Deb: 49 Writers weekly round-up

Poetic justice hits 49 Writers. We novelists who think ourselves so clever with the element of suspense are now wallowing in it ourselves as we wait to hear: do we or don't we have a home for our Alaska Writing Center? Hang in there - we're working through some logistical challenges and hope to have closure on the lease, one way or the other, within in the next week or two. We know it's never done till it's done, but - just in case - we have a name: Raven Place.

In the meantime, we have filed our Articles of Incorporation with the State of Alaska and are now officially (drum roll) 49 Writers, Inc. We have a new email address - 49writers@gmail.com - but we'll still answer if you use our personal email addresses. Yes, we have a bank account too, and yes, we're taking donations (49 Writers, Inc., PO Box 221086, Anchorage, AK 99522; we're also set up on PayPal with 49writers@gmail.com as payee). No paid staff or any such luxuries yet - right now we're all-volunteer and building up funds for programs to promote Alaska writers and writing. Our IRS Form 1023 for 501c3 tax-exempt status is in the works, but in the meantime, the nice IRS people says it's okay for you to deduct your donations - and we'll do our best to get it right so you don't have to un-deduct them at some point in the future.

Newly inhabiting our sidebar is a request for you to fill out one of our volunteer forms. We've had such an exciting response to our call for help, and now we need to get organized. So please, even if you've already emailed and/or told us how you'd like to help, take a moment to fill out the form so you'll be in our database. Time, money, sweat, ideas - we need it all, whether you're in Anchorage or Barrow or Ketchikan or Tuluksak.

Already, we can't say thanks enough. It's exciting to see the Center (now officially 49 Alaska Writing Center) come together with the grassroots energy we'd hoped for. Stay in touch; let us know your ideas. We know we can't be everything to everyone, but we want to listen and consider as best we can in these formative stages. In the next few weeks, we'll sort through our volunteers and assemble teams to tackle various projects. If you're not hearing from us soon enough, feel free to check in at 49writers@gmail.com.

Deep breath, moving on. Many thanks to our April featured author, Kim Rich. May brings Heather Lende as our featured author - watch for her posts beginning next week. And don't forget our 49 Writers online book club discussion May 6 from 6-8 p.m. We'll be chatting with author David Vann about his highly-acclaimed Legend of a Suicide.

Homer area authors: Andromeda and I will be in the Homer area on Monday, exploring options for a possible 49 Writers retreat. We plan to meet with area authors for coffee and conversation at Captain's Coffee (on Pioneer Ave.) at 3 p.m. on Monday, May 3. No RSVP needed - just show up.

Speaking of Homer: If you are thinking about registering for the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference, the early registration deadline is TOMORROW, April 30. The conference will be held June 11-15 at Land’s End Resort in Homer, Alaska. This year’s keynote presenter will be Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Michael Cunningham, author of “The Hours” which was also made into a feature film starring Meryl Streep. The conference will feature 17 other award-winning, nationally-recognized authors, editors and agents who will conduct creative writing workshops, readings, craft talks and panel presentations in fiction, nonfiction, children’s writing, poetry and the business of writing. Optional activities include manuscript reviews, editor-agent consultations, receptions, a boat cruise and open “mic.” The evening readings on June 13-15 by visiting writers and conference registrants will be open to the general public at no charge. A special post-conference workshop will be held at Kachemak Bay Wilderness Lodge for conference registrants.


Noted conference faculty include Richard Chiappone, Elisabeth Dabney, April Eberhardt, Karen Joy Fowler, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Joan Kane, Len Kamerling, Nancy Lord, Dinty Moore, Jennifer Pooley, Bill Roorbach, Eva Saulitis, Joni Sensel, Peggy Shumaker, Sherry Simpson, Maurya Simon and Emily Wall.
 The early registration fee is $325 until April 30, space available. There is a special UA admitted student rate at $225 until May 1 (admitted degree-seeking students). Advanced registration is required.
For more program and registration information e-mail iyconf@uaa.alaska.edu, call (907) 235-7743 or visit http://writersconference.homer.alaska.edu/.

Thirteen Anchorage area children's writers and illustrators met Wednesday night to start up a local SCBWI (Society of Children's Bookwriters and Illustrators group). Come join the fun next month: Wednesday, May 26 at 7 p.m., tentatively scheduled at the Blood Bank of Alaska (no donations required!) at Laurel and Tudot.

In Anchorage, Midnight Sun Brewing is hosting a community book swap on Sunday May 2, from 2 to 6 pm, at 8111 Dimond Hook Drive.

On Sunday, May 16 from noon to 4 pm at the Girdwood Center for Visual Arts (next to the Bake Shop),
Katharine Adams, Beth Taylor, and Libby Hatton will be displaying artwork and signing books.

Longtime Fairbanksan Sue Ann Bowling, has published Homecoming, a science fiction novel that's been dubbed both Editor's Choice and Rising Star by iUniverse. A graduate and faculty member (Geophysics) at UAF, Bowling wrote the Alaska Science Forum for several months in the late 80's.

YA writers, note this anthology opportunity: the proposed anthology of young adult short stories, with the title: RUSKRDYET?© will feature stories for the teen/young adult market where supernatural and paranormal meet technotalk. Submission details are at http://www.ruskrdyet.com/. Submissions are due no later than midnight CST, June 30, 2010. There will be 10 to 12 stories with word count minimum of 3500 and maximum 5000.

Promised Land II -- A Guest-post by Barry Zellen

Concluding thoughts from our guest-poster. Thanks Barry!

When I first came North two decades ago, I met the editors of a now defunct magazine called Dannzha, which aspired to be a Tundra Times for the Yukon but which was doomed by a lack of funds and a tiny market to a short life. But in its brief reign, it gave me my first opportunity to publish my thoughts twenty years ago this week (April 1, 1990), with no editorial constraints. I was free to write what I truly saw for the very first time. Here’s how it began:

In October of 1988, I hopped on a small, cherry red Honda Rebel 250 motorcycle, and rode up the ALCAN to Alaska. I stopped in the Yukon and NWT, discovering a unique world that reminded me of my own heritage – as a Jew, a wandering Jew in a strange and in so many ways foreign land. I found the Aboriginal peoples of the North to be in a state similar to my own people, in conflict with a White European culture that rejects tribal relations and nations without states as anachronisms, primitive and obsolete in a modern age. My people were almost exterminated by the hatred of the Nazis, and brutally suppressed by the Spanish Inquisition and repeated European pogroms. My people almost lost their Old Law and their old ways, and by almost forgetting their old knowledge came close to cultural extinction.

I saw the First Nations at a similar crossroads, with signs of cultural renewal mixed with the decay of the traditional ways. Each revival and remembrance seems to come at the expense of several things forgotten - be it language, religion, social relations or other aspects of aboriginal culture. The fate of the First Peoples seems to hang in an unsteady equilibrium, much as Judaism did throughout the modern era.

After describing in brief the historical struggle of the Jewish people to survive a world of pogroms, inquisitions, and holocausts, and the modern world’s constant effort to oppress its tribal remnants from an earlier time, I went on to describe the world I found in the North, a world I fell in love with:

Up here, I found the first landscape that truly felt welcoming to me. Vast, open spaces; large gaps between those ugly pockets of civilization with Fast Food and shopping malls. I wandered up the Dempster, staying a while in McPherson and Inuvik, and later Tuktoyaktuk. I met the Gwich'in and Inuvialuit and I discovered people not unlike my own. Fellow wanderers, who went east instead of west, and who crossed the Bering land bridge from Asia; the people of the north came to North America thousands of years before my people crossed that hot, dry desert to build their nation. The people of the North are still wanderers of a sort, hunting the migrating caribou or living along the icy Arctic coast. They follow the seasons and live close to the land – just as my people subsisted in the desert, rendering dry waste land into fertile and productive soil, living in a place considered barren by those who knew less, and by those who failed to see life growing where their minds said it couldn't.

