there are some great one-liners. And in another item on which I'll devote a full post or two down the road, the illustrator for my 2011 (University of Alaska Press) picture book Lucy's Dance is posting weekly blogs of her sketches, with students and others from Stebbins weighing in with their comments and thoughts. Inspired by my visit to Stebbins last spring, Lucy's Dance is the story of how one child inspires a revival of an cultural tradition. Stop by and have a look.

Alaska Northwest Books R.I.P. : Guest post by Bill Sherwonit

Bill Sherwonit will be joining us as featured author next month, but in the meanwhile, he's keeping the news coming -- and this item is timely and important. Thanks to Bill for allowing us to crosspost this, which originally appeared on Bill's Anchorage Daily News community blog.

I was sitting in a favorite café this week when an old friend and colleague in the book-publishing world came over to say hello and share news of an unexpected and untimely death. Sara Juday, longtime regional manager for Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company, put it bluntly: “I have some bad news. Graphic Arts has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.”

Initially I didn’t get it. I was thinking Chapter 11, the kind that results in a company’s re-organization. Graphic Arts had been down that road once before and I knew the company has again been hurting financially. More than a year has passed since the company paid me any royalties. But Chapter 7? Liquidation? The company was going out of business? Wow, bad news indeed, not only for its employees, but also for its many authors and Alaska’s book lovers.

GACPC is the parent company of Alaska Northwest Books, which has been around in one form or another for decades – since 1959, in fact. (It became a Graphic Arts imprint in 1992.) Over the past half-century, Alaska Northwest Books has published hundreds of titles by dozens of Alaskan authors. For many years the company rightly touted itself as “the premier publisher of books about Alaska,” specializing in “history, natural history, biography, travel adventure, Native heritage, factbooks, cooking, guidebooks, and children’s books by Alaskans and about Alaska.” Though the imprint and its parent company have struggled in recent years, it has a laudable legacy.

I have a special fondness for both Alaska Northwest Books and Sara Juday, because the company – and especially Sara – got me into the book publishing business. Until Sara contacted me in 1989 and asked if I’d be interested in writing an Alaska mountaineering book, I never imagined I might become an author. The company published my first book in 1990: To the Top of Denali: Climbing Adventures on North America’s Highest Peak. It published five more of mine after that, the most recent in 2002, a guide to the Denali region. We stopped working together when I became interested in creative nonfiction; the company’s marketing people didn’t see much potential in such books. I largely lost touch with Sara and other Alaska Northwest Books staff after that, but I’ll always have a great appreciation for her role in my writing life, her enthusiastic support for Alaskan authors and books, and her friendship over many years.

She’s been out of a job for several weeks now and isn’t sure what she’ll do next, though she’s exploring some possibilities. Sara, I wish you all the best.

Though Graphic Arts filed to liquidate its assets last Friday (Nov. 13), I haven’t heard or read any local news coverage of its bankruptcy, perhaps because it did so in Portland, the company’s home base. I did find a couple of short articles online, including one by Publishers Weekly, which reports that Ingram Publisher Services – whose parent company loaned GACPC $1.5 million after the 2006 Chapter 11 bankruptcy and took over its book-distribution responsibilities – will continue “accepting orders, shipping books and processing and crediting returns” for Graphic Arts titles.

What all this means for Alaska Northwest Books’ many authors is unclear. Sara said she has no idea what will happen. And there’s no one at Graphic Arts to provide answers. The staff had cleared out even before the filing. Now the Chapter 7 proceedings will have to play out, which likely means that authors won’t know the status of their books – or royalties – for weeks or months.

Some of Alaska’s book-reading residents are bound to notice the company’s absence, though nowadays many other presses are publishing all sorts of books about Alaska, including the University of Alaska Press, my newest publishing “home.”

Still it’s a big loss, “like losing someone in the family,” as Sara said glumly before we said goodbye. Alaska Northwest Books, 1959-2009, RIP.

Your Turn: Going Rogue -- or not? (plus online book club ideas)

Thanks to Bill Sherwonit for passing on this news item from the Associated Press:

"An independent bookseller in Sarah Palin's home state is donating the proceeds he makes off her book to a group that is among the biggest critics of the former Republican vice presidential candidate.

Don Muller owns Old Harbor Books in Sitka. He's selling Palin's memoir, "Going Rogue," for $28.99, and says he will donate profits to Defenders of Wildlife."

Do I dare ask 49w readers: Are you planning to read the Sarah Palin book? Buy it? Ignore it?

If you're interested in what other readers have to say, KSKA's "Hometown Alaska" (featuring Ellen Lockyear, Kathleen McCoy and Charles Wohlforth) will be having a call-in book discussion at 2:00.


If the Palin question sets your teeth on edge, how about this one? We have another online book club coming up soon -- late December or early January. I was thinking of picking a short story from David Vann's Legend of a Suicide, but the author tells me it's coming out in paperback in March and we might want to wait just a little longer... Since I'm spending the morning mulling it over, I thought I might as well let anyone reading this mull it along with me. Any ideas?

In Defense of Self-Promotion, Part 3: A guest post by Ken Waldman

Two weeks ago, in my first post, I mentioned that in 1996 I attended a conference where I met John Crawford, of West End Press, which started a process that led him four years later to publish my first full-length collection, Nome Poems. I also mentioned that prior to that meeting, I'd self-published a chapbook that included some of the poems which later appeared in that book. Though I'd taken the initiative to self-publish, I'd also been fortunate to have already had poems from that book accepted in such literary magazines as Beloit Poetry Journal, South Dakota Review, and Poet Lore. Those publications, which meant that independent editors elsewhere had vetted the work, surely didn't hurt.

In that post, I also mentioned how earlier this year I'd self-published a book of acrostic poetry for children, D is for Dog Team, which University of Alaska Press picked up for distribution.

In the nine years between, I had six other books from six different publishers, each coming about through its own particular circumstances. I'll briefly tell those stories in the hope that one or more will be of use to other writers.

When Nome Poems came out in 2000, I felt well-prepared for a writer having a first book. I'd finished a reasonable draft of the manuscript six years earlier so I'd been living with the poems for a good long while. Having had so many of the poems appear in journals (and having met Naomi Shihab Nye, who encouraged me on the project—-an episode also mentioned two weeks in my first post here), I was confident the book had real merit and might find a wide readership, at least in Alaska. Also, having self-published twenty-six chapbooks the preceding five years, I had a rudimentary sense of how to market, and, yes, self-promote. In addition, I'd been freelancing as a visiting artist and performer for the past five years, and those skills overlapped with the marketing and self-promotion. And though I didn't know it when that first book came out, my first CD, which had been recently recorded in a rush, was going to come out in less than three months.

In the midst of that busy time, I'd booked a tour. First stop was the AWP conference (AWP is an acronym for Associated Writing Programs, an organization that's the clearing house for all things Creative Writing in higher education, though over the years its reach has extended further) in Kansas City, where I was to see the book for the first time, and where I'd bought space in the exhibit hall to sell my book and chapbooks. From there, I was off to Denver, where I'd rent a car. After a bookstore gig in Denver, I had a coffeehouse show in Boulder, then events in Albuquerque—-where the book was published—-and then several dates in Arizona, which included gigs in Phoenix, Prescott, and Flagstaff. Then I'd drive back to Denver, and fly home to Anchorage.

In Kansas City, I was excited to see the new book. Though a slow four-year process, there had been a sprint at the end so the books could arrive in Kansas City in time to sell at the conference. And since West End Press had been affiliated with University of New Mexico Press, the designer at the university press had worked on the book. In retrospect, it was odd I hadn't seen the cover beforehand, or even thought to ask—-or even thought to ask to proof the book. Still, when I first set eyes on the book, none of that seemed to matter. The design was better than anything I could have envisioned. Then I leafed through the pages.

Though I'd given a pristine copy to my publisher, it was a pristine hard copy from my ancient double floppy disk computer with Leading Edge word processing, my ancient Panasonic printer. This meant that someone at the press had to retype the manuscript. In the retyping, there had been mistakes, which in-house proofing didn't catch. The first poem I looked at, I found one small typo, and over the next two weeks, as I toured the Southwest, I must have found at least a dozen more, invariably in the midst of reading one of the poems at a public event. And though the discovery of each new error felt like another quick awful punch deep to my gut, and the accumulating number felt like a curse, I had no choice. The book was out in the world, blemishes and all. At least the book looked great, and, really, most of the errors were so minor no one else would likely notice. After struggling the past several years to sell chapbooks for $5 and $7, it was a pleasure to display this full-length book with color cover. It felt underpriced at $9.95.

While I didn't sell hundreds those first weeks, I happily sold a fair number and made some connections I've maintained to this day. Back in Anchorage, after landing at the airport, I decided to stop in Waterstone's (the airport bookstore that pre-dated Mosquito Books), where I introduced myself to the manager, Jana, who happened to be in. Before leaving, I offered her a copy of Nome Poems, which she accepted and promised to read. Ultimately, this simple act was one of the smartest things I've ever done for any of my books. Though Jana had been quick to warn me she didn't read much poetry, she did read the book as promised, enjoyed it, and felt others would also enjoy it. Over the summer, she displayed the book at the front table she reserved for recommended Alaska reading.

The next months, I stopped at Waterstone's every time I flew out of Anchorage, or returned home. Invariably, I saw a stack of my books on the front table. From Jana I learned that against the odds—-after all, this was poetry—-the book sold steadily.

This was one of the reasons why West End Pess went through most of the 1,500 run through the rest of the year and decided to reprint. On my end, I was quick to argue that for the next round of books the typos be fixed and the price raised to $11.95 (this second edition also eventually sold out, but far more slowly; West End Press was reluctant to invest in a third printing, so with John Crawford's blessing, in 2008 I reprinted it myself—-another example of self-publishing). Another reason the book sold so well was because while West End Press (and University of New Mexico
Press) were both small publishers, they were long-established small publishers. I learned how if I researched worldcat.org, I could see which libraries bought the book (and, indeed, this minute just looked it up, and saw 124 libraries, from the New York Public Library to the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library, owned the book in their collections; while the number could be more, it could certainly be less—-a similar check on my other books teaches the sad truth about that).

Since Nome Poems quickly went into a second printing, it made sense for me to pitch another book to my publisher. After all, I had plenty more Alaska-set poems—-again, many already published in respected national journals. This time, after I sent a manuscript, John Crawford quickly agreed to publish To Live on this Earth, which came out in 2002. Instead of setting all poems in the Bering Straits region, this book had poems set state-wide: a section of Interior poems (some music-based), a section of Southeast poems, a section of political poems, a section of rural poems (more poems from the Bering Straits region, as well as poems set in Eek and poems set in Barrow), and a short final section set in Alaska and beyond.

In 2004, at the AWP conference in Chicago, where I again had a table in the exhibit hall-—now with two full-length poetry collections, three CDs, and the chapbooks piled off to the side—-a young editor and publisher I knew asked to buy me a drink. We talked. A long-time fan of my work, he'd published a journal (where my work had appeared), ran two annual book contests, and brought out other books as he wanted. He asked if I'd consider having him publish a book of mine.

Of course I'd be interested, I told him, and mentioned how one weekend in 2003 I laid out sheets with favorite poems that hadn't been in the first two books (though most had been in the self-published chapbooks, and many had appeared in literary journals), and constructed six more full-length books. The preceding year, I'd entered contests, but gotten nowhere. He could have his choice of one of those books.

“Whoa,” he said. “I don't work that way.”

“No?”

“No, give me all your poems,” he said. “I'll choose the book I want to publish.”