... I met Elders that still spoke their native tongues, who still wore traditional clothing. Who still ate of the caribou or the Beluga whale, and lived close to the land. And this made me happy. But I met so many – especially among the young – who knew not their traditional language and customs. Like my people, they had become assimilated, their culture eroded and consumed. Many had been forced by missionaries to abandon their native language, torn from their families and ripped out of the fabric of their societies … I full well understand the power of the white world, as I am borne of it. I likewise know its danger: I saw so many young people turn to the poison of alcohol and drugs and to the temptations of the bootlegger… poisoning themselves with an opiate foreign to their land, and introduced as a tool of repression. The cross and the bottle seem to have come together, agents of a slow and silent conquest. And this made me sad, and sometimes frightened.

But while I saw much to fear, I knew from my people’s own struggle to survive, and to overcome its brush with cultural extinction, that there still remained much reason for hope. Since in the end survival comes to those who hold on and ride out the storm – and who never give up:

The strength and power of my people came from within, by resurrecting our old ways. It came from the heart and soul, the very source of our identity. And it came from the faith that we kept, in the face of adversity, condemnation and ridicule. White society has the powers of numbers, just as Ancient Egypt did. And it has the wizardry of technology. But its power is not eternal nor is it infinite. The Jews learned this by keeping their Faith, and after almost losing it, restoring it with a cultural renewal and national rebirth. We did not fight back so much as we held on, until they stopped beating us into submission. Our victory came from our endurance against all odds. And so can yours.

Promised Land -- A Guest-post by Barry Zellen

Barry Zellen, our featured author last month, shares this final post with us, in two parts.

In my last post I started to describe some new work that dives into the ambiguous and haunting imaginations of philosophers of the state of nature, that allegorical, proto-historical realm of pre-history that describes mankind before the erection of political artifice. Even the classical era’s city-states, as fractious as they were in their constant state of war with their neighbors, are well beyond the primitivist world that these guys were trying to conjure up. Hobbes’ massive tome Leviathan has become an archetype for the darkest view of man, though only one chapter in his million-word, four-part tome is widely read, and one sentence quoted (and misquoted), the one that describes life in nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” if my memory serves me still.

When I went North in 1988 for what I had imagined would be a short motorcycle journey to the end of the road, I found that life truly began where the road came to its own gravelly conclusion. I had until then been imprisoned by the hive constructed two and a half millennia earlier by Aristotle, the Academy, actually Plato’s invention, placed outside the city gates to prevent the demos from lynching any more of its high faculty as they did poor Socrates, who practiced his new art of philosophy in the marketplace of Athens, royally pissing off the men of wealth who felt impoverished by his constant questioning. So they killed him, and in response Plato exiled the Academy, for its own protection. Then came Aristotle, Plato’s best student who strived to outsmart his teacher and create the very philosopher king that Plato had imagined but tragically failed to nurture in Sicily, nearly dying in the process. Aristotle founded his own competing institution of learning, the Lyceum, which he opened in Athens after returning from his own exile to the Macedonian court, which now ruled over Greece as its hegemon. There, Aristotle had tutored and unleashed upon the world his most infamous student, Alexander, who went on to swiftly impose regime change upon Persia, breaking the back of its empire and usurping its King, hoping to export not democracy per se but Hellenistic values to the entire world, but which, upon his untimely death, instead planted the seeds of lasting chaos, and even more so than Herodotus or Xenophon, poisoning relations between East and West.

My issue with Aristotle was not his bold ambition to unleash upon the world a grand vision of unification as practiced by Alexander. Indeed, had Alexander lived he would likely have conquered India, and from there, China, so in the end, one vast, ethnically intermixed and rebalanced society would remain, as old and new co-mingled: One world, one empire forged of so many peoples, a world with no more war. Maybe not so bad an idea? But after Aristotle unleashed Alexander, he came back to Athens to open his Lyceum, where he put pen to paper just the way I like, writing in longhand all of his great works, in essence creating the superstructure of the modern academic world to perpetuate of his new intellectual order, an edifice of ideas and observations as grand as Alexander’s military conquests. But what resulted was as vast a bureaucracy, a realm where administrators rule, and where ideas reify into a bureaucracy that replicates the polis in its conquest of nature. Blame it on Aristotle. He not only sought to have his pupil conquer the world. He sought to systematize all knowledge, and did a remarkable job when you consider this was only the third generation since the very birth of philosophy. But his legacy has been oppressive, as knowledge, meant by Socrates to illuminate, became transformed into a tool that crushes the very spirit of mankind, and rids it of all natural instinct. So when I came North, I was in search of a world still free, not subdivided by academic disciplines and its many morsels of disaggregated knowledge or its institutional resistance to cross-pollination across disciplines, its impulse to crush contrary views that did not conform to party line and which threatened to upend this new artificial order.

And so I headed North, to the end of the road, thinking it might be refreshing to see the last frontier. What I did not anticipate was that the frontier itself was an interface between ages and cultures, that where the road ended, a pre-existing world re-emerged, one that is still with us, one beyond the road’s end, beyond our own divisions, beyond Aristotle’s superimposed vision that presumes the known world defines the whole world, when it is the world unknown that we should aspire to know. Alaska is like that, a special blend of known and unknown, a realm where roads are still the exception. It has a tiny road network around which is clustered a world familiar to anyone from Outside, with its same Starbucks and Fast Food, the same McCulture that has replaced Alexander’s vision with its own world conquest. Alaska is blessed to remain mostly unpaved, where roadways seem to give up without a fight, and surrender to the predominance of nature, with the exception perhaps of the Alcan which the necessity of war precipitated, enabling one major push across fifteen hundred miles of taiga and bog, forever binding here with the there of the Outside. One long, thin line, like an intravenous line connecting us to the machine that keeps us on life support, unable to survive on our own.

If only we had the courage to cut that line. To cross into the realm where there are no roads, where no roads are wanted, nor needed. That world is our state of nature, the world that has been here long before we even knew there was a here to come to. A world as God imagined it, a promised land as innocent and pure as He conceived it. Not without heartbreak or tragedy or malice, no Rousseauian paradise. A rough and tumble and cold and forbidding land, one that is harsh but is also full of beauty and grace.

When I first came North, I put pen to paper to describe the world that re-appeared as the road ended, a world I felt more intuitively at home in than any place else the road interlinked, any place else I had ever been. When the road disappeared, replaced by river and lake, I could breathe deeply, for the first time, knowing the air that I inhaled was my first taste of nature’s purity. Though I put pen to paper for the first time twenty years ago this week, the words I wrote, my first impression, my first taste of freedom and my first intuition of the state of nature, were my most insightful observations, as if my eyes had opened for the very first time ever.

In my next post, I will share some of these words with you! See you then.

Barry S. Zellen is an author and political theorist. After riding his 250cc Honda Rebel up the Alaska Highway in 1988, he settled down in the Western Arctic region, living in Whitehorse, Inuvik and Yellowknife, working in the field of indigenous language media. Since 2004, he's been with the Naval Postgraduate School where he directs the Arctic Security Project, edits journals, and writes books on various subjects including Arctic political and cultural history, political philosophy, and strategic studies.

49 Writers Interview: North Words Writers Symposium

The first North Words Writers Symposium will be held June 3-6 in Skagway.  Click the link in the first question below for details.

How did the North Words Writers Symposium come to be?
Dan: During Buckwheat’s human-powered trek from Miami to Nome three years ago we had the opportunity to talk at length about a writer’s symposium. We rendezvoused in central Minnesota in March, and on the northward walk to Winnipeg chatted constantly about a writer’s symposium. As the miles passed under our feet, we talked about reasons to host a symposium, who might come, what they wanted, how we could meet their desires, and why Skagway had the potential to be a great gathering place for aspiring writers and aspiring writers. Buckwheat never let go of the idea, and set about politicking with Skagway, Yukon, and Alaska leaders to walk our talk.

Buckwheat: I like reading about my part of the world and I want to encourage everybody to write more about Yukon and Alaska.

Why a symposium rather than a conference?

Dan: Nine years as a staff member for the Sitka Symposium convinced me that people who attend these sorts of gatherings want at least as much to contribute as listen. People ought to have time to talk with each other. Great conversation is a scarce commodity in our a treadmill world of digital messaging, and anything we can do to stimulate discussion will contribute to event’s value. Our panel discussions are led by published authors talking about writing, but symposium participants are encouraged to build scaffolds to support further lines of thought. The trick in a two-hour discussion is to keep the scaffold from collapsing.

Buckwheat: We are encouraging discussion rather than lectures.

Tell us about this year’s theme, Frontiers of Language.

Dan: We hope this works for people interested in open space, wild things, survival, independence, surprises, experimentation, determination, celebration, and living on the edge.

Buckwheat: Skagway has preserved a glimpse into a bygone frontier, and we want to see more of that in the printed page. Just because it happened a hundred years ago doesn’t mean things have changed.

You’ve pulled together a great faculty. What sort of mix were you seeking?

Dan: The North Words faculty is comprised of Alaskans who write exceptionally well about people striving to live out a piece of the Northern myth. Our keynote speaker, Dana Stabenow, constructed a dazzling career on that premise. Where better to converge with mythmakers than in Skagway, Gateway to the Klondike?

Buckwheat: We want to bring together great Alaska writers and publishers to explore with participants the craft and ideas behind the printed word. We’re excited to host approaches even beyond the page to film and TV.

Describe the participants you expect and what they can expect to gain from attending.

Dan: Folks who are interested in attending North Words should come expecting the following:
-Solid strategy focused on the craft of successful writing;
-True accounts from survivors of the publishing world;
-Opportunities to chat with like-minded believers in the Word and the Edge;
-Frontier adventures (train ride to White Pass, hike at lake Bennett, Dyea raft trip, etc.)
-Networking with human beings (as opposed to the blinking screen)

Buckwheat: I think about the people who have already registered, like Sarah McGinnis in North Carolina who thinks that Alaska is filled with special characters, and wants insight on writing about them. It’s more than just writing. It’s an exploration of place and mind. We’re dancing on the edge of wilderness every day. Wild people, too. What with the whorehouse tours, taco feeds, hikes, bikes, and the raft trip down the Taiya River—it’s an unbelievable deal.

In what ways does the Symposium distinguish itself from the Kachemak Bay Writers Conference and the Alaska Book Festival?

Dan: The North Words crew honors all those brave organizers who came before us. We are impressed by the energy committed to developing enduring writing communities in Alaska and northern Canada, and are eager to contribute to a sustainable frontier literature. After many sessions with the Sitka Symposium, which concluded a 25-year run in 2009, I was inspired to continue fostering relationships, conversation, and the powerful ideas that come from the convergence of remarkable people. Buckwheat loved the idea of gathering word wizards in Skagway, and taking them to new intellectual and experiential heights. No town can throw a party like Skagway; we know that faculty and participants will discover new worlds at this transformative event.

Buckwheat: The difference comes down to our location. We are a jumping-off place. Our living history permeates the Symposium. It’s even beyond the physical grandeur—literature translates a place like this through the human experience.

Midnight Runs to Wal-Mart and Finding the Right Writing Project

I am starting this, my final blog for the month of April, at midnight. I don’t normally write at night, but I just returned from a late night run to Wal-Mart and thought I’d give this a try.

I do, on occasion, shop late at night. All the parents know why. I can go alone. (Tonight’s midnight run was to buy last-minute birthday gifts for twin girls in MY twin’s first grade class.)  I’ve always liked getting out of the house at night (if I can muster the energy). I like the quiet and sense of freedom going out after dark brings. I especially like it here in Texas. I love the dark and warmth (two things you won’t find together in Alaska); the empty roads, the glow of the lights in the parking lot; the lack of crowds in the store.

Sad, but true. This is what my life has come to: Extolling the virtues of driving to the store late at night. I suppose truth be told, I’ve always liked the night, and probably many of my nights throughout the years have been spent driving to one place or the other. Most of the time, while there was always a destination in mind, the getting there was half the fun.

As a teenager, it was me and my friends trying to find some elusive and often even, nonexistent party. In my 20’s, we sought the most happening night spot; my 30’s I hunted for the perfect restaurant to meet friends, and finally, now as a parent, my road warrior days are past.

Thinking about it, going out at night is about being freed from my daily routine, which as a writer, is self-imposed and involves working at home. I love and loathe working at home. I like the convenience of walking into my office in my sweats. I like being able to take breaks and do things around the house. Once in awhile, I actually manage to get work done.

As I mentioned in my earlier blogs I am writing about Christa Brelsford, an American survivor of the Haiti earthquake [Editor's note:  Christa is an Alaskan]. I promised to write more about this project.  Christa, as some of you may recall, is the young woman who was in Haiti volunteering on a literacy project when the earthquake hit. She became trapped in the rubble and would eventually lose part of her right leg. She is a national rock and ice climbing champion. She is only 25.

It is this life change I hope to capture and illuminate; how she navigates her life from here on; overcoming such a life-changing event. Part of the story is Haiti itself, the earthquake, and Christa’s continued work to help Haiti.  A friend asked a very good question: “What makes her so special? What about all the others who lost limbs and are left behind in Haiti?”

“Well,” I said. “She is special by virtue of being an American.”

I went onto to explain that not being Haitian obviously meant she could leave the country to seek medical care, as most other Americans and other foreign nationals on the island did. But that’s the point of Christa agreeing to a book. It is her very ‘special-ness’ that Christa is using to do good.  The media discovered her in her hospital room in Miami and Christa became a tangible way to tell the story of the earthquake.

She agreed to talk to the media and to having a book written about her for one reason: To help Haitians left behind.  Almost immediately after returning to America for medical treatment, she started the organization: Christasangels.  She is going to donate her proceeds from the book to Christasangels.  She has already devoted her life to eradicating poverty through her PhD. Studies in “Sustainability.” She believes the world’s impoverished nations can be helped by building infrastructure. She was in Haiti in the first place to work on a retaining wall to stop flooding in a village.

“Stop,” my devil’s advocate friend wailed. “I get it.”

I am working on this project with my lifelong friend, Ginna Brelsford, who also is Christa’s aunt. Ginna approached me about doing this book. Without hesitating, I said “Yes!”

The first thing I do when I have an idea for a book is run the idea by my literary agent. I have heard the word ‘no,’ a lot over the years. I expected as much when I wrote her about Christa. Enthusiastically, she wrote right back: Yes.  My agent also wrote, “This is what you should be doing.”  (She was never too thrilled that I spent perhaps too much time writing for film. This made my film agent happy, though).

I have wanted a good nonfiction project to sink my narrative teeth into. I just haven’t found any thing since Johnny’s Girl that seemed to come together as well as this book.

Which means as a writer, I have purpose, a focus, and a renewed sense of self-worth. I need this as much as any writer, perhaps as much as I need to get out of the house once in awhile at night. Even if it is to go to Wal-mart.

In graduate writing school, a friend and fellow student once observed. “When the writing goes right, all goes right.”

Deb: 49 Writers weekly round-up

First off, let me say that we’ve got an amazing community of writers. You’re willing to pull on your overalls, roll up your sleeves, and plunge in to help with launch Alaska’s first-ever writing center. And though the building isn’t a done deal yet, we wanted to spend the first part of this week’s round-up filling you in on some details. One caveat: you must promise to read through to the rest of the news.

While it might look like a sudden development in our planning, we’ve zeroed in on this little house after exploring lots of options: Mountain View, mid-town, South Anchorage. We’ve been wading through zoning and square foot calculations and spreadsheets for some time. And we’ve also kept ourselves open to the idea that we don’t have to have a physical home to serve writers. Even if we do get to start up in a nice little spot, we want to maintain a broad presence, offering programs not only in various Anchorage locations but throughout the state.

What’s daunting, of course, is the money. We want to keep program costs down so they’re not out of reach for struggling writers. We want to run community service programs at no cost to participants. Grants and private donations are a big part of our overall funding plan, but wherever we can find ways to self-support, that’s what we need to do – which brings us back to this little house.

My backstory includes ten years of running a B & B, four years of running a vacation rental property, and twelve years as a real estate licensee. With the help of a no-interest start-up loan from one of our Directors, we can generate enough revenue through a guesthouse (in the writing center off-times) to cover all of the annual rent and a chunk of the utilities. And with a lease, we don’t have to fret over repairs or tie up big chunks of capital.