I shrugged my shoulders, and we shook hands. After the conference I sent him the six collections I thought had been ready to go, and told him to have at it.

Fourteen months later, May 2005, I heard back. And while I'd never have chosen the poems he chose for a full-length book, I had to admit the poems cohered in a different way—-instead of a geographic, or narrative, arc, these were mostly all dark and energetic. The challenge was in finding an order to the book, and after we went back and forth several times, we agreed how it would read, first poem to last. Since his strength was editing, not design, I asked whether I could suggest a professional designer. He thought that would be fine, especially since I offered to split the cost.

By early July we were ready to go for a mid-September publication date. I'd seen proofs-—the front cover, the back cover (which included the blurbs I'd solicited), the poems inside, all the rest. My designer only needed a final okay from the publisher for the last of the changes. A week stretched into two weeks, stretched into four. Mid July turned into late August.

It was a little more complicated than this, though. I'd set up dates in the Midwest, including ones in the publisher's home state. I'd wanted not only to have the book to sell, but had planned to set up even more dates specifically around having the book available. I also expected to use the book to apply for certain grants and fellowships. Having a book is one thing. Having two books is something more. Having three is even more-—and I was waiting for that third book. And there was even more to it than that: in October I was turning 50 years old. Not only was this book a present to myself, but I had a big double CD coming out, and in early August had just recorded my first children's CD, which I realized could also come out in time for my birthday. Everything was seemingly on track, but for this poetry collection, which had fallen through cracks. The publisher was not returning emails from the designer, who was asking whether the last fix was correct. Nor was he responding to my emails, phone calls, or letters, all checking about the status of the book. Without confirmation, I wrote, I couldn't market it in any way.

Labor Day weekend, I decided to call a new friend, Bryce Milligan, a writer and musician who was also the publisher of Wings Press in San Antonio. We'd met two months earlier when he attended my performance at Gemini Ink, a San Antonio literary organization. Afterward, he'd bought one of my books, one of my CDs, and we'd talked. Though we hadn't been in touch the past two months, he didn't seem surprised to hear from me. I explained my dilemma, and asked him, as a writer and publisher himself, what he'd do if he were in my situation.

“I can do that book myself,” he said. “I have a small hole in my schedule. Get me the files, and I could have it out in ten days. All you need to do is promise to buy some of the books from me.”

“I need to do that anyway,” I said.

“500 books?” he said.

“I'd need to buy 500 anyway,” I answered. Though I hadn't formalized such an arrangement with John Crawford at West End Press, I'd had to buy books, then buy more and more, and had gone through 500 relatively quickly. This seemed a more efficient way to do it, even if I had to spend more of my own money up front for my own stock.

Later that day, I called the other publisher. Getting the machine, I started to explain that since I hadn't heard from him, I'd be withdrawing the book. At that, he picked up the phone, and sputtered how he'd sue me if I'd withdraw the book.

“But you haven't answered the phone or returned an email in two months,” I reminded him. And then I reminded him the book was supposed to be out in mid September, which was now an impossibility. “Somebody else has offered to do the book,” I said.

“I'll sue you,” he said, and explained he'd already put in a lot of time and money into the project. Then he hung up.

When I called back Bryce, he suggested that since I had no contract with the first publisher, there was no grounds for a suit, and that I should talk one more time with him and try to establish firm dates. “If he balks,” Bryce said, “remind him you have another publisher.” He paused. “And while I'd be happy to do that book, if he does decide to do it, you can just get another to me in the next couple of days, and I'll do that one. Like I said, I have a hole in my schedule.”

“But don't you want to see the poems?”

“I'm sure they're fine,” he said. “I read your other book and saw your show. Let me know what happens.”

After the first publisher reaffirmed that if I gave him more time, he'd have the books for me by November 1, I went to work typing in poems so I could email Bryce a file. Within a day, I was done. Less than two weeks later, I had a preview copy of the book--which I titled The Secret Visitor's Guide--just in time for a major fellowship application. I received the bulk of my copies in late October, just after my birthday. Mid-November, I received copies of And Shadow Remained, the book from the Ohio publisher. The book looked beautiful and some readers have commented that it's their favorite of my collections. It remains the only one that was so deeply edited. Despite the confusion with the communication, I was grateful for the help; in fact, without that confusion I'd never have had the Wings Press publication.

My fifth book, Conditions and Cures, was a finalist in a 1994 book contest from Steel Toe Books, a new poetry publisher out of Kentucky. Maybe I had a slight advantage because not only had I once met the publisher, Tom Hunley, in passing, but was acquainted with his own poetry, which I liked. Though I don't make a habit of entering contests, in 1995 I tried again. This time I wasn't even a finalist, but received a personal note from Tom, telling me he'd enjoyed the book, as had another judge. It was the third judge who hadn't much liked it, which was why it had been eliminated before the final cut. Regardless, he especially admired the sequence of comedy sonnets in the collection, was mulling doing a chapbook series, and wondered whether I'd be interested.

I answered that indeed I'd already self-published the comedy sonnets as a chapbook, albeit in slightly different form. And while I'd be happy to have him do a chapbook, it made no sense. With the two poetry collections I now had, plus the two about to come out in the next two months, I'd really have no way to sell a chapbook for whatever price we figured. But if he'd be interested in doing the full-length book, which had been judged good enough to be a finalist the year before, I'd certainly agree to it, and could certainly guarantee I'd buy some hundreds of books, which would lessen his risk.

A few weeks later, Tom agreed to publish the book with a summer 2006 publication date.

My last poetry collection began after an idle comment. March 2006, after a reading in San Antonio for my new Wings Press book, the publisher, Bryce Milligan, mentioned that if he could find a book of really good political poems, he'd publish it in a second. I rued that many of my political poems had already been published, and let Bryce's remark slide.

But three weeks later, subletting a little house in Louisiana, watching the Daily Show on Comedy Central, I wrote a political sonnet in the manner of the comedy poems that led to Tom Hunley accepting the Conditions and Cures book. So, now I had one new political poem. Torture was a breaking story then—-alas, as it sometimes remains now—-and a few days later I wrote an Abu Ghraib poem. The next weeks I wrote a Laura Bush poem, a Barbara Bush poem, a George W. Bush post-Katrina New Orleans poem. Somewhere I wrote a sonnet in George W. Bush's voice. Mid-May to mid-July, working for the first half of the summer in Skagway, I wrote several dozen more, most in the 43rd president's voice. Quickly, I'd somehow accumulated a whole book, so emailed Bryce, who answered that his distribution had changed, so he could no longer do books without a nine-month to one-year lead time. Besides, he wasn't convinced the project really worked for him.

I disregarded Bryce's criticisms. Convinced I had a new book on my hands, and one that felt especially topical, I made a few more queries, and remembered a friend, a well-published poet, who was an especially skilled self-promoter himself (and I should mention not only has this poet hosted me several times at his various reading series, but we originally met more than a decade ago at an AWP conference), who had a publishing house that was currently in hiatus. Maybe he'd be interested.

Though that part of his business remained in hiatus, he wrote back to say he'd be happy to help where he could. In this case, while he'd “publish” the book, we were both aware for most intents I was self-publishing through him. He supplied the ISBN and his publishing company's name, and would enter the necessary paperwork, so the book at least could be considered authentic, at least through the process the book business has established. Meanwhile, I'd design, manufacture, distribute, and pay for the book. Mid August, I picked up 2000 copies of As the World Burns: the Sonnets of George W. Bush and Other Poems of the 43rd Presidency from a manufacturer in Austin, Texas-—one chosen because I knew it specialized in short-run projects, and I'd be swinging through Austin anyway about the time the book would be done.

One Austin friend who has professional experience designed the text of the book, working gratis. I paid the manufacturer for the services of its in-house designer, who did the cover. After picking up the boxes, I drove seventy miles to San Antonio, where I left two dozen copies at Bryce Milligan's as a thank-you, then drove several blocks where I knocked on Naomi Shihab Nye's door in the same neighborhood. I had no appointment, just a standing invitation to visit, which I'd previously never taken her up on. Naomi was in, but busy, and quickly leaf through the book, lauded the project, and asked to have several copies of the book, which she promised to pass along to contacts she thought would appreciate it—-one of which directly led to an invitation to read fifteen months later in Pittsburgh at the International Poetry Forum (and the stipend from that one invitation, and an accompanying school visit in town, which came as a result of the first invitation, alone nearly paid for the whole run of books). By the way, for anyone interested in that book, you won't find any mention on my regular website because I work in a variety of venues in a variety of communities, and there's no need to mention the political nature of some of my writing. I do have a parallel website: www.kenwaldman.com/astheworldburns. One other note about this book. Though the Ohio publisher had been challenging to work with as he published my collection, the following year he offered to take on this political book in my behalf, which meant helping place it with Small Press Distribution in Berkeley, which then meant national distribution that it couldn't have had otherwise, at least not without me or my nominal publisher spending an inordinate amount of time and money.

Finally, the publication of my 2008 memoir, Are You Famous?, is a variation of all these stories.

In 2002, I attended BookExpo in New York City (indeed, I attended this past May for the first time since, and wrote about it in 49 Writers), and met representatives from Cinco Puntos Press, of El Paso, who were friends of friends. The business manager at the time was the son-in-law of the owners. He was also an Irish flute player, and offered to host a house concert if I was ever passing through El Paso. Early 2003 I took him up on it, and during the tour of the Cinco Puntos Press office, met their marketing director, Jessica Powers, a writer, herself. Jessica liked my poetry—-a reviewer for New Pages, she favorably wrote about my second West End Press book, which I'd dropped off on her invitation—-and we remained in touch. (An odd aside: a few years later, driving through El Paso, when she still lived there, I stayed one night with her and her then husband; she passed along a book that she'd recently been given to review, which was coming out in a few months, and which she thought I might be interested in—-that night I stayed up until 5 a.m. to finish Ordinary Wolves.)

In 2007, Jessica phoned me that she was mulling starting a publishing house. We'd last seen each other in California in 2005, when, during a visit, we exchanged manuscripts. She read a draft of Are You Famous?, which I'd recently written. I read her young adult novel, The Confessional, which Knopf was going to publish in the next year. So two years later, as I listened to Jessica tell me her plans, she asked whether that manuscript of mine was still available. It was certainly available, I let her know, which started a process that led to her publishing the book in August 2008—-more of the story of how that book came to be is in the final chapter of that book, the postscript. (One thing not mentioned in the book is that while Jessica is a terrific editor, and a smart marketer, and has been just great to work with, book design is not her strength; and while design is not my strength either, if I hadn't my experiences, that memoir would have looked much different, and, I believe, much worse, if I hadn't worked hard as an advocate to make sure certain things looked the way they did—-having that say can be one of the advantages, and disadvantages, of being involved with a small press.)

I thank Deb and Andromeda for the opportunity to write here. Funny, I apologized to Deb last week at the length of these posts, and promised this one would be shorter; instead, obviously it's the longest yet. I do go on. Funny, too, I meant to respond to Andromeda, who commented on my last post; I'm not sure about the thicker skin stuff since this past week I just got rejected from being on the roster of touring artists in Alabama schools. I'm not sure whether I'll even bother seeking an explanation. It feels like such a little thing since I don't get to Alabama much, but I did wonder what more I could offer, or how I could have done this differently since I answered the questions, followed the directions on the form, and included reasonable supplemental materials. I'd even been in touch with the director of the program before applying--and a well-respected musician who runs an arts council in the state, who himself does a lot of school visits around the state, who'd hired me to work in his community's schools, and who is a big supporter of my work, had been one of my references. One thing for sure: we're inevitably getting rejected in this business for a multitude of reasons, some of which are out of our control. That doesn't seem to change.