People say the first rule of real estate is “location, location,” and this place has that: great arts-minded West End neighbors; inlet, park, Coastal Trail two blocks away; decent parking on nearby streets (free meters during most of our program times); downtown proximity and visibility. Real estate’s close-second rule is that there’s no perfect property. We’d love something bigger, newer, and free. Parking’s better in midtown; there’s cool stuff happening in Mountain View and Spenard. But when we weigh all the research, this place stands well apart from the rest, especially with its income-generating potential.

So though it’s not a done deal – should get closure by early next week – we’re excited. Workshops, clinics, classes, writers in residence, meeting space, maybe even some limited studio space (lots more of that on the horizon at TAC’s Mountain View venture, where you’ll likely find us running some programs as well), space for book signings, readings, author events, and just a place to hang out – lots of possibilities for all of us to have a home base. But first, assuming our lease comes together, we’ll have a guesthouse to get up and running. I’ll be the booking coordinator and bookkeeper to start; Andromeda’s tracking on getting the physical space up to snuff. We have one fabulous volunteer who’ll play local host (translate: run interference, scrub toilet) for most of the summer. Here’s a run-down of the other help we could use for this all-volunteer effort:

• A set-up crew to clean, hang window coverings, haul furniture in early to mid-May. Minor fix-ups may be in order. Andromeda will organize a work day or two or three or four.

• A back-up local host, from possibly May 25-June 6 and June 11-15, when our regular host is out of town. Duties: carry cell phone for guest calls (should be minimal; we’ll use a lockbox so there’s no meet and greet); clean and change linens between guests. Bonus: during the 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. cleaning timeframe, you get free run of the place as your personal studio.

• Groundskeeper to take care of flowers and lawn – one or two hours per week, end of May through September

• Any sign painters out there? We’ll need at least one.

• Possible “book nook” coordinator – there’s room for authors to donate books that guests could browse through and buy – emailing, inventory, shelving, and light bookkeeping if this project materializes; one or two hours per week?

• Possible First Friday coordinator – nice porch for small book signings – several hours to set up for the summer and then a few hours each First Friday.

• Bookings Coordinator in training: Late summer, early fall – I’ll need to train to someone to take over so I can move on to other programs. Duties: answer emails and calls, maintain booking calendar, keep track of payments and deposit. Figure 3-5 hours per week; sometimes less.

Email debv@gci.net if you’re interested in volunteering for one or more of these tasks.  And for the multitude of other tasks and decision-making that go with the whole writing center effort, please be bold and specific about telling us how and at what level you'd like to be involved.  If you want to be part of the planning and decision-making, say so.  If there's a certain aspect of the center that piques your interest, or if you have a special skill we should tap, tell us that, too.  Tell us more than once if you need to. 

We know the hazards of trying to do too much.  We're moving into a new phase of delegating, but we're not using a "planning team"; that feels too exclusive.  Jeremy Patatky has volunteered to be our third Board member for initial 501c3 paperwork (thanks, Jeremy!); he has a lot of non-profit experience and certification and he’s been tracking on a writing center project here for a long time. From there we’ll move, over a period of several months, to a bit larger Board - boards are political animals, and we'll tread with care. Along the way we’ll be tapping advisors and all sorts of volunteers. We'll have to decide to do some things and forego others, and not all will be happy.  But we'll do our best to keep you informed (stay tuned through the blog!) and give you opportunities for input. 

Now, we need everyone’s creative energy for this one: a name. It’s for both writing and wayfaring (that might be the subtitle on the sign). For a vacation rental, it doesn’t have to have a name, but we’d like one for branding. 49-something might be nice, but the street number’s 415, and that could get confusing. L Street. West End. Something raven, which we like as a symbol of creativity? Novel-something, played off one former life as the Novel View bookshop? Let’s see your best brainstorming, via comments below. For now, we’re looking to name the house, not the whole writing center effort (though they could end up the same).

Now, other news. New authors looking to get a children's book published, note that First Book is a proud sponsor of the Cheerios® Spoonfuls of Stories® New Author Contest in 2010. The contest invites previously unpublished adult authors to submit their children's book manuscripts. This year, the contest launched March 15, 2010, with entries accepted through July 15, 2010. The winner will have their book reviewed for a potential book deal with Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, and Cheerios will provide cash prizes to the top three finalists.

It's always fun to follow the lives of former Alaskans, especially when they write about tasty and intriguing things. This week, food writer extraordinaire Kim Severson released her newest book: Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life (Riverhead). Michael Pollan blurbs, "Kim Severson has written a spicy, thoroughly delectable memoir about the cooks who changed her life. Her touch is light and humorous, yet by the end she has managed to get at something profound about the meanings of food in our lives.” Confirming her prominence in the foodie world, Severson will be on the Rachael Ray show April 23 (check her website for more details and local showtimes). Severson has been a staff writer for The New York Times since 2004. Previously, she spent six years writing about cooking and the culture of food for the San Francisco Chronicle. Before that, she had a seven-year stint as an editor and reporter at The Anchorage Daily News. Go Kim!

Congratulations also to Effigies, which made the 20 list of Salt Publishing bestsellers in the fiscal year, and to former Alaska writer Ann Chandonnet, who has had a poem accepted for the new anthology, Of a Certain Age: Voices of Experience, edited by Vicky Lettmann and Carol Roan. The anthology will officially be published by Holy Cow! Press in June, but is already available for purchase through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The theme of the anthology is expressions, jests, harangues and barbaric yawps from writers over 55. The book will debut with coordinated readings at 7 p.m., June 17, at The Loft in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the Gallery of the Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

In all the excitement, don’t forget our upcoming book club discussion of David Vann’s Legend of a Suicide on May 6.

Sometimes, opportunity knocks... but when do you listen?

Spent the day looking at real estate with Deb (who was, thank goodness, a realtor in her past life) and facing some very exciting but urgent, time-sensitive decisions.

Does this look like a little Alaska writing center to you? (Note that just a few yards to the left is Snow City Cafe, with great coffee and spillover space for special catered events. They have a liquor license, too...)

Does it look like a place where you'd like to do your next book launch, perhaps in conjunction with First Friday gallery tours that pull in hundreds of downtown visitors?

Does it look like a summer vacation rental that might also work for hosting the occasional visiting writer? (Picture the Coastal Trail just across the street and downhill.)

More to say, lots to ask our most loyal readers, but for now, I'll leave you with the photo and the cryptically described dream.

I won't be sleeping easily tonight...

Bows of Respect: A guest post by Shannon Polson

Shannon Huffman Polson is a native Alaskan who, along with her husband and son, splits her time between a cabin just outside Denali National Park and a home in Seattle. She manages the website The Ultima Thule () while working on nonfiction, a manuscript about a 2006 trip to the Arctic and essays about Alaska, the wilderness, family and faith.

All good writers know that reading is at least as much about reading as it is about writing. It is also, as I discovered on April 7 listening to Barry Lopez speak, about learning from great writers.

“When I go to a place, I attempt to be silent,” he said. “To listen to what the land is trying to say.” This comes as no surprise for anyone who has happened to soak in the language of Barry Lopez, speaking at the Benaroya recital hall as part of the Seattle Arts and Lectures series.

My husband Peter and I swapped Barry Lopez’s masterpiece Arctic Dreams back and forth while we base camped toward the headwaters of the Nigu last summer, and brought it with us backpacking from the Jago to the Aichilik and over to the Leffenwell Fork. Lopez’s sensitivity to the land, its creatures and its people in Arctic Dreams- and in his essays and other books- stole our breath as surely as the wild land over which we walked and kayaked.

"What I tell writers,” he said, “is that if you are going to write you must do two bows of respect- the first toward the material, and the second toward the reader…the reader relies on you to get it right, and to make it memorable.” At the reception following his talk, he continued: “I think of myself as a writer not as leading the reader, but rather walking behind her, showing her things to see. By the end of a good book, she will have completely forgotten me. I haven’t told her what to think, but have convinced her to ask questions, to draw her own conclusions.” In all of our efforts as writers, he exhorted us in the audience not to look for people to blame in the problems we see in the world, but to find a way to tell the stories, to help people see.