Funny, too, that when I first imagined these posts, one of the subjects I wanted to write about was the challenges of getting work distributed throughout our state, which, in my case, has meant challenges with working in collaboration with Todd Communications, Alaska Geographic (formerly ANHA), and others. I have one more chance next week; I'll strive to get to that, briefly.

49 Writers Publisher Interview: Epicenter Press

Continuing our series of 49 Writers Publisher Interviews, we check in with Kent Sturgis, president and publisher of Epicenter Press, Inc. Sturgis is a two-term former president of the Independent Book Publishers Association, a national trade organization. He was born and raised in Fairbanks, where he edited the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner during the pipeline boom. He has edited dozens of books and written two of his own.

Who started Epicenter Press?

Lael Morgan and I incorporated Epicenter Press in Fairbanks in 1988. We are a home-grown book press that sells Alaska stories to the outside world.

Lael Morgan forced me get into book publishing. No kidding. She didn’t hold a gun to my head, but she might as well have. If you know Lael Morgan, you know how persuasive – “relentless” might be a better word – she can be.

I was taking a sabbatical from journalism after twenty years working the Associated Press and later the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. “Let’s go into book publishing and buy Alaska Northwest Publishing Company from Bob Henning,” Morgan suggested in a telephone call in 1987. We had not seen one another for twenty years since working together on the Daily News-Miner during the Fairbanks flood. Henning’s company published books about Alaska; including the Milepost, and two magazines, including Alaska magazine. We went to see Henning in Edmonds, Washington. He introduced us to three other prospective buyers who had approached him. But even after the five of us combined our financial resources, we couldn't raise enough cash to make a deal.

After the group broke up, Lael and I went back to Henning thinking we might buy the books only. At that time, Alaska Northwest had two to three hundred titles on its list. Henning was encouraging. I remember going home one weekend with a huge stack of sales and inventory reports. I discovered that the company had lots of inventory in the slow sellers, and not much stock in the best-sellers. A light went on in my head. This meant that in addition to raising money for the sale price, which apparently included the dubious value of the slow sellers, we would have to raise additional money to reprint the bestsellers.

We backed off, deciding it made more sense for us to start a book-publishing enterprise from scratch--one book at a time. And that’s what we did.

Which books were among the first you published?

The first year, 1988, we published four titles. Lael and I each contributed one.

Lael wrote Art & Eskimo Power: The Life and Times of Alaskan Howard Rock. This is an absorbing and important biography of the Eskimo journalist who founded the Tundra Times and helped fight for settlement of the Alaska Native land claims. Although we got a very nice review in Publishers Weekly, leading us to believe, falsely, that national reviews would not be difficult to get in the future, I wish we had held off publishing this book until we knew more about book promotion and marketing and had better distribution.

I contributed Four Generations on the Yukon, a pictorial biography of the Binkley family in Fairbanks, which had been running riverboats on Alaskan waters for four generations (five, now). We also published Reaching for a Star, a history of the Alaska Constitutional Convention by Gerald Bowkett, and Steamboats on the Chena, a history of the riverboat trade into Fairbanks, by Basil Hedrick and Susan Savage.

At the time, crude e-mail was just coming into use, but there was no such thing as an “attachment,” and not yet available was the software that ultimately leveled the playing field for independent publishers to compete with the big New York houses. It cost a dollar a minute to telephone the Lower 48, and FedEx was nowhere to be seen. There was no book-publishing infrastructure in Alaska — no book editors, designers, marketers, and certainly no book printers. I moved to the Seattle area to learn how to publish books.

What niche do you hold in the marketplace?

We are a regional trade publisher specializing in nonfiction titles about Alaska. Within this regional “niche,” we publish all varieties of nonfiction. Although most of our titles relate in some way to Alaska, we do occasionally publish titles from elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

What are some of your best-selling titles?

Each publisher has its own definition of what constitutes a best-seller. In our realm, we consider a title to be a best-seller if it is reprinted on a regular basis and has sold mid tens of thousands of copies.

Four titles come to mind:

1. Two Old Women by Velma Wallis. We published the original cloth edition of this unusual story based on an Athasbascan Indian legend. The book won a Western States Book Award and later won a book award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. We sold paperback rights to HarperCollins and, through agents, licensed translation rights worldwide. Two Old Women has been published in eighteen languages.

Even going on fifteen years after its original publication, this amazing little book continues to be a bestseller in Germany, where five editions have been published. The book has been read in its entirety on the German version of National Public Radio. In Italy, the owner of a chain of hotels was so taken by the book that he published a private edition, placing a copy in every one of his hotel rooms. Our standing joke for a while with Velma Wallis was that her book was competing with the Bible in Italy. And the Two Old Women story goes on and on. One of these days it will be made into a movie.

2. Lael Morgan wrote Good Time Girls, the charming history of prostitution in Alaska and the Yukon. This book was on the LA Times best-books-of-the-year list after its publication and Lael was named Alaska historian-of-the-year by the Alaska Historical Society for this work. We have sold about 50,000 copies of two editions of this book, and it continues to be a bestseller year after year.

3. It was a pleasure working with Governor Jay Hammond on his autobiography, Tales of Alaska’s Bush Rat Governor, which was a huge success due to the governor’s immense popularity and because the book was so well written and entertaining and received glowing reviews. The book was published after Hammond left office. But he loved to interact with people and made more than one hundred public appearances on behalf of this book.

Shortly after its release, we scheduled a signing for the governor at Hearthside Books in Juneau. It quickly became apparent that the bookstore would be overwhelmed with Hammond fans, so the event was moved to the Juneau community center. Instead of running the scheduled hour and a half, the event continued for more than four hours, with lines of people circling the block waiting to get in. Hammond signed 900 books!

4. And, then, of course, there was Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down, by Kaylene Johnson. Predating the 2008 presidential election, Sarah was the first and only book in print about Sarah Palin when Republican presidential nominee John McLean selected Palin as his running made. The cloth first edition and two paperback editions sold nearly 200,000 copies. Two of the editions appeared on New York Times bestseller lists on the same weekend.

Has there been a shift in what readers expect and which Alaskan authors/books do well?

Fundamentally our market in Alaska is one part local audience and one part visitors. At the heart of this market is interest in Alaska adventures, lifestyles, the Alaska dream, and personal stories about unusual aspects of living in Alaska. Still, we have seen a few shifts.

Individual titles about sled-dog racing, mainly the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, don’t seem to sell as well as they once did. There are many mushing books in print.

In recent years, we have ventured into the true-crime genre, thanks to the work of Tom Brennan. This content sells well, and may be bringing young and new readers into books. Books about the “unexplained” such as Strange Stories by Ed Ferrell and Haunted Alaska by the late Ron Wendt are popular year after year.

History can be a tough sell, but a recent bright spot has been North to the Future: The Alaska Story, 1959-2009, by Dermot Cole. Publication of this absorbing history was made possible by the Alaska Historical Society.

Literary nonfiction, which is difficult to define, has been a mixed bag for us over the years. But we have been pleased to discover in recent years that these titles have found a place in the literary nonfiction market outside of Alaska and help sell some of our other titles to a broader market. Two titles that come to mind, which I strongly recommend for the quality of the stories and fine writing, are Surviving the Island of Grace by Leslie Leyland Fields and Moments Rightly Placed, the Aleutian memoir by Ray Hudson.

Our 2009 year-to-date bestsellers:

1. The Spill, by Sharon Bushell & Stan Jones
2. Good Time Girls, Lael Morgan
3. North to the Future, Dermot Cole
4. Haunted Alaska, Ron Wendt
5. Amazing Pipeline Stories, Dermot Cole
6. Jon Van Zyle’s Alaska Sketchbook (new edition)
7. Alaska Blues, Joe Upton
8. Sarah, Kaylene Johnson (cloth First Edition)
9. Cold Crime, Tom Brennan
10. Strange Stories of Alaska and the Yukon, Ed Ferrell

How many books do you typically publish each year?

This varies depending on our financial situation and the number of promising proposals we have in hand. Some years we publish as few as two new titles. In busy years, when sales have been strong, we have published as many as a dozen.

Recognizing that not every book idea or project will fit on our list, we also have begun to reach out to authors, self-publishers and private and public entities through Aftershocks Media, a subsidiary enterprise that offers editing services, consulting and mentoring, book packaging, print brokering, and distribution of titles other than our own.

In which genres?

Within the Alaska category, we publish memoirs, history, humor, true crime, books about sled dog racing, Native American stories, and books by and about strong Alaska women. We’ve also published a few guides, although generally we do not publish travel guides, and a couple of self-help titles. We call all this our “Alaska Book Adventures.” As a rule we do not publish fiction, children’s books, or poetry.

Over the years, what kinds of changes have you made with your list?

With the availability of on-demand digital printing, we now can keep in print indefinitely titles that otherwise might have been dropped from our list in the years past as sales slowly declined. Even when we print on an offset press, we tend to do smaller printings now, knowing that we can get a reprint delivered from most North American printers in about 30 days. At the same time, we have been moving away from color gift books and so-called “coffee table” books. The main thing we look for now is the quality of the story.

Describe your ideal author. In other words, if one of us wanted to wow you with a proposed project, how would we do it?

The dream author is a marketing-savvy, self-promoting individual living in Alaska who comes to us with a tight, well-written, skillfully self-edited work with strong commercial potential that makes us shout “Eureka!” when we read it, and who has access to photos scanned at the proper density — if we need them. I’m grinning as I write this. I have never met such an author.

The economy has hit publishing hard. Are you seeing any encouraging signs? What is the future for small and regional publishers?

You have to be an optimist to be in this business. Even when the overall economy is in decent shape, book publishing is a challenge for all the reasons you can imagine – declining literacy, disappearance of many independent book stores, returns, increased reliance on the web, and a growing array of e-reader formats and devices. Meanwhile, there are too many publishers printing more paper books than can be sold.

E-books comprise the fastest-growing segment of the book industry, yet the percentage of the total is still very low. But this is the wave of the future.

I believe the small, independent niche and regional publishers may find it easier to survive than the large national trade publishers. But “easier” is a relative term. A lot of trade publishing companies are going to fail if they do not adjust to changes. But others will rise behind them, more attuned to the new technology and changing needs of the reading public.

Meanwhile, we all can take solace in this: content will always be needed, no matter what the delivery system.

What do you most want to communicate to readers about your books and to writers about submissions?

Perhaps it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway--start with original material. No matter what your topic, fiction or nonfiction, tell a story that will entertain as well as inform.

Maintain high standards for your work. In dealing with agents and publishers, share only your very best effort. Unless asked to do so, do not submit any draft material. Seek objective criticism of your work. Take with a grain of salt praise from your family and friends.

The cover letter should be the best letter you’ve ever written. Slave over it.

Often I am surprised to receive nonfiction proposals from authors who have spent a great deal of time researching their subjects, but little time researching prospective publishers.

If you are considering self-publication or have interest in publishing as a business, join the Independent Book Publishers Association (formerly the Publishers Marketing Association).

The best book I have seen about the publishing process for prospective authors is How to Get Happily Published by Judith Appelbaum.

Kent Sturgis can be contacted at kent@epicenterpress.com.

49 Writers Weekly Round-Up

Have you weighed in on the MFA question this week? We'd love to hear from writers who've earned MFAs, who are working on MFAs, or who are wondering if they should pursue MFAs.

Another popular post this week was part two of featured author Ken Waldman's "In Defense of Self-Promotion." Ken's post along with Mark Coker's Smashwords Book Marketing Guide inspired author Arne Bue to push his comfort zone to post a "non-academy award winning video I made, starring old me."

Also, author Ann Chandonnet shares a link to BookTour.com, where authors can enter and search for upcoming events.

Of course, blogs are another great place to promote your work. Debby Dahl Edwardson, author of the picture book Whale Snow and Blessing’s Bead, is featured in an interview on a blog called Through the Tollbooth

Our own ex-gov Sarah Palin apparently has her own ideas about how to get readers to buy a book: omit the index. That way folks who want to know what you said about them have to plunk down some cash. But then again, with a print run of one million, do you really care? But is it really one million? Daily Finance crunches the numbers on the Palin memoir, providing some interesting insight into how these things do (or don't) work.

Praeger Books announces the release of Barry Scott Zellen's second nonfiction book on the transformation and modernization of the Arctic region: Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic. The second of a three-volume project exploring the foundations of security, stability and sovereignty in the modern Arctic, it examines the challenges and opportunities of a polar thaw; considers the impacts on geopolitics, international security, and international commerce; and discusses what a “post-Arctic” world might look like.

The book includes an introduction by former Alaska Governor and U.S. Interior Secretary Walter J. Hickel, and a foreword authored by Professor Daniel J. Moran of the Department of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. "The author argues that the twilight of the reign of ice in the Arctic marks the dawn of a new geostrategic pivot and economic powerhouse—a rich new navigable “Mediterranean” basin full of beneficial promise for the future of the Arctic rim nations, the indigenous Arctic peoples, and human history," notes the publisher.

Looking for an agent? Check out the recent Writers Digest article "24 Agents Who Want Your Work" and its companion piece, "10 Things You Should Do Before Querying an Agent."

Libraries in peril, plus an upcoming tour

Recently, Nancy Lord wrote about our need for libraries.

Today, we direct you to an ADN Community Voices blogpost by Bill Sherwonit about the Anchorage public library system's current challenges. Sherwonit says,

It’s not like local libraries and their staffs are living high on the hog. If the Daily News is correct and Sullivan’s proposed new budget passes, the city’s public library system will have lost 13 percent of its municipal funding in just two years. Since 2000, the staff of Anchorage’s public libraries has shrunk from 114 to 86 people, its librarians have fallen from 43 to 34. On the positive side, volunteers are way up, from 120 to 840 (though volunteer hours haven’t risen so dramatically). While money and staffing are down, both library visits and the variety of services are higher than ever. In short, Anchorage’s five public libraries are doing more with less. But that’s not sustainable, say library supporters. Anchorage’s library system is struggling to survive.

Sherwonit also wrote:
Before leaving (Loussac Library), I stopped and said hello to Special Collections Librarian Michael Catoggio, who will lead an “insider’s tour” of the Alaska Collection next Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 3 p.m. (Those wishing to participate are asked to rendezvous at the main reference desk on level three.) It’s a tour I don’t want to miss.

A while back, Michael Catoggio wrote his own post for 49w: 'I want to be your librarian.' He really means it! We hope his tour is well-attended; it sounds like a great deal for writers and researchers.

Your Turn: The Eternal MFA Question

At the post office, I take all the clothing catalogs directly from my box to the recycling bin, to avoid unnecessary temptation. I may need a new pair of boots, but I can't afford them presently, thanks to some recession-era realities that have hit my home.

And yet, I certainly didn't recycle this month's tempting Poets & Writers magazine, with its comprehensive listings of the top 50 MFA programs. An MFA would set me back $25,000 or so, and it doesn't fit my lifestyle in any way. I'm an autodidact by nature and I don't need the discipline of academia to persuade myself to read or write; and I'm not convinced -- given how many MFAs have flooded the market -- that an advanced degree guarantees future teaching opportunities.

And yet -- and yet -- I've thought about getting an MFA for years. Twenty years ago, my reasoning was that it made more sense to study other subjects that I planned to write about (political science, economics, biology) than to study writing itself. Fifteen years ago, I reminded myself that most of my favorite writers didn't have MFAs. But a different generation of writers has ascended, and many of them do have the pedigree now. (Today's writers also have the option of many low-residency programs, including the one offered at our own University of Alaska Anchorage. But note one downside of low-res programs: less financial support.)

Ten years ago, I did the math and realized I could spend a fraction of what an MFA student spends on a non-degree model of my own devising, by attending out-of-state conferences, purchasing 'writing time,' and filling my bookshelf. (I did all that. And I published my first novel. But for some reason, those MFA ads still call me.)

I've been told by a local friend that I'd love the camaraderie and the stimulating craft conversations.

I've been told by a mentor who teaches in MFA programs that I should steer clear.

I raise the question here, more out of collegial mischief than angst: Anyone out there who pines for the classroom on occasion? Any recent graduate or current teacher willing to share some opinions (feel free to use the anonymous option when you post). Tell us the best about your program and the worst; how an MFA changed your life or didn't; what every young OR middle-aged writer should consider before taking the plunge.

In Defense of Self-Promotion, Part 2: A Guest Post by Ken Waldman

It was a late February 1995 episode that taught me I better get out and self-promote.

I'd recently moved back to Juneau and was freelancing. Though the title Alaska's Fiddling Poet was yet to be coined, for months I'd been attempting to cobble a living combining writing, teaching, and fiddling. This new venture of mine hadn't exactly been met with universal, or even local, approval. In fact, the preceding year, I'd applied to be on the Alaska artists-in-the-schools roster and been turned down. Given my professional experience, that rejection had been especially puzzling. But I pressed on. So maybe I wasn't going to be state-approved. That didn't mean I couldn't induce schools to hire me as a visiting artist for a day, or two, or three.

That winter, school districts in Delta and Tok did indeed hire me, and I coordinated the trip with a presentation at an education conference in Anchorage. Before driving north out of the city, I had a free hour, and decided to stop by the office of the arts-in-education administrator, the one who'd signed the letter telling me I wasn't going to be on the roster. It seemed smart to go in, introduce myself, and inquire what I could have done to boost my application.

When I knocked on the door, the administrator was in. Without an appointment, I clearly caught this person off guard, because once I introduced myself and queried, I only heard that, yes, the administrator remembered my application. It had been red-flagged, and ultimately rejected, because none of the panelists knew who I was; no one believed I did the work I'd claimed.

I left the office stunned, and remained stunned as I drove all the way past Cantwell, towards Fairbanks. I replayed the comment a hundred times, trying to figure out what it meant.

I'd moved to Fairbanks in 1985, lived there three years while I'd pursued an MFA. In 1988, I moved to Juneau, where I taught distance-delivery classes across the state and taught creative writing workshops locally. In 1989, I moved to Sitka, where I was a visiting assistant professor for a year at the UAS campus there. In 1990, I moved to Nome, where I was an assistant professor at the UAF campus there for two years, until I got sick, had to take a leave of absence, then had to resign my job.

Through it all, except for the worst of that illness time, I was writing prolifically, and had ten stories and over a hundred poems in a wide range of literary journals. In Nome, I'd volunteered at both the elementary school and the high school. When I met my college students in their villages in the Bering Straits region, I'd visit the schools to play fiddle and teach writing to the kids. Now here we were in 1994. I didn't know it, but I was still six years from having my first full-length poetry collection published. Yet according to the arts-in-education administrator, I'd been red-flagged because my experiences seemed so out of line that I must have invented some of my credentials. And while surely it spoke volumes of a committee that didn't care enough to contact references, it also told me I had a major problem. An Alaska resident for almost a decade, a writer who'd lived and worked in four communities across the state, I was so unknown that people in position to select a roster didn't believe I did what I claimed. And what was it that I was claiming? It wasn't like I was publishing books like Joyce Carol Oates.

So I vowed I'd start going about this differently.

And now, nearly fifteen years later, while I can point with pride to six full-length poetry collections, a memoir, and the new children's book, I also shake my head at how the whole business—-or, really, the whole world—-seems to run.

While self-publishing has its stigma, self-promotion has its own taint. Just as “real” writers are going to have publishers, “serious” artists are busy creating, aren't going to bother with promotion, or else will have publicists do that work.

Of course, publicists cost money—-sometimes a lot of money—-which complicates things. And, to make it even more complicated, to do something right—-and cost-effectively—-often means doing it yourself.

My 2008 memoir focuses on how I've gone about doing what I do; there's no need to rehash that here (and if you're interested in my book, I'll give a plug to Nancy Lord's piece from the past week, and say go get the book from your local library). But I've long learned that if you want people to read your writing, you can't depend on people to find it anyway. Maybe they will; maybe they won't. Regardless, you give yourself a greater chance to find readers if you work at promoting yourself. And if you want people to show up for your public events, again you can't depend on people automatically attending. Again, it helps to promote yourself.

Since beginning this work, including school visits, I've done well over a thousand events across the continent in a wide range of settings. I've learned that I feel my best when I know I've done everything possible to ensure success. And that means I've learned how to best self-promote in order to augment what publishers are doing, what bookstores are doing, what everyone involved with whatever the event is doing. And that leads to the next dilemma: the more I'm involved with this part of the job, the more I understand the possibilities in self-promotion, which means the more work that's ultimately involved. But that's okay. While I enjoy writing and performing, I also enjoy getting my writing and performances out there, and this is part of the process. I already have eight published books, six more unpublished ones that are ready to go, and other projects. I already have nine CDs. My writing, music, and performances have a life of their own. It's more satisfying when more people learn about that work, especially when I've received validation that both the writing and the performances deserve a wider audience.

I ended last week's piece explaining how last month I managed to be on statewide radio in both Dakotas. Here's how it happened—-complete with a few quick lessons in self-promotion.

First, the most important point, which can't be emphasized enough: write well enough so you have something to self-promote.

In this case, last February, I received an email from the South Dakota Humanities Council (I've long been on their mailing list), informing me of their upcoming fall book festival. Somehow I hadn't known about this event. Though I'll usually email an initial query, in this case I called the office cold and asked for the director of the book festival. He happened to be in and I mentioned that this past year I had a memoir out, and one chapter included how I'd set up an 11-day tour of South Dakota. Since there was a local tie-in, I wondered if he'd consider me for the coming festival. He answered that the book sounded intriguing, and asked me to send the book, the accompanying CD, and any other materials I wanted. The next day I had a packet in the mail, and within a week I received an invitation to the festival, which included airfare, a place to stay, and a small honorarium (which I negotiated up to one that felt fairer, plus the promise that I'd be allowed to seek additional paid festival outreach work nearby).

Now that I had the one job (and not just any job, but one vetted by a state humanities council), I set to work, and contacted every arts council, presenting organization, and university English department in both Dakotas, and mentioned I'd be in Deadwood the first days of October. First, an arts center in Rapid City invited me to do a general concert one night for a guarantee. Then, the Rapid City Library, which was right across the street, invited me to do a children's show and children's poetry workshop on another night, also for a guarantee. I was also invited to Dickinson, North Dakota, several hours away, where the English Department sponsored a major reading series. The guarantee for the residency was more generous. There, I'd visit the high school, visit three English Department classes, meet with faculty, and do a public event.

Though I contacted newspapers and radio in the vicinity of the South Dakota book festival--and knew I was instrumental in having the newspaper story in the Rapid City newspaper—-the freelance journalist covering the children's show and general concert for South Dakota public radio was a surprise to me. But it wasn't completely unexpected. Not only had word gotten out in the media that I was doing three separate events in the region—-all with very credible presenters in the community—-but the book festival was a statewide story. In this case, I felt lucky since the reporter had taken the initiative after hearing about the events and pitched the story on her own.