Lopez read from other people’s writing, including Alaskan writer Eva Saulitus, with a grace and humility that saturated his every word and suggestion. Lopez’s only reference to his own work was his recently published Home Ground, Language for an American Landscape, which he edited with his wife. “A writer must search for the right word in the context of the sentence and the paragraph, in the context of the work as a whole,” he said of language. Lopez expressed concern that the words of the land are disappearing, and there must be a place where they are written down and will be remembered, and perhaps relearned, and hopefully used. In the introduction to Home Ground, he writers: “If we could speak more accurately, more evocatively, more familiarly about the physical places we occupy, perhaps we could speak more penetratingly, more insightfully, more compassionately about the flaws in those various systems which, we regularly assert, we wish to address and make better.”

Fitting sentiments for Alaskan writers and all those who write about the land.

The Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny: A guest post by Kim Rich

The spring has left me struggling to preserve a sense of magic in our house. Two events caused the crisis: My daughter Mary lost yet another tooth, and Easter came.  Now seven, my girls are getting smarter and wiser about the broader world. This is both a good thing and a loss. With that awareness comes reasoning, and with that goes things like belief in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.

The past Christmas I was convinced the gig was up with Santa. The kids were asking way too many questions: “How Does Santa get into the house” (my girls are preoccupied, perhaps rightly, with the idea of strangers coming into our home in the middle of the night. Read on); “How does Santa’s sleigh fly?”; “Do the reindeers really fly?”; “How Does Santa get all the presents delivered?” And so on.

With each question, I managed to come up with an answer/comeback. For example, when wary of the different-looking Santa’s (“Look at his beard!” Kristan once exclaimed when we found yet another Santa at another mall), the children agreed with me that Santa used a variety/host of ‘fake’ Santas to make all the mall appearances. In fact, we even once ran into the ‘real’ Santa at one of our outings, and this confirmed his existence.

I wrestled with the idea of telling them. Was it really better for my kids to think someone was essentially breaking into our house in the middle of the night and that was OK? Not really. Their wariness of such an occurrence was heartening – they’re NOT inclined to let strangers in the house. This remains steadfast. Good.

I’ve always thought magical thinking was important to children’s development. A recent study I read about confirmed my suspicions. This particular study found that children who had active fantasy lives as toddlers and preschoolers do better in school later on.  This is probably true of children in developed nations. If you are a starving child, in say, Africa, you probably don’t spend a lot of time chasing make-believe dragons. There are sadly too many real-life dangers to deal with.

That aside, early on when I had kids I wondered how much of what I grew up with would be passed onto my children. Anyone who has read my book knows there is much about my childhood I’d just as soon not pass on. But the tradition of Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny were worth keeping.  Why? Because if for no other reason: It’s fun.

As it gets closer and to closer to coming to an end, I chronicled this issue in a series of Facebook posts titled: “The Texas Diaries: Magical Thinking meets the Age of Reason.”

First to nearly go? The Tooth fairy. When Mary lost her last tooth in March, she asked about this so-called tooth fairy. Once again, how it got in the house. “Oh, they’re very small,” her dad said. That seemed to be the end of it. Of course, things always got a bit dicey when the Tooth Fairy forgets to come by and doesn’t leave any money. We have elaborate scenarios to explain this. First, parents have to send an email alerting the Tooth Fairy that a tooth has come out. If you don’t get the notice off in time, the tooth fairy won’t come until the next night.

If I applied as much time writing as I do concocting stories to prop up and preserve the mysteries of childhood, I could have written something akin to “War and Peace.”  But remember my last post? Sitting still is not so much fun. Talking about the tooth fairy is.

Then real problems began to surface with the advent of the Easter season.  We attended a YMCA event here in Dallas where the children could get their pictures taken with the Easter Bunny. Seeing how obviously fake the Easter Bunny at the photo shoot looked, the girls concluded that the Easter Bunny, like Santa, must send out fakes to take care of photo ops. (I should note mine were the oldest children there; everybody else had babies and toddlers in their Sunday best). I cling to fantasy. So shoot me.

Later that week, while driving back from a birthday party, the girls started asking questions about the Easter bunny. Some were like the ones dealing with Santa: How does this giant rabbit get in our house?  As we drove on, it became increasingly clear that the girls were quite anxious at the prospect of this big bunny running through our house (I should mention we have a white, dwarf pet rabbit named Snowball, so the kids know real bunnies.)

“What happens if I run into him in the middle of the night?” Charlotte asked anxiously.

“What happens if dad gets up in the middle of the night?” asked Kristan.

‘You won’t,’ ‘He won’t,’ etc . . . soon the questions were coming faster and faster and I had trouble keeping up. And clearly I wasn’t very convincing. When we got home, the questions continued. I was just about to give up, figuring this bunny concept was now scaring the kids. Then I said: “Sometimes the bunny will leave the baskets at the front door. Would you like that?”

Indeed. Charlotte pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote this note: “Leave the stuff at the front door. Please. Thank you. Love, Charlotte, Kristan, Mary.”

Got it rabbit? Just do as the kid says and no one gets hurt! She taped the note to the outside of the front door. The rabbit complied.

Alas, I felt safe and secure in the knowledge I had preserved magical thinking in our house one more year. We were about to live happily ever after until Charlotte found the Wal-Mart receipt for the Easter candy on the kitchen counter. If this were a script I was writing, I would write the words: beat . . . beat . . as this sinks in.

The receipt on the counter, I might add, is the product of the recession. Dad/husband thinks I spend too much money when I go to the store. We’re tightening our belts. He thinks he can ‘help’ me by going over the receipts and seeing if he can spot some items we could have live without. You know, such as soap, bread, milk, flour, sugar . . .

Anyway, there it was and Charlotte reacted with much glee: “Mommy is the Easter bunny!!!”

You thought this post was going to end at the last sentence, just like my daughter’s belief in the Easter bunny. Well, never underestimate the power of quick thinking (because after all it is a skill I am honing when answering my husband’s questions regarding store receipts: “Ah, honey, the diamond bracelet is an investment.”).

“Oh, Charlotte, I was just afraid the Easter bunny wouldn’t be able to find our house and you guys wouldn’t get anything for Easter.” (Remember, we moved to Texas).

“Yeah,” said Dad, from the couch, where he usually can be found.

Oh. Thought Charlotte. “OK,” she said, giving a knowing smile. And while she has since talked about how mom bought some things and the bunny others, I wonder who’s trying to preserve the fantasy: Me for her; or her for me.

This got me thinking about my writing. Most of my writing life I have written nonfiction, except in screenplays. Narrative fiction scares me. After all, Tom Wolf (“The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” “Bonfire of the Vanities”) waited until he was 50 to write his first novel.

But maybe after all this effort directed at magical thinking, I might try my hand at some fiction.

Andromeda: On Transparency and the Writing Center Vision

When Deb and I started researching the viability of an Alaska writing center several months ago, we wanted to aim for thoroughness. From the beginning -- and always knowing these ideas would evolve as we get input from more Alaska writers, and learning all along the way -- we considered things like our starting rationale and possible approaches, a budget, a business plan, a mission statement, and some initial strategic planning, including where we might see this thing going in one, three, and five years.

We also started talking about values -- including concepts like transparency.

Have you ever attended a conference, or taken a class, and wondered how the writers who were invited to speak got invited -- and how the teachers who were teaching got hired? Have you ever heard rumbles of some new literary opportunity unfolding, but felt there was no way to break into the process -- or even get an update about what was being planned?

Lack of transparency usually isn't a conspiracy. It's just a lack of communications.

But we're pretty lucky, having this blog. You heard us starting to ask about a writing center last December. You may know that Deb and I began to do our research, earnestly, in early 2010. You may have followed our research as it continued over the last few weeks. And if you're as excited as we are, you'll not only keep reading, but you'll also add your voice -- especially in May, when we run a survey about a future Alaska writing center. We'll be adding a newsletter to interested parties, updating you on fundraising strategies, our incorporation as a nonprofit, and other events as they unfold.

How does transparency continue to be a value in existing writing centers? Consider the simple proposal process that some centers and conferences use when they are hiring presenters or instructors. If a writer wants to give a talk or teach a class, he/she makes a proposal following basic, fair guidelines. It's not about who you know, or if the organizers happen to think of you in a given year, or if you've worked your way into the clique. There is a way in -- always -- for everyone who has something to contribute. (Some centers do have standards about education or level of publication, but some don't -- and even the strictest center has much more flexible standards than academia allows.) The final hiring is still selective, of course, but it's neither apparently random nor obscure. We think that's a great idea.