The North Dakota interview happened differently. Though the reading series director had made prior contact with the radio producer, I'm not sure I ultimately would have been interviewed if I hadn't independently contacted the radio station myself. Though the producer said that he'd been meaning to get me, it's also true that any producer of a statewide show invariably has several good interview options for any one day; in this case, my email spurred him to reply. And even then, I had to follow up repeatedly to make sure the timing worked. Because I was scheduled to visit a class at the same time as the show aired, we taped the “live” interview earlier that morning instead of doing the interview “live” over the phone.

In this case, too, it helped that Dickinson State University has brought in writers regularly, which made for a good story—-and my press release mentioned that this was to be my first public visit anywhere in North Dakota (though I'd mentioned, too, that one of my books had been favorably reviewed in North Dakota Quarterly, which meant that I did have some connection to the state, albeit slight). It didn't hurt that Dickinson is a relatively isolated community, but has its own full power station in the statewide public radio network. I imagined there might be a need for a story from that region of the state—-and in this case I guessed correctly.

So what's the point?

At least in North Dakota, some people came to my evening event specifically because they heard the interview on the radio. And, even better, afterward when I contacted another North Dakota presenter and mentioned the interview was archived on the station's website, she said she heard it when it was originally aired. While there's no guarantee that presenter will ever hire me, I have to think my chances are better since she heard the 40-minute interview. Ultimately, I find, just as one poem, or one story, points to the next one, so does one event lead to another. And the more effectively I self-promote an event, the more apt I'll draw more people. We had a good turnout in Dickinson. Afterward, I sold $350 of books and CDs, which for me is a good night of sales. And, of course, all across the state, more people were introduced to my writing and music.

And here's one final bit of advice about self-promotion, which may be
obvious: occasionally search for yourself online. While you may have friends—-or publishers!—-looking out for you, I haven't been so lucky. It's one more thing I've learned to do myself. Just the other day I found an article which I would have missed, from the Eunice, Louisiana daily paper, about my event this past week. And if I hadn't done that kind of snooping earlier this year, I would have certainly missed learning that my book, Are You Famous?, had been chosen as one of the picks of the month by The Reader's Cove, an independent bookstore in Fort Collins, Colorado. Kevin Grastorf, the store manager, wrote, “If you have ever seriously considered pursuing a career in the music business or any other like profession where you must travel and self promote, this is a must read.”

My next time in Colorado, I'll certainly schedule an event at the Reader's Cove, where I expect a ready audience (yes, I'll be doing my part to promote the event) and support from a friendly staff.

Taking Stock

I used to fret over my penchant for organization and analysis, thinking good writers were so right-brained they could hardly hold their heads up. Thanks to the “dancer test,” I breathed a big sigh of relief: by this measure, I couldn’t be more right-brained. (Though retaking it to set up this link, I turned up balanced, seeing both right and left movement.) The so-called test may have little validity, but it helped me debunk the right-brained myth and embrace the brain I was born with.

Organization, analysis, and evaluation are terrific writer skills, as long as you don’t turn them loose prematurely or in the wrong places. They’re especially helpful when you’re trying to get a handle on the big picture: the trajectory of your writing career.

Why worry about trajectory? Why not just write? Mostly, that’s what I do. But unless you’re writing wholly and completely for pleasure, with not the tiniest concern about whether you’ll be published or get paid, it doesn’t make sense to keep stumbling around without ever taking stock of your efforts.

Having embraced spreadsheets to organize data for a couple of freelance gigs, I decided to use one to sort through the unpublished projects I’d collected over the past ten years or so. Like most writers, I have a pretty good handle on what I’ve published: 2 YA novels, 3 picture books (plus one forthcoming), 1 middle grade (2010), 1 nonfiction for adults, and 2 travel guides. What I needed to probe was the stuff in my own personal slush pile.

I set up a spreadsheet with these headings: title, length, partial/full, genre, characters, premise, voice, comments, and assessment. I created a ranking system, one through five, with one being “no hope” and five being “ready to submit,” and three columns for numerical rankings: character, premise, and overall assessment. Then I mined my Word docs. Only partial or full manuscripts made the cut. I copy/pasted snippets from my drafts into the voice column, and I tagged a few of the more prominent voices in the character column.

The process took about four hours, start to finish. I sorted and resaved the spreadsheet several ways: alpha order by title, alpha order by genre, numerical order by assessment, and alpha order by action. I totaled my words: a whopping 546,964 words of unpublished manuscripts in ten years, compared to roughly (I haven’t done a spreadsheet for this) 200,000 words of published manuscript over the same time frame. That was a surprise: I’d have estimated the ratio of unpublished to published to be much wider. But my figures don’t include journals and multiple drafts.

More importantly, the tables give me a snapshot of what I want to return to and why. I found three picture book manuscripts that have potential as magazine sales (if I can get past the fact that I still haven’t been paid for my last magazine effort, published some ten months back). I found four manuscripts I’d like to use in my own self-directed workshops, playing around with various aspects of story without feeling pressure to produce a finished product. And I found five that made my short list for attention next year.

Of course, I don’t plan to just mine my old stuff. I love diving into new stories, fresh and full of possibilities. But sometimes it’s good to take stock.

49 Writers weekly round-up

We might still be waiting for snow here in Anchorage, but that's not stopping the 2009 Mushing History Conference, bringing together authors, historians, researchers, writers, veteran mushers and supporters of the colorful history of sled dog travel. In addition to several well-known mushers, speakers and presenters will include Jane Haigh of Kenai, author of Gold Rush Dogs, and author Linda Chamberlain of Homer.

The Conference opens with an informal gathering for the presenters on Friday, November 6, from 5 to 7 pm, at the Iditarod Trail Headquarters in Wasilla, reconvening on Saturday, November 7, at UAA's Commons Conference Room 107A from 9 am to 5 pm and at the Grand View Hotel in Wasilla on Sunday, November 8, from 9 am to 3 pm. All events are free to the public, with donations appreciated but not necessary, and families are encouraged to attend. For more information, call the Conference Coordinator, Helen Hegener, at 907-354-3510 for information.

[NOTE: THE FOLLOWING SIMPSON/BURLESON EVENT WAS CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS.] Also in the Valley this weekend, Sherry Simpson and Derick Burleson of UAA's Low-Residency MFA Program will be giving a free public reading Saturday, November 7 at 7 p.m. in the yurt at Spring Creek Farm in Palmer. We understand that in addition to being oh-so-Alaskan, the yurt is a great venue for this kind of casual and intimate literary event---it’s warm (yes, there’s heat), inviting, and it’s surrounded by acres of fields, gardens, and woods—none of which you’ll be able to see since it will be dark.

Also on Saturday, the UAA Campus Bookstore will be open from 10 am - 2 pm to celebrate National Bookstore Day with a 20% off storewide sale. Some exclusions apply (i.e. textbooks, software and computers, consignment, sundries).

Remember, too, that on Monday, November 9 from 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. Bill Sherwonit, author of Changing Paths: Travels and Meditations in Alaska's Arctic Wilderneess, presents "Notes from a Literary Journalist: The Importance of Passion, Persistence, and paying Attention." This event is cosponsored with the UAA CWLA/MFA Program.

On Tuesday November 10 from 5 - 7 p.m., Seth Kantner, Phyllis Fast, James Labelle and Karla Booth will speak on "How Life in the Arctic is Depicted." Seth Kantner is author of the Ordinary Wolves and Shopping for Porcupine, and Phyllis Fast is the author of Northern Athabascan Survival. Shopping for Porcupine is the UAA/APU Book of the Year for 2009-2010.

The following week, on Monday November 16 in SSB 118 at 7 pm, Dahr Jamail will discuss his new book, The Will to Resist: Soldiers who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jamail's visit is sponsored by the Gene Sharp Lectureship on Nonviolent Action, Political Science Dept/UAA; Political Science Association/UAA; Alaskans for Peace and Justice; Veterans for Peace-Ernest Gruening Chapter and the UAA Campus Bookstore.

Joan Kane, an Anchorage poet honored by multiple national awards, will be featured in a November reading to celebrate Alaska Native writers. The poetry reading and discussion is set for 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 17 at the UAA Campus Bookstore. The free event is sponsored by the bookstore, by Alaska Center for the Book and the Alaska Native Heritage Month Committee, marking November as Alaska Native/American Indian Heritage Month. Campus parking is free.

Kane recently made national headlines by being named one of 10 emerging writers awarded the 2009 Whiting Award. She will read from her newly published book, The Cormorant Hunter's Wife, recently released by NorthShore Press. A discussion will follow with other Alaska Native poets. Copies of Kane's book will be available for purchase and signing at the Nov. 17 poetry reading. For more information on the event, contact carolben@gci.net.

Ann Chandonnet's essay “Write What You Don’t Know” is now online in the November newsletter of Winoca Books & Media. You can link to www.winoca.com. Chandonnet also shares news from Book Rix of a free short story contest for writers and readers on the theme "Travel Stories." On the line: $1,800.00 in prize money for writers, "fame!" and Amazon vouchers (each worth $20) for voting readers.

Writers need libraries -- and so do we all: a guest post by Nancy Lord

The political writer Joe Klein (Primary Colors) has written, “Libraries are places where we writers go after we die, if we're lucky. We’re going to live on through libraries. But there is also something more. In addition to being a place that we go after we die, (if we are lucky,) libraries are also the place where a great many writers are born.”

This is certainly the case for me—the part about being born, though I also hope for the lucky part.I have so many fond memories from my childhood of the big old granite and marble Manchester NH public library and the “bookmobile” that brought its treasures right to my neighborhood. I didn’t know then that I would become a writer, but my library was without question the place that opened my mind to every sort of adventure and possibility.I loved to read, I learned about language and storytelling from reading, and it’s natural that I eventually wanted to emulate what seemed so essential and beautiful to me.

In Homer, we’re fortunate to have a new public library, three years old now. I say fortunate because it’s not something that just happened. The community had waited a long time for a new and larger building to replace the small one that had become not much more than a book warehouse, where you could go in, get a book, and leave, and where any new book meant an old book had to be removed to make room.

We were fortunate that a core group of citizens got together and launched a campaign to plan and fundraise for a new building and that we had city leaders—our library director, city manager, mayor, and council members—who supported the effort. We were fortunate that the economy was reasonably healthy at the time, and that the whole community (well, almost) backed the project, and that we got help from our elected officials at the federal and state level as well as government agencies and foundations (thanks, Rasmuson Foundation!)We now have a community building that’s way more than a book repository; it’s a center for learning and civic engagement, with access to multiple educational technologies and plenty of space for study and conversation.

In the course of being involved with our new library project, I heard a lot of library stories from people who stepped forward with their checkbooks and volunteerism.I heard from one woman that she’d practically grown up in a library because, in her childhood, it was the only safe place to be. I heard from a well-known artist that all his real education came from a library and that if it had not been there for him, he never would have made it through high school and would not have had any idea about what purpose he should find in life. I heard from adults who had learned to read, as adults, in libraries, and from people helped by librarians to find what they needed to fix their cars and their health.

Each of Alaska’s Writer Laureates is asked to have a “project” during his or her term, and so it was natural for me to focus on libraries. I’ve made a number of trips to communities now, where I visit libraries, do some kind of program there, and speak to library supporters about the Homer experience of planning and fundraising for a new library. I’ve found that many if not most public libraries in the state are outgrown and inadequate and that their communities are in various stages of planning for additions or new buildings. In sharing what I’ve learned, I emphasize that there is never a good time to fundraise for a new library (or anything else); you just have to decide to do it, plan carefully, have a core group of worker-bees, and then do it. One of the motivations for us in Homer was knowing that Haines had succeeded in building a new library. If they could do it, we could! In Alaska, of course, with our small population and lack of individual or even foundation wealth, no one expects private donors to fully fund anything. In Homer we raised an impressive amount of local money before taking our case to foundations and public entities, where we found a generous willingness to “partner” with us.

On my most recent “mini-tour,” in September I visited the community libraries in Kodiak, Sutton, Palmer, Wasilla, and Talkeetna. I also stopped in, just to take a look, at the Eagle River library (very new) and the Big Lake library (relatively new and being used as the design template for Mat-Su libraries to follow.) I’ve always had a high regard for library volunteers and professionals, but my appreciation is even higher after meeting so many kind and committed library people.

We library supporters face a number of myths that need constant correction. The big one is that libraries are irrelevant now that “everyone” has a computer and can Google anything he or she wants to know. This faulty argument misunderstands the role of modern libraries, which are not about looking in books for information, and are—just as Andrew Carnegie insisted—for everyone equally. Statistics from the American Library Association show that libraries are busier than ever. Nationwide, the number of people using libraries is up, participation in programs by both children and adults is up, and internet use is way up.

In the Kodiak library, two men were playing chess while others read newspapers in non-English languages and the computer stations were full. In Sutton, a mother read to a child in a comfy chair, in Wasilla someone was checking out movies, and in Talkeetna kids worked on their homework. In Eagle River I plugged in my laptop to check email. Back in Homer, a computer club meets, a knitting circle meets, and a book group is reading Asta in the Wings.

Driving back from Talkeetna, I was listening to the radio—I might have been listening to a book-on-tape from my library except that my car has no tape or CD player—and heard someone say, “It’s a good thing we already have public libraries. Can you imagine trying to get such an idea through Congress now?”

It’s a good thing we have our libraries, but we have to defend and support them always. As I write, the budget-cutting Homer City Council is preparing to close Homer’s new library on Mondays. But there’s a girl who needs a safe place to go on Mondays, and there’s a budding artist who might realize his gift. And there’s someone who just wants to borrow and read a book.

Nancy Lord is the Alaska State Writer and author, most recently, of Rock, Water, Wild.

Your Turn: NaNoWriMo (or not)?

I'm having trouble getting online at all today (make it all this month) because I have not one but TWO kids at home, taking part in NaNoWriMo.

Anyone out there taking part in the month-long event, which challenges participants to write an entire fast-draft novel of 50,000 words (less for the younger participants) in the month of November?

I've got an 11-year-old and a 15-year-old battling for both the laptop and the desktop, each with just over a thousand words written and ambitions to write 15,000 to 20,000 more. (It's all about the quantity, not necessarily about the quality -- but that's a good way to keep the internal censor from taking over.) My daughter has been distracted at times by the chatty forums, much as I get swallowed up in email -- eegadz, the nut doesn't fall far from the tree, as my own mother used to say. But both daughter and son are doing great, while learning lesson number one about writing: that simple butt-in-the-chair time comes first, perfectionism later.

Do you love NaNoWriMo? Think it's silly? Do you have any of your own non-NaNoWriMo November writing goals to share? (I'm revising a novel manuscript, hoping -- hoping! -- to have a new draft before Thanksgiving.)

Once I wrench the kids away from their screens for longer than 5 minutes, I promise to bring you a new post by Nancy Lord. Check back soon and if you're a NaNoWriMo-er -- write on!

In Defense of Self-Promotion: A Guest Post by Ken Waldman

There's no getting around promotion: writers and books need it. With his penchant for both language and entertainment, 49 Writers featured author Ken Waldman is a master promoter. It all starts with recognizing and acting on opportunities.

I was going to title this post In Defense of Self-Publishing, but recall how Ned Rozell covered that three months ago. But first, before I talk about self-promotion, I'll share two of my own stories about self-publishing.

I'd moved to Fairbanks in 1985 to attend the MFA program. Though I'd entered and graduated as a fiction writer, I'd started writing poems, and during subsequent years in Juneau, Sitka, and Nome, I wrote more and more of them. From 1989 to 2000 I sent out for publication virtually everything I'd written. A few stories got published first. Then some poems. Then plenty more poems.

Sometime back then, I thought about putting books together. I'd written maybe a hundred poems about Nome and the Bering Straits region, so that seemed an obvious book. And here I recall passing through Fairbanks. Naomi Shihab Nye was there with her husband, Michael, a photographer. They were touring the state as visiting artists. One night at a party I talked a long while with Michael. He mentioned they'd be heading to Nome in a few weeks and would be spending several days there. I told him I'd written poems set in and around Nome that they might find interesting, and I'd be happy to pass along a copy of the manuscript. He said I should just drop it by the English Department on campus, where Naomi could pick it up. The next day I did just that, and the following day I got a phone call from Naomi, who invited me to come see her. When we met, she told me she'd read the manuscript, and that I should persist with this project: it was publishable.

Eleven months later I was living in Juneau. A former poetry student of mine with a background in graphic design had offered to design a chapbook for me. The timing was perfect. I'd just received an invitation to present at a statewide conference in Anchorage, and it would be ideal to have a chapbook with some of my rural-set poems. At the time, I had an ancient two-floppy-disk computer, a contraption that may have been fine for my writing, but wasn't a help with this. I watched amazed as my friend, Penelope, took the poems I'd typed on her laptop, and with a few clicks allowed me to view them in various sizes and fonts.

The first chapbook was so successful that a few months later I paid a graphic designer to make a chapbook with all my music poems. And a few months after that, working at the UAF Summer Fine Arts Camp, I stayed a week afterward to take advantage of the computers on campus, and taught myself to design my own chapbooks. I put together four more there, and made my first poetry postcards. Later that fall, back in Juneau, I used library computers, and designed two more chapbooks.

So, in 1995 I self-published eight chapbooks. In 1996, I self-published eight more. In 1999, having moved to Anchorage, I self-published my last ten. Twenty-six seemed right, an alphabet of chapbooks. And while I don't sell them now, they still have value, since when I visit middle schools, high schools, and colleges, I'll show all twenty-six, and explain I chose the poems so each individual chapbook has unity. For instance, there's the first one with its rural-set poems; there's the second one with music poems; and then there are the others—-the chapbook of comedy sonnets, the chapbook of political poems, the chapbook of plane crash poems (here I mention that students don't have to have a plane crash in order to write one of their own; they can write about their car wrecks, their bike wrecks, the times they've fallen out of trees).

The process of putting these chapbooks together not only taught me how to assemble my six full-length collections, but also gave me the necessary skills for making CDs. And in 1996, when I met John Crawford of West End Press, who later published my first two full-length poetry collections, I offered him a copy of my first chapbook, the one set in rural Alaska. John took it to read overnight. The next day he mentioned he liked the poems, and wanted to see the complete manuscript, the one that Naomi Shihab Nye had read two years earlier.

Though it took another four years for that first book to actually be published—-and it was published in much different form—-I remained convinced that having self-published some of the poems to make a chapbook catalyzed the process.

The other story about self-publishing?

Three years ago, on the advice of another of one my other publishers, Bryce Milligan of Wings Press, I wrote a children's book. After all, Bryce argued, I had a successful children's CD, often went into schools, and ought to have something to sell.

At least I attempted to write a children's book, since Bryce didn't much care for my effort, a sequence of Alaska-set acrostic poems from A to Z, which he thought was much too sophisticated. Since I didn't know the children's book market, I let the project languish, though not before writing another A to Z Alaska-set sequence, trying to address his concerns. Maybe he was right; maybe I needed to make the poems simpler.

When I showed him my second effort, he just shook his head. Since Bryce had written a couple of children's books himself, occasionally published children's books, and was married to a school librarian, I had to admit that he was likely right about this. Indeed, two years later, the only other time I showed the acrostic poems to someone who might potentially publish the book, I was again met with an utter lack of enthusiasm.

Still, I didn't shelve the project completely, and in May 2008 made the two acrostic-poem sequences the foundation of a second children's CD, which I recorded in Fairbanks. This past summer when I manufactured the CD, I felt I had to show off the acrostic poems, which meant putting them on the page. Incredibly, it cost more to make 1000 of the small 24-page booklets that were to be included in the CD than it cost to make 750 64-page, free-standing, 6x9 paperbacks. That got got me thinking. Since I'd already bought a series of ISBN numbers, I decided to just go ahead and self-publish the kids' acrostic poems as a stand-alone book. My
rationale: not only would I save money in the manufacturing, but maybe the book could be sold separately. With every buyer, I'd be coming out ahead.

So I published it myself this past spring, enlisting a friend to add illustrations, and officially gave it an October 1 publication date. Late June and early July I hauled them to library gigs in Haines and Anchorage, as well as to my other appearances in Juneau, Skagway, Girdwood, Kenai, Palmer, Talkeetna, Fairbanks, and Denali National Park. Surprisingly—-or maybe not-—the book and CD did just great, and the enthusiasm for the book from booksellers, librarians, and just regular readers was heartening. Stopping by University of Alaska Press when I was in Fairbanks, I happened to show the book to one of the editors and there was such interest that now they're distributing both the book and CD.

What does it all mean?

I've been through the process with enough projects that any optimism is guarded. It seems a given that so much of this business is random; all any of us can do is persist. I sent the book and CD out for review in mid-June before University of Alaska got involved. I haven't seen any reviews yet, and maybe there won't be any. But my first children's CD received national reviews, so maybe this project will get some too. Also, I understand University of Alaska Press will be sending the book and CD out also, so there are more opportunities. Regardless, I know the challenges in trying to distribute books and CDs on my own (a topic for still another post this month). I'm grateful for the help.

Self-promotion? Unless you count this piece as an example, I'll get to it next week, promise (though below I'm including links for some of the recognition I received last month in both North and South Dakota; how did those two interviews happen—-that's a bit of what I'll be explaining next
week) :

www.prairiepublic.org/radio/hear-it-now/?post=15417

and

www.sdpb.org/dakotadigest (click the 10/5/09 show “the fiddling poet”)

49 Writers Interview: Marilyn Sigman

Marilyn Sigman of Homer has an impressive resume: director of the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies, winner of the Alaska Conservation Foundation's Jerry S. Dixon Award for Excellence in Environmental Education, former statewide coordinator for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's 'Alaska Wildlife Curriculum' program, past chairman of the Alaska Natural History Association, and a host of other leadership roles in Alaskan environmental organizations. Somehow, she has also found time to publish in the Alaska Quarterly Review, first in 2007 and again this fall. Here we talk with Sigman about balancing writing and work, the Alaskan experience, and literary journals.

You’ve made a significant impact on environmental education in Alaska. In what ways do your writing efforts extend that mission, and in what ways is your writing something altogether different?

In environmental education, the goal is to raise awareness and then to provide people with experiences and information so they can think critically, and think for themselves, about environmental issues and decide to change their behavior to be less harmful to the environment. So as an educator, I would always strive to share my own knowledge and enthusiasm and love of the (nonhuman) natural world, but keep a lot of my own thinking and opinions to myself. Writing, on the other hand - particularly what is now termed “creative nonfiction,” is a means to speak from the same passion that drives me as an environmental educator but with a much greater freedom to share my personal exploration of the cultural and spiritual complexities which I believe are at the root of many of our environmental issues. My hope is that I will able to affect and influence people at a deeper level.