Do you have other ideas or values that belong at the top of a writing center priority list?

Deb: 49 Writers Weekly Round-Up

Not much news from around the state this week, but we've got plenty right here at 49 Writers. First, note that our next online book club discussion, featuring David Vann's Legend of a Suicide, will be held on Thursday, May 6 from 6 - 8 p.m., live with the author. If you've somehow missed the surge of interest in Vann and his book, which has been dubbed "an American classic" (The Sunday Times) by "a truly great writer" (The Irish Sunday Independent) in the tradition of Cormac McCarthy and Hemingway, check out our April 4 post and related links.

Here at the blog, we've got scads of great guest posts lined up, and we're always eager for more. If you've submitted - don't fear, we've got yours queued up to post. In the next several weeks, look for guest posts by Shannon Polson, Rich Chiappone, Sandra Kleven, and John Morgan, as well as a slew of great 4.9 Things posts about what our readers have learned from writing. Look, too, for interviews with Dan Henry and Buckwheat on the North Words Writers Symposium and with Judy Ferri on the Alaska State Literacy Association. In short, keep reading!

As you know, Andromeda and I have been hard at work, at a pace that eclipses most part-time employment, devising strategies to engage Alaska's writers and readers in dialogue about a statewide writing center, all while building and maintaining core writing center-type activities: workshops, consulting, program planning, and this blog. Look for a newsletter and survey in the months to come, as well as a shift in our organizational status to a 501c3 non-profit. In a few weeks we'll also travel across Kachemak Bay to explore options for a writers' retreat. If you have thoughts about what you'd like in a retreat, or on any other possible writing center functions, leave a comment at the end of this post, or email me at debv@gci.net.

Congratulations to Alaska writer Sandra Kleven, who has with thanks to David Tarr added a recording of Holy Land to the book's website. Years in coming, the recording is a dramatic monologue spoken by actor Michael Bricker, from the Y-K Delta region. Find it by clicking on the Holy Land book cover (scroll down) on the 49Writers page.

The Ultima Thule, Adventures in America’s Northernmost Lands, a website and anthology dedicated to education about and preservation of Alaska’s public lands in the Arctic, reminds us of their ongoing call for submissions. The Ultima Thule will also showcase selected photography and multi-media, as well as representation of artwork in other media. All artists submitting work which is accepted will be featured on the Artists’ Bio page. Previously published work is welcome. They are developing plans to publish selected submissions as a print anthology within the next two years. Send your submission (short submissions welcome, or essays up to 5,000 words, or ten photographs or other media images) along with a short bio and picture, to Shannon Polson at ps@polsons.com.

A writer from Wrangell/Puerto Rico on the Alaska Writing Center

We asked lurkers to step forward, and here's one of several who did: Vivian Faith Prescott, an Alaskan MFA poet writing to us from Puerto Rico. Before reading Vivian's post, which arrived via email, I figured some folks refrained from commenting out of shyness. Now I'm thinking that perhaps a 'comment' is simply too limiting for what many readers have to say. But I'll let Vivian take it from there, and encourage others to join in with comments or blogposts of their own.

I'm a poet. There, I said it. I started writing poetry in the 6th grade. By the time I was in middle and high school I was known for being a poet (I was known for being the 'wolfie' mascot, too, where I dressed in fuzzy red/white suit with wolfprints on my butt). I used to get paid five and ten dollars per poem to write poems for love struck teens. I was published by the time I was fifteen. I thought that being a poet was going to give me a great life. Yes, it has, but it's also been a struggle to participate in Alaska's writing community since I live in Southeastern Alaska. Wrangell isn't typically noted for its literary scene. I got tired of being an obituary poet. But when I moved to Sitka, I saw other possibilities: Islands Institute, the Monthly Grind and now the Larkspur Cafe.

The introduction of UAA's MFA really boosted my literary connections throughout Alaska. Although I have a Ph.D. in Cross Cultural Studies, I wanted to get the elusive MFA (elusive for me). When you live in small isolated villages/towns your whole life, there isn't much opportunity to be choosy about your college program. I took many of the only courses available via distance. At the time I started college there was no low-residency MFA. So when UAA developed their MFA emphasizing, "the literary approach to exploring and redefining relationships between people and place...," I knew the program was right for me.

But it took my husband, who's also a poet, to convince me to apply to the program with him. I was hesitant at first, but the valuable connections and relationships with other writers and faculty have proved invaluable. I worked with poet Zack Rogow; now with Derick Burleson. I am in awe. Plus, what I learned about poetry at UAA has led me to my first book contract and possibly a second poetry book. Yes, I've been working on three poetry manuscripts during the MFA. During this MFA I'm also working on a collection of short stories inspired by a UAA MFA mentor, Alaska writer laureate Nancy Lord—may the salmon gods bless her. And I wrote and finished a middle grade fantasy novel; the book is being considered by agents as I write this....I've finished a rough draft Y/A novel, plus I'm in a revising and consulting phase of my memoir. Yikes! Now I have to write a thesis. No problem.

And the low-residency thing really works. My husband was deployed on active duty to Kuwait as a medical officer during the first year of the MFA. He was able to continue writing and submitting his work to his mentor. And UAA worked with him to re-arrange his program to make up for his missed residency hours. Times sure have changed; a low-residency MFA student writing from a war-zone is pretty unique. We would Skype each other and talk poetry.

Also the community service aspect of UAA's MFA intrigued me. Dr. David Stevenson, our MFA director, explained to us—actually, I think he insisted—that our practicum during the second year should be 'community oriented', something that gives back to the community. So, my husband and I, both poets, chose to start a writers group at the Borinquen U.S. C. G. air station in Puerto Rico where he's stationed temporarily with the U.S. Coast Guard.

In my opinion, Alaska's literary scene should support a bridge between the smaller towns and villages and the larger cities. Maybe pairing mentor and beginning writer. Or just encouraging a cultural/writers exchange. The key is communication between the larger towns and the smaller towns and finding the contacts in those places. Not all of us in small towns can afford to travel to Anchorage for a writer's reading/presentation, but we can be there live via the internet. Let's think about that form of interconnection: this winter, fellow poet/MFA student Sandy Kleven connected writers on a live blog at Alaska 49 Writers. I was able to participate from Puerto Rico. Perhaps a cafe in Wrangell with three writers present could link to a big event at the new writing center in Anchorage. We writers should support this venture in any way that we can.

Andromeda: From the million-dollar Loft to the basement-based CityLit, models abound

On my trip last week to Seattle and Denver, I had a great time meeting directors of many Lower 48 Writing Centers. I also discovered that these centers have their own combined organizational identity as part of the "WC & C" (Writing Centers and Conferences) component of the 34,000-writer strong "AWP" (Association of Writers and Writing Programs). The WC & C is a great source for 49writers to tap into, and we'll keep that connection growing.

Meanwhile, forgive the acronyms, and let me highlight two specific writing centers that may inspire some thinking about what an Alaska writing center could become.

At the high-end, we have the Loft, based in Minneapolis. Founded in 1975, this center is the nation's oldest and largest. With a budget of $2 million a year, it serves thousands of writers, via a wide range of multi-genre writing classes, and engages thousands more writers in readings and other events. The Loft also produces publications, sponsors competitions, rents out studio space, and supports writers and readers in so many ways you could peruse their website for several hours and still not know all that they do.

Now, Minneapolis is much bigger than Anchorage, but I find it amazing and inspiring nonetheless that our nation's most vibrant literary organization is centered in the land of Garrison Keillor, rather than, say, Manhattan. Equally surprising is the humble nature of the Loft's origins. The center started in a room over a bookstore, where a poet began to offer writing workshops. That was 1974. Unable to continue to afford the rental cost of the room, the poet and friends decided to form a club -- which became a nonprofit the next year. At their first fundraiser, the little group sold 100 memberships at $15 a person. Over the years, there would be many more fundraisers, many physical moves to various modest facilities, with countless illustrious writers on-board for the ride.

But the Loft is only one model of what a writing center can be. Let me tell you about one newbie organization with a less-than-$100,000 budget, and no permanent facility at all. (A center-less writing center, as it were.) CityLit of Baltimore also serves writers and readers, and sponsors innovative programming -- include four 'anchor' programs: a literary festival, year-round writers' workshops, and two youth programs. The six-year-old nonprofit is run out of the basement of its founder, Gregg Wilhelm, with the help of an intern, volunteers, and a very active board.

Now, I don't know about you, but for me, it's one thing to read about an organization on the web, and another to meet its founders or current staff in-person. Face to face, you sense the energy, the organizational pride, and the passion for literature and the arts that makes these people tick. But you also see that they're just people. In the case of founders, they saw a need, or they had an idea, and they ran with it.

Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting both The Loft's Executive Director, Jocelyn Hale, and CityLit's Gregg Wilhelm. Here are just a few tips they had for 49writers and a future Alaska writing center:

From Jocelyn:
Beware "Death by Opportunity." You can't take on every possible project in the beginning, or you'll weaken your organization. Focus on strengths (for example, offering great writing workshops) and build slowly.

Build a brand from the very beginning and trademark your name.

Do everything online, from the beginning -- for example, billing for memberships.

By the way, Jocelyn added (kindly) that we're lucky to be young and new to the world of writing centers. Older centers have had a harder time, in some cases, adapting to the world of blogging, social media, and so on. Ideally, a start-up can innovate with greater ease.

From Gregg:
Start a strong database that tracks all members, participants, and so on -- don't wait until you're several years old to do this. (He described how his works and how it relates to his newly designed website.)

Don't forget why you're doing this -- to offer exciting and innovative programming. CityLit has received recognition for its exciting lit festival from its first year, and more recently, it added a "Lit's Not Dead" rock-and-read concert for ages 18-34 as a way to encourage more reading in that demographic.

Jocelyn and Gregg had much more to say, of course. But the most important thing they both said was: "Keep in touch." Alaskans should know that there are great organizational connections out there, including nonprofit experts and entrepreneurial whizzes who don't mind sharing what they know. All we have to do is ask.

Deb: Big State, Big Vision

Writing Center? Again? Don’t worry, dear readers – we won’t blog-beat this drum forever. But at this point in our planning, Andromeda and I are devoting a couple of weeks (this being the second of those) to engaging our readers in the excitement of pulling together programming and instruction for writers from throughout Alaska. From the beginning of our 49 Writers venture, we’ve committed ourselves to being inclusive, which means we don’t want to get very far in our scheming and dreaming before making the broadest possible reach to include Alaska’s writers, an effort that begins with these blog posts.

If you’ve hung around here for any length of time, you know that neither Andromeda nor I need another project. We’re up to our writerly necks in blogging, instructing, and creating new books. But this Alaska Writing Center idea – our working title is 49: The Alaska Writing Center – grabbed us hard. Like many of you, we’re mostly self-instructed as writers. Through programming and outreach, we’d love to see support for creative writers from throughout Alaska at all stages of their development while building an audience for Alaska literature.

My road to publication began with a short writer’s conference Outside followed by a short Teacher as Writer workshop sponsored by the Alaska Writing Consortium. But trips Outside are expensive, and by design, AWC workshops are available to only teachers and public school students. Alaska’s emerging and established writers deserve better than hit-and-miss when it comes to honing their craft and getting their work to market. So Andromeda and I began a program of writing workshops. Motivated students, content that’s fun and challenging to prepare, and no unwieldy institutional requirements to wrestle – what teacher/writer wouldn’t love doing this? We’ve enjoyed a fabulous response, which tells us we’re meeting a need.

We could be content with writing and teaching and blogging in Anchorage. But I want more. My desire has little to do with money (ha!) or recognition (double ha!). It comes from something that snuck into my soul back in 1979 when I landed in the Yup’ik village of Nunapitchuk, something that rooted in my emotional core and grew as I moved to the villages of Tuluksak and Akiachak. As a writer, I’m at a sorry loss to explain it.

Someday I’ll shove aside other projects and devote a book to trying to sort it all out. All I know now is that it has something to do with people like Maggie, who taught me to cut fish and shared her steam bath with me – she must have noticed sponge baths weren’t doing the trick. And the Alexies, who showed such tenderness to my firstborn, convinced the soul of their beloved A’pa had been reborn in him. And Eliza, who watched that little boy like one of her own while I went off to teach, and who helped me stitch the tiny fur parka that hangs in my closet, waiting for the day when I can pass it on to that boy’s first child.

These are the people I consider, with a catch in my voice, when I speak of a statewide effort to encourage writers. Against all odds, they’ve held fast to their culture. They’ve suffered watching their children grow up between worlds, without self-esteem. I’m no Pollyanna, but I’ve seen the way writing helps people discover a sense of themselves. I want that for all Alaskans, not just those in Anchorage.

To my knowledge, none of the wonderful writing centers Outside attempt to serve a whole state. We’d be the first. But I believe it’s essential to launch with a big vision, before the stories of people like Maggie, the Alexies, and Eliza are lost. Yes, there’s the little problem of funding far-flung programs. But we’re dialoguing with donors, movers, and shakers who share our passion. Are you one?

Desk cats, writing, and a sick kid: A guest post by Kim Rich

I have been told I should start a blog. See above title to know why I haven’t so far: Domestic bliss. Or not.

As I mentioned in my earlier blog, I have three seven year-old daughters. That means I don’t have much of a life, outside of being mom to three seven year-old daughters.

Did I mention I have three daughters? I used to have three babies and that made me something of a circus attraction any time I went any where. I thought that phase was hard. Then they were labor intensive – diapers, feedings, washing, dressing. Now, they’re emotionally intensive. Now, they talk back. Say no. Balk. Pout. Refuse to get in the car; refuse to get in their car seat; say one thing, then do another, make big messes . . . wait, I think I just described my husband. Oh, never mind.

The good news is they are in school. God bless the parents who homeschool. Yes, in truth, I hated putting my kids in school. I couldn’t imagine a day apart from them. I longed to volunteer ALL day in their classes. I missed them like crazy. Then an amazing thing happened – I rediscovered my work.

I had written all along when they were small, mostly during naps or when I had hired help. Now, I had what seemed an endless stream of hours to write. Now, don’t get me wrong, the house does not pick up itself, I have always taught college (but mostly night classes) and have done hired editing. But it seemed like it had been forever since I had real time to write.

What does one do when they are suddenly given what seems all the time in the world to do the one thing they love to do more than anything else? You got it. Nap.

Or do laundry. Brush the cat. The dog. Sort mail. Call somebody.

When I was in graduate school, the author and screenwriter Richard Price (“Clockers” “Sea of Love” “The Wire” ) came to teach a workshop. He began by talking about getting a writing fellowship at Stanford. It was a dream come true. He only had to attend one workshop a week and then had the rest of the time write. Imagine the possibilities!

So what did he do? He promptly developed a drug habit. Cocaine. I think he chose this drug because when you have all the time in the world to write, all you really want to do is take a nap.

It was a few years ago. Nowadays, he probably would have become addicted to Starbucks. Coffee is pretty good for keeping one awake, especially if you’ve paid a lot of money for it.

The fact is I prefer having less time to write. Just like I like tighter deadlines – both tend to keep me upright in my chair. I am not alone. The author Philip Roth (Goodbye, Columbus, American Pastoral) also came to teach at my graduate school.  We all gathered in a large room to hear him speak. He asked if anyone had questions. One student asked: “What’s your work routine?”

I about fell over from embarrassment. One of America’s – the world’s – greatest living writers and you want to know how he works? No sarcasm intended. What idiot asks such a question?!

Roth peered over the rim of his glasses. “You want to know what I do?” he asked. The room fell silent. Oh, God, we’ve made him mad.  He leaned back, sighed, then said, “Well . . ."  He proceeded to answer the question. And this, in so many words, is what he said:  I get to my office at 9 in the morning and I do whatever ‘it takes’ to get to 2 p.m. and get out of there.

He explained that he wrote maybe a couple of hours, if he had to, then talked on the phone, faxed stuff around, etc . . . In other words, sitting at his desk was about the last thing he wanted to do, though he, like the rest of us writers, needs to.  Or as my good friend and writer Mike Doogan once told me: Writing is about sitting in a chair and staying there.