What prompted you to begin publishing in literary journals?

I was encouraged by Sherry Simpson, who provided a manuscript review at a Kachemak Bay Writers Conference, and Nancy Lord, who taught a course in creative nonfiction at the UAA/KBC Kachemak Bay campus. After a lot of editorial help, they told me that I had written some pieces that they thought were publishable. I entered the Anchorage Daily News writers’ contest and received an honorable mention. After a few experiences with slush piles, the impetus to submit to the Alaska Quarterly Review was the result of reading in the submissions guidelines that all submissions from Alaska writers had a guarantee of being read [clarification: AQR reads all submissions].

In what ways do you feel Alaska has enriched and informed your writing?

I’ve always believed that Alaska is a state of mind as much as a geographical place. I’m continually inspired by connections between my sense-memories and the meanings they evoke. So as I ponder some abstract concept about which many thinkers and writers have had much to say and try to reach some synthesis or resolution that brings me some peace, or at least balance, of mind, it’s the Alaskan landscape and seasons and communities of living beings and beauty that provoke me and ground me and provide the stories and the metaphors.

What have you learned, and what are you still learning, about writing creative non-fiction?

After many, many years of writing more scientifically or bureaucratically in the third person, I think I am just beginning to learn to relax my resistance to writing in the first person and revealing myself through my writing. When I been successful at being a character in my non-fiction tales of science and philosophy, I have learned that this “trueness” of the writing is not only personally rewarding, but it also makes the strongest connections to people who read what I have written. I’m also learning that the personal things that are the hardest to write about are the richest in meaning.

Publishing in literary journals can be a good way to “get noticed,” but it also can be a rewarding end in and of itself. How do you view it?

I have a certain compulsion to write to make sense of the world. Writing “pieces” that are potentially publishable requires a certain coherence and organization on my part that really helps me figure out the nature of my current obsession and how I might need to change my belief system and life style accordingly. Actually having something published is the “icing on the cake.” I get the pat on the head by the editor that it’s “good enough” to publish and a potential audience who appreciates good and artful writing and who will, hopefully, share my obsessions and resolutions by reading the piece. While I sometimes dream of a “writing life,” I’m pretty busy with my “day job” which I think wise to keep.

What advice would you give to writers interested in publishing in literary journals?

Write what you’re compelled to write. Take a course and/or join a writing group – polish your editorial skills and learn how to “kill the darlings.” Know when a piece is done. Research the journals that publish the type of writing you do. Send it off. Send it off. Send it off. Keep writing. Repeat.

49 Writers weekly round-up

Wow. What a week. Dana Stabenow inks a deal with Evergreen Films toward a TV series featuring her Aleut PI, and Joan Kane earns a hugely prestigious Whiting Award. Front page of the Anchorage Daily News, two days running. Of course we covered the big news for Dana and Joan, too. Well done, Alaskan authors.

So let's ride the wave, starting with submissions for ICE FLOE, the celebrated and award-winning journal of circumpolar poetry, which will return in the fall of 2010 as an annual book series published by the University of Alaska Press. Subsequent volumes will be forthcoming in 2011, 2012, and 2013. ICE FLOE founders and Alaskans Shannon Gramse and Sarah Kirk will edit these anthologies in collaboration with an international editorial board of scholars, translators, and poets representing the world’s northern nations.

The University of Alaska Press is currently seeking poetry to be considered for inclusion in ICE FLOE 2010. Poets residing in Alaska, Northern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Northern Russia are encouraged to submit new, original work. Poetry will be printed in its original language and in English translation. The only criterion is excellence; any language, style, or subject matter is welcome. Please submit no more than five poems. Simultaneous submissions will be considered, as will previously published work if accompanied by appropriate permissions. If possible, please provide English translations when appropriate and a brief paragraph of biographic information, also in English. Contributors will receive two copies of ICE FLOE. Electronic submissions (either in the body of an email message or as an attached MSWord .doc or .rtf file) are preferred and may be sent to icefloe@uaa.alaska.edu. The submission deadline for ICE FLOE 2010 is January 1, 2010.

Of interest to Anchorage booklovers and writers: Special Collections Librarian Michael Catoggio is hosting an insider's tour of the treasures of the Alaska historical collection in the Loussac Library. Meet at the Main Reference Desk, level 3, on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 3 p.m. Having made good use of this collection while researching Picture This, Alaska, I can attest that it's a real treasure trove.

Looking for a Halloween splurge? Alaska Sisters in Crime members Kimberley Gray and Elisa Hitchcock of OutCast! Productions are among the sponsors of an overnight adventure of Mystery, Fun and Suspense on October 30 at the Historic Anchorage Hotel. The History: On February 20, 1921, at 9:15 pm, Anchorage’s first Police Chief John J. “Black Jack” Sturgus was found shot in the back with a bullet from his own gun, steps away from the Historic Anchorage Hotel. It is rumored that his ghost returns to the scene of the crime each year, haunting the location of his untimely death, seeking justice for a crime still unsolved to this day. For $239 per couple, (includes room for two, evening appetizers/light meal, cash bar, and breakfast the following morning), you can become part of this meticulously researched mystery, wining and dining with the famous and infamous characters of a much younger Alaska. For details, call 272-4553 or 800- 544-0988.

With November closing in fast, it's time to say thanks to poet John Morgan for his guest posts as October's featured writer and to welcome another poet, Ken Waldman, as featured author for November. Looking ahead, watch for guest posts by Marilyn Sigman and Nancy Lord as well as an interview with Joan Kane. And remember to check the blogroll and author sites in our sidebar for all of the best in Alaskan (and Northern) authors and books

what the web is saying about award winner Joan Kane

We're eagerly awaiting our own upcoming interview with Alaska poet Joan Kane, but we can understand why she's a little busy today, as the secrecy veil lifts over receipt last night of a coveted $50,000 Whiting Writers Award.

New York magazine had this to say about the prize, which was awarded to ten writers and playwrights.

"...the Whitings are a ticket out of water-treading obscurity. Not everyone who wins follows the path of Whiting alumni Denis Johnson, August Wilson, Jonathan Franzen, Lydia Davis, and Jeffrey Eugenides. But even a book advance would be a quantum leap for another 2009 winner, Joan Kane, a (very pregnant) Native Alaskan writer whose new book of poetry, The Cormorant Hunter's Wife, had a print run of 500 copies with NorthShore Press, which runs off a solar cell. (She bought 400 of them so she could sell them herself.) "No royalties, nothing," says Kane, who has four subsidized months to get some writing done before her second child is due. "This comes at a really fortunate time."

The Anchorage Daily News shares this about Kane's background: a 32-year-old Inupiaq mom from Anchorage with a second son due in February, Kane was accepted into Harvard University at the age of 17, and received an MFA at Columbia in 2006. She works as a financial consultant for Native corporations but looks forward to concentrating on a second book of poems, among other things. Her play, "The Golden Tusk," premiered at the Anchorage Museum this summer.

The two other Alaskans who received past Whitings were Seth Kantner and Natalie Kusz.

The award ceremony was keynoted by Margaret Atwood, who had this great advice for the recipients: "'Doubt not, go forward. If thou doubt, the beasts will tear thee piecemeal.'"

Kate Shugak, P.I. one step closer to the TV screen

Congratulations to Dana Stabenow, who made a big splash this week with the announcement that film producer Mike Devlin has purchased rights to her Kate Shugak series -- just one step in a very long process of getting the successful mystery series made for TV.

The news popped up first in Dana's Roadhouse Report, where she explained:
As you have all heard me say too many times to count, I was determined to sell the screen rights only to someone who would shoot the series in Alaska. Specifically, to someone who would put Alaska, not British Columbia or central Washington state, right up there next to Kate and Mutt.

Well, that someone found me. Mike Devlin made his bones in Silicon Valley software, came north and fell in love with Alaska, and is now pursuing a second life in film production. I don't know him that well yet, but my gut says he's got a good heart and a hard head, along with the muscle and the determination to make this happen. He says, and I'm quoting verbatim, "There's no reason we can't film the whole series in Alaska."


I'm not a regular listener of radio guy Dan Fagan, but I tuned in yesterday to hear Stabenow and Devlin talk about the announcement and take calls from listeners, who wanted to know who would play Kate (an Alaska native actress, Dana hopes -- but this decision, like many others, will be hammered out with whatever network purchases the series) and whether Alaskans should keep their ears open for acting and production jobs (definitely). The Daily News followed up with a story today.

On the personal side, I'll add that I worked with Mike Devlin earlier this year, writing a script for a nature documentary still in development. My first impressions of him mirror Dana's: that he is smart, competent, and rarest of all in the movie business, a straight shooter. There's a long road ahead, but we all have our fingers crossed.

Got any thoughts about Alaska movie/TV adaptations? Kate Shugak? The Alaska economy and how books and film can help give it a boost? Check out our old 'Movie Week' posts about local filmmakers, and/or speak up here...

P.S. Mudflats provided an enthusiastic run-down of the offical announcement -- and best of all, photos of the Evergreen Films production facility hidden away on the Anchorage Hillside. Visiting the screening room, by invite only, is a bit like getting to see the inside of the BatCave. Fun stuff. When I worked there this spring, I often had to get a Hummer ride up the last icy stretch because even my Subaru couldn't make the final climb.

Denali Park Journal, Part Two: A guest post by John Morgan

"As the road crested over its top everything shimmered, the whole landscape gold and scintillating . . .Physical and temporal boundaries dissolved, and it felt like I’d reached a culmination, as if some crucial gap in my life had been filled." So writes our featured author, John Morgan, of a culminating moment as the first writer in residence at Denali National Park. (For Part One, see yesterday's post.)

Day 6. Nancy and Ben [our son] visiting. We woke up to heavy rain, low clouds and not much prospect for a change in the weather, but hey—this is the park—so we drove west, hoping for something different, and we got it—snow. Heading over Polychrome, rain turned to sleet and we could see the snow-level on the mountains dropping. The road wasn’t bad, though, and we continued out to Eielson, seeing along the way a mother grizzly playing in the snow with her single cub. They wrestled and rolled around in the frosty white stuff, delighted with each other and turned on by the snow.

At Eielson we walked into a snowball fight involving some visiting kids and the bus dispatcher. On the way back, we hiked near Stony Creek and came on a fresh-looking pile of bear scat and, nearby, a stretch of ripped up ground where the bear went after a ground squirrel. Seeing a few square yards of earth gouged and torn apart, big rocks tossed aside like tennis balls—a thorough thrashing of the region—gives a new and different perspective (different from the playful wrestling of a mother and cub) on the wild power and ferocity of a bear.

Day 7. We hiked to Tattler Creek, noting wildflowers and ringing bear-bells for bears—not to attract them, of course. In a rugged side-canyon, I scouted for dinosaur footprints (which have been found here) and saw many possible maybes, but no definite prints.

We crossed the stream and climbed to an open spot where we ate lunch overseen by a dozen Dall sheep. On the way back, we had to make another crossing of Tattler Creek. Following Nancy, I noticed that one of the rocks she stepped on had shifted slightly, so I was careful in placing a foot on it, but it shifted again and threw me off balance. When I asked her if I could write that “I fell gracefully into the stream,” she replied, “You can say that if you like, but it would be a lie!”

On my hands and knees in four inches of icy water, I took stock. A few minor scrapes, I thought. But something was wrong with my left pinky. It looked like a miniature hacksaw, with the middle section out of line with the rest. But as we were hiking out, figuring I would have to visit the clinic in Healy, I fiddled with the joint and it snapped into place.