So, here I am in my chair, writing this blog that I hope will warm me up to continue work on the book about Christa Brelsford. But I have two problems: one is the cat, Simba, a large orange tabby keeps jumping on my desk and walking across my keyboard. My other problem is my oasis of time and peace and serenity has been disrupted by the presence of a sick, but not deathly-ill, kid home from school. She has a cold and a lot of congestion. This means she’s not bedridden, but not well enough to go to school. This means that she wants to roller blade around the house. This also means she has me saying ‘no’ a lot and she is not listening to me. At the moment she’s bugging the cat, which is about to jump down from the window ledge back onto my keyboard.

All of which means, it might be time to take a nap.

Andromeda: Lurkers, we love you, and...

From the Portland airport, I'm thinking back on three incredible days at AWP, the most stimulating writing conference I've ever attended, and also thinking about how many interesting Alaskans were there. Of the many I enjoyed meeting, or re-meeting, I'm thinking most about a gaggle of University of Alaska Anchorage MFA students who all said the same thing. They read 49writers. They appreciate it. They use it. Someday, they might like to contribute to the blog. But in the meanwhile, they don't comment.

I'm not going to "out" anyone here, though I will attempt some flattery. We've got a good pool of talent building in the UAA MFA program, people writing about interesting things from a range of interesting backgrounds (and even winning some top prizes for their work). It's energy we need in our young state, which is seeing quick development in the literary arts this decade.

In the meanwhile, we have some great opportunities on the horizon. But we need to meet each other. We need to hear from each other.

If you're an MFA student so busy with your thesis, among other things, that you can scarcely breathe, much less imagine your future five years from now, I urge you to take at least one breath in the next month and introduce yourself. Tell us what you write. Tell us what you want the Alaska literary scene to become. Weigh in on the Alaska writing center idea -- or about anything else. You may or may not actually live in the state, but through your program, you're an Alaska writer, too.

P.S. This applies to all of our other favorite categories of literary lurkers as well...

P.P.S. If you're too shy to comment, at least send me (at lax AT alaska.net) your name, city, and email so we can add you to our email list for future news updates about writing center and 49writers developments.

Deb: 49 Writers weekly round-up

The big news this week comes from Seattle and Denver, where Andromeda's doing all sorts of research and making connections for what we hope to grow into an Alaska Writing Center.  More about that next week.  For now, back to Alaska.

Enrollment is open for this year's Changing Landscapes course in McCarthy, Alaska. Changing Landscapes is a Wrangell Mountains Center natural history course for educators, guides, interpreters, and anyone curious about the natural world. On June 4-6, the program will feature days on the trail, enjoying the dynamic environment of the McCarthy area as a classroom. Evenings will be spent engaging in insightful, indoor discussion in the Wrangell Mountains Center's historic facilities.  Fees are $170/person before April 23rd, $235 thereafter. Last day to register is May 15, 2010. WMC members receive an additional 10% discount. Continuing education credits (ED 580) are available through Prince William Sounds Community College for a $25 administrative fee.  To register or learn more: contact the Wrangell Mountains Center at info@wrangells.org or calling 907.244.7717.

Writers can't live by words alone, so if you're in the Homer area this summer, check out Alaska author and acclaimed chef Kirsten Dixon's weekend cooking classes at the Tutka Bay Lodge, across Kachemak Bay from Homer.  Back from a recent culinary tour of Morocco, Kirsten and daughter Mandy have lots of techniques and recipes to share.  And stay tuned for updates on a possible 49 Writers retreat at Tutka Bay, possibly this September.

Lots of great events coming up at the UAA Bookstore, starting on April 12 from 5 - 7 p.m. when Ken Tape presents The Changing Arctic Landscape, published by University of Alaska Press. In the book, Tape documents changes in Alaska landscapes by pairing decades-old photos of the arctic landscape of Alaska with photos of the same scenes taken in the present. Each section includes interviews with scientists who have spent decades working in Alaska for the United States Geological Survey. Ken Tape was raised in Fairbanks, has a master's degree in geology from UAF and is currently finishing his PhD in biology.

On Monday, April 19 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Patricia Wade presents ancient Ya Ne Dah Ah legends and her latest book Luk'ae; and playwright Sarah Hurst presents Alaska History Narrated by Benny Benson, which is being turned into a graphic novel by a team of Alaskan artists.  The book, called "A Native Lad: Benny Benson Tells Alaska's Story," features Dimi Macheras as one of the illustrators.

And on April 15 at 7:30 pm at Wendy Williamson Auditorium, Jean Twenge, Ph.D. presents, The Narcissism Epidemic and How It's Spreading Through Our Culture.  Dr. Twenge is author of The Narcissism Epidemic and the book Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before. The event is sponsored by Undergraduate Research & Discovery Symposium/University Honors College,and The Behavioral Sciences Conference of the North/CAS Psychology Department.

From Slush Pile Reader in San Francisco, Joann Denize writes to tell us about their social community for readers and writers from all over the world.  Authors are welcome to submit their manuscripts.  Readers read from submissions, comment and vote for their favorites. She says Slush Pile Reader will then publish the most popular manuscript(s).  Apart from the selection process, Joann says Slush Pile Reader works like any traditional publisher - editing, distributing and marketing selected books. As such, she says there are no fees or costs involved for the authors.  Has anyone checked this out yet?  Johanna says she invites questions johanna@slushpilereader.com.

Confused about the Google Book Settlement? I was, until reading this summary brought to my attention by a fellow writer: http://io9.com/5501426/5-ways-the-google-book-settlement-will-change-the-future-of-reading  Complicated, yes, but I think now I've got the jist of it.

Andromeda: Writing Center Lessons - It's Not About the House

Hugo House, Seattle's wonderful nonprofit writing center (est. 1997), is located in a sprawling, 16,206 square-foot, Victorian house facing a green park. There are classrooms with charming names -- "Winslow" and "Alice." There is a world-class 'zine archive and a cafe-cabaret space, perfect for the monthly open-mic night that took place last night, the evening of my Seattle arrival (when I also attended an evening prose master class, in order to soak up some of the instructional atmosphere). It is enough to inspire envy in anyone who dreams of founding a physically-sited writing center.

But upon meeting today with some great staff -- including Program Director Alix Wilber and Executive Director Sue Joerger -- I was quickly reminded: It's not about the house.

It is tempting, when dreaming up a nonprofit, to long for a permanent, charismatic, historic, ideal space. Instead, Joerger told me: think cheap, keep costs low, and focus on programming, programming, programming (meaning, in this case, writing classes and events). "You can make a virtue out of a crappy space," she said. Wilber further reminded me that writers come not to look at the house, but to consider their own "internal landscapes." Good points, all.

The staff had lots of other great tips for a would-be writing center: Focus on what you do best. Don't get distracted by too many sideline activities or programs that don't fit your mission. Be aware of how difficult it is to raise money for operations costs (it's easier to raise money for programs, and easiest of all to raise money for kids' programs, but few orgs or people want to give money to the executive director of a nonprofit who keeps the lights on and the website updated and the whole show running).

Wilber, Joerger, and others were candid with cautionary tales and examples of how an organization like theirs evolves over time; challenges aside, they've got a great track record and they deliver lots of writing instruction -- about 25 to 30 classes per quarter. Even with their big house as a base, they have a hard time having enough space for classes.

We talked instructor pay and class pricing, how to pick nonprofit board members and why it's great we already have a happenin' blog (cha-ching!), writers-in-residence programs and youth scholarships, the challenge of delivering programs to prisons and the notion of orienting events around a fall-to-spring "literary season," much as theater and dance are presented. (That would make sense in Alaska, where summer is not the best time to schedule most public events).

I filled 10 notebook pages. I collected names and addresses. I felt like I left with possible future friends -- friends that just maybe could be talked into having an ongoing interest in Alaska, their enchanting, northern neighbor. (Writer or administrator exchange program, anyone?)

A long walk to Pike Place, a quick Chinese meal spent staring at my notes, and back to my hotel in the Queen Anne neighborhood not far from the Space Needle. (Seattle is fun -- I'm not complaining.) Tomorrow, I leave for Denver, where I'll meet with more writing center folks, and pass on what I learn.