Driving back to the cabin, Mt. McKinley was beautifully out at the far end of Sable Pass. It towered over the nearby hills, at a spot I’d never seen it before, brilliantly white, both summits sharp and clear for the first time on this trip

Day 8. Nancy and Ben packed up to leave and we drove to Teklanika and hiked through the woods and along the gravel bars of the river, seeing moose sign and the tracks of (possibly) a wolf. We ate our lunch out on a bar and then, driving to the park entrance, saw a couple of large-shouldered moose crossing the road just in front of us. I dropped Nancy and Ben at their car, gassed up and drove back to the cabin.

Day 9. As I headed out to North Face Lodge to give a reading, a fox preceded me up the Polychrome switchbacks. Red, smudged with black along its sides and rather scrawny—not the handsomest of foxes—it rubbed its muzzle along a scrap of something (a former meal perhaps) at the side of the road, not paying much attention to the poet following impatiently on its tail.

Then approaching the overlook, something amazing! Sun shearing through low clouds transformed the view to glitter. As the road crested over its top everything shimmered, the whole landscape gold and scintillating. I checked my shaky hands on the steering wheel, not wanting to swerve over the edge, but feeling in my crazy euphoria that if I did, nothing very bad would happen. Physical and temporal boundaries dissolved, and it felt like I’d reached a culmination, as if some crucial gap in my life had been filled. The unreal dazzling vision lasted for ten minutes or so, but it reverberated throughout the day and remains unforgettable.

At Thoroughfare Pass, where I’d seen the grizzly family (brown cubs, blond mother) on several earlier drives, and expected to see them again, instead a herd of caribou, more than 100 of them, grazed and moved gradually west toward Eielson. Lots of young ones, four of them lines up in a game of “follow the leader,” their herd instinct already kicking in.

The reading at North Face went very well, with a relaxed atmosphere and a large receptive audience. And afterwards, driving back to the cabin late, I shouted with surprise at the sight of a double rainbow shooting up from the base of Denali—brilliant colors, with the muscular shoulders of the mountain behind it.

Day 10. At an early hour, before I was properly into the day, I heard a car door slam. Some people were talking in what sounded like a foreign language. I unlatched the door and there stood two men in slacks and crewneck sweaters.

When I said, “Hello?” they glanced at each other, apparently unsure how to respond. One of them grinned sheepishly and the other muttered, “Murie…Murie…”

Finally, a third person, white bearded and wearing wire-rimmed glasses, stepped forward and explained, “These are two wolf specialists from Spain. I thought they should see the cabin.”

“Oh, sure,” I said, and at that the two Spaniards rushed past me and scurried about, excitedly taking in the bunk-bed, fridge and stove and noting my papers, books, and clothing scattered about, exclaiming, “Murie! Murie!” And when they departed, I felt I had served the cause of international wolf studies, though, sad to say, I haven’t seen a single wolf during this particular visit to the park.

Day 11. My last morning in the cabin, I went down to the river to have a look around and while I was casually staring at the fast-flowing silty channel, a head poked up mid-stream. What kind of head? I couldn’t tell. It was gone too quickly. Had it been a fish, trying to get its bearings? A river otter? Maybe it was just a trick of light on the riffles. Had I really seen anything at all?

But then in almost the exact same place, the head poked up again, this time followed by the long neck and mottled body of a duck—and instantly it was paddling and flapping desperately toward the bank, and was almost about to make it, when it disappeared again under the thick gray current.

Denali Park Journal, Part One: A guest post by John Morgan

For ten marvelous days this past June, I was writer-in-residence at Denali National Park. Here are some excerpts from the journal I kept.

Day 1. Driving to the cabin, I saw a group of fourteen caribou being pestered by a pair of long-tailed jaegers—move along! move along!—they swooped and shouted, protecting their territory. Focusing my binocs, my elbow hit the car horn and the caribou stopped dead, looking around for the source of the noise. I thought: “Strike one for me.”

After moving my stuff into the 14’x16’ cabin, equipped with a double bunk bed, a propane refrigerator and stove, I heard some loud talk and laughter coming from the river. Two naturalist filmmakers, Kennan and Karen Ward, were watching four or five fox kits poke their heads out of the den holes and peak down from over the top of the hill. The human noises we made seemed to intrigue and puzzle them—what strange two-legged creatures!?

Day 2. Scanning with binocs at the river, I noticed an odd boulder on the ridge-line across the way, past the East Fork bridge. It turned out to be a golden eagle, in profile against the sky. After about ten minutes, two more eagles circled in, looking through the blue haze of distance like shadowy ghost-birds.




Day 3. This morning, driving back from a hike at Tatler Creek, I saw a mother ptarmigan and two tiny chicks crossing the road. When I stopped I could hear her motherly peepings to hurry them along. On this stay in the park, I find my interest in bears and moose is somewhat less, while my attention to smaller creatures grows.

I also have more time to sit and take in the landscape. The hills I can see from the cabin window at the east end of Polychrome Pass, for instance—looping green and brown with dots and streaks of snow, rising up to snow-splashed peaks, with shifting clouds and cloud-shadows, and flitting and foraging in the foreground magpies, ground squirrels and rabbits.



Day 4. After showering at the staff washhouse at Toklat, I continued out to the Eielson Visitor’s Center and hiked up toward the ridge. The wildflowers were amazing—such varieties of color and shape, the alpine forget-me-nots an almost neon blue. On the drive back I saw the Wards' camper pulled over, with their camera set up. A sow grizzly and two first-year cubs—tiny by comparison—foraged in the middle-distance. She was blond and they were both brown and when she lay back for them to nurse I snapped a picture, though it was probably too far for me to get a decent shot.

While in the park, I’m reading Robert Richardson’s fine book on Thoreau (Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind). It turns out that Thoreau experienced true wilderness not at Walden Pond—a short stroll from his home in Concord—but rather on Mt. Katahdin in northern Maine, where, alone in howling wind, surrounded by barren rock, feeling sick and worn-out, he encountered a nature that was in no way hospitable to our species. He realized that nature has a range of experiences to offer and concluded that in essence there isn’t just one nature, but two. The familiar one, almost domestic, offers a healing relief from the petty distractions and restrictions of human communities, but, at the other end of its range, lies a hostile, barren world, which he called “Demonic Nature.” Thoreau felt that this harsh and alien environment was also important to humans, because, as he wrote, “We need to witness our own limits transgressed.”

And reading this, I realized that at the present time, while I’m relaxing in the cabin or cruising up and down the park road picking from a menu of easy to moderate hikes, there are climbers taking on Mt. McKinley itself, voluntarily putting their lives at risk, testing their limits and in some cases having their limits transgressed.

Day 5. A little after one a.m. the excited barking of a young fox got me out of bed. I saw it dash toward the den, pause and bark as if calling for a parent or sib, then turn and race back into the brush, where it continues to bark as I write this. A first kill perhaps? The look on its face—a mixture of terror and pride—as if its young life had stumbled on something utterly new and amazing!

The barking isn’t like a dog’s and could easily be mistaken for a crow cawing—which I did at first. But the barks are longer than caws and the silence between more spread out. Foxes are usually thought of as quiet and stealthy, but clearly this one feels it has something to crow about.

(To Be Continued)

49 Writers weekly round-up

How far can writers ride the coattails of our illustrious former governor? Perhaps quite a ways, which is some small justice in the face of Palin's gigantic advance. First, Going Rouge: An American Nightmare, launching the same day as Palin's Going Rogue. Edited by two Nation staffers, Going Rouge is a collection of 23 essays addressing Palin's catapult to fame and the "nightmarish" prospect of her continuing presence in the national arena. Included are Alaska's own Mudflats and Shannyn Moore. Copies may be pre-ordered at OR Books.

Then there's Frank Bailey, the former Alaska Airlines employee turned Palin staffer who took a tumble in Wootengate. According to the Anchorage Daily News, Bailey is working with a publicist from LA and her daughter to pen a memoir entitled Renegade: Sarah Palin's Hatchet Man. It's due out in three months, with one little hitch: there's no publisher yet. Imagine if we all pre-promoted like that.

If all that sounds like too much to read, don't despair: there's a Palin-spoofed coloring and activity book, written by a couple of cartoonists. Follow a maze to get Palin to the White House, or find where in the world our Alaskan oil ends up.



On a more serious note, Alaska Geographic announces an addition to its National Park Series, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve by Steve Kahn and Anne Coray. According to the publisher, "This beautifully designed, full-color book features captivating prose, stunning photography from Fred Hirschmann, and insights into the fascinating natural and cultural history that defines this majestic wildland."

And in more book news, Bradford Matsen's new book, Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King, the first complete biography of the legendary ocean explorer, inventor, and environmental sage, was released this week by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House. We'll feature an interview with Madsen in the weeks ahead.

Bill Streever, author of Cold, will be speaking and signing books at Barnes and Noble (Anchorage) on November 13 from 6 to 8 p.m., the Anchorage Museum on November 15 at 7 p.m., Title Wave midtown on November 28 at 1 p.m., and the Eagle River Nature Center on November 29 at 2 p.m. He'll also be at Borders (Anchorage)on December 20 at 2 p.m.

Another busy author is Debbie Miller of Fairbanks, who last weekend added the Forget-Me-Not award from the Alaska State Literacy Association to her growing list of accomplishments. Debbie's next book, Survival at 40 Below, comes out in February. And speaking of Fairbanks, we had a great time at the Red Lantern last Saturday night, meeting new writers and catching up on projects.

If you're looking to get a jump on holiday book-shopping, note that ReadAlaska 2010, the 17th annual Alaska publisher's book fair, will be held Thanksgiving weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday Nov. 27-29)at the Anchorage Museum. Alaska's largest book fair is held in conjunction with Crafts Weekend and will feature Alaska publishers and authors selling their latest books direct to the public. Admission is free and there will be music, food and access to all museum displays. It's a great opportunity to see the new museum expansion as well as network with Alaska publishers and authors. A number of companies that package books for authors will be there, including Greatland Graphics, Northbooks and Publication Consultants.

In the spirit of gift-giving, Operation eBook Drop provides a way for ebook authors to get their work to U.S. troops. Author Arne Bue forwards this link plus another for authors interested in participating.

A new exhibit in Spokane has resurrected a 240-line poem written by Ann Chandonnet about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The poem (and an exhibit of bronzes by sculptor Peter Bevis that included casts made from semi-intact sea otter heads collected from the spill) debuted in 1993 in Anchorage. At that time, the words and music played in a continuous loop in the gallery. Ann says they didn’t know how the public would react, but some of them sat on the floor and listened to the whole thing. The composer, Phil Munger, made recordings of his soundscape and Ann's poem, which can be accessed at www.progressivealaska.blogspot.com

The Alaska Writers Guild is offering a series of seminars on writing and the writing process. Blending craft-talk, workshop and theory, the seminars will feature Lee Goodman, an MFA grad from Bennington College who also studied fiction in the graduate program at Boston University. His work has appeared in The Iowa Review and Orion Magazine, and his novel Cliff Nesting debuts next year. Goodman has taught at the University of Alaska Anchorage, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Alaska Pacific University. Seminars will be in two three-hour segments, with the cost for each class at $75 for Alaska Writers Guild members and $90 for non-members. The first, The Pesky Details: Dialogue, Voice and POV, will be November 11 from 7 to 10 p.m., with the second session a week later. For details, contact David Brown at dbeci@myexcel.com.

As if writers weren't already undercut in the market, now we've got book price wars. In a recent post, agent Nathan Bransford assesses the potential damage.