Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Our entire 49 writers “family” wishes you a great new year – with lots of ways to reach those writing goals we know you’re considering as you write your 2011 resolutions. If this is your year to learn and grow, take a class with us: from Storytelling on Jan. 9, to Stirring Words, a food-writing course, starting Jan. 22, to a very special 8-week Fiction Workshop starting Feb. 17, we have lots to tempt you into greater productivity and creativity. If this is your year to connect with other writers, consider becoming a member. If this is your year to become a more active part of this blog, send a guest-post anytime! If this is your year to get out of the house, we welcome you to two new series of events we’re launching in January. CROSSCURRENTS, an onstage conversation series, and GATHERINGS, a salon-style opportunity for members and volunteers to gather in a more intimate setting to discuss craft issues and the writing life. More event details below.

If you are a member already, start thinking about what writing resolutions you might like to share at our upcoming GATHERING in Anchorage on January 14, "Resolve to Write." Epicenter's Kent Sturgis and authors Don Rearden and Bill Streever will be among the special guests. Official invitations to members and volunteers will be on their way soon. Would you like to host your own satellite version of this event? Contact Deb.

Another date to mark on your calendar: Jan. 25 at 7 p.m., when we'll be inaugurating the first event in our new CROSSCURRENTS conversation series: "Environmental Writing and Activism." Join Alaska writers Nancy Lord, Marybeth Holleman, and Charles Wohlforth for an onstage conversation about environmental writing, writing as a form of activism, and their experiences as writers concerned with global oil-reliance and climate change. Wohlforth will moderate this lively discussion with reference to Lord's new book, Early Warming: Crisis and Response from the Climate-Changed North and the paperback release of Holleman's The Heart of the Sound: Paradise Found and Nearly Lost. A question and answer session and book-signing will follow. Location: Out North on 3800 Debarr Rd., Anchorage.

Next Friday, Jan. 7, from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m, for the first 49 Writers First Friday signing of 2011, Kaylene Johnson will sign her books at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art, 427 D. St. in Anchorage.

Kaylene Johnson is a long-time Alaskan who lives in Eagle River, Alaska. She has written several books about Alaska including A Tender Distance: Adventures Raising My Sons in Alaska; Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned the Political Establishment Upside Down, Portrait of the Alaska Railroad and Trails Across Time: History of an Alaska Mountain Corridor. Her award winning articles have appeared in Alaska magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Spirit magazine, Parish Teacher and other publications. She holds a BA from Vermont College and an MFA in Writing from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky.

There will be a 49 Writers Resolve to Write Event in Juneau on Friday, January 14th from 6:30 - 7:30 pm at the Rookery Cafe downtown at 111 Seward St. Grace Elliott and Therese Harvey will cohost.

The Alaska Writers Guild's monthly meeting will take place on Tuesday, January 18, 2011, 7 p.m. at The Wilda Marston Theater at the Loussac Library. The speaker will be Michael Catoggio, Longtime Local Librarian, on The History of E-Books; Pros and Cons, Ways and Means of eBook Publication.

On Thursday, January 27, 2011, there will be a Social Media Seminar with Sherrie Simmonds and Aliza Sherman from the AK Professional Communicators Association It will take place at Elim Café, 561 West Dimond Boulevard (Dimond and Arctic), Anchorage.
12–1 p.m. – Lunch and networking.
1–4 p.m. – Seminar
January 19 – Deadline for registration via PayPal: $50 members, $75 non-members
Late registration and/or payment at the door: $60 members, $85 non-members (More detailed information soon at http://www.akprocom.org

Cinthia Ritchie of Seward was awarded a Hedgebrook Residency to work on her second novel, about death, miscarriage and dogs, in no particular order. She has a trail running, reading and writing blog: http://www.ahahalaska.blogspot.com

Andromeda/Your Turn: Resolution Time

This morning, I'm trying to help my husband and daughter get out the door on their first winter camping trip, complicated by the recent announcement of a high-wind advisory -- and complicated even before that by the fact that they are camping, well, in winter. That was the point, of course (daughter's school project; husband involved involuntarily). Let's just say I'm not envious of them.

But to be fair, one of the pleasures of winter camping, I've been told, is that once you're all properly set up, in your bag/tent or snow shelter, you're not all that cold. One's imagination of what it will be like is worse than reality. (Again, one hopes. Please, Turnagain Arm winds, don't shred their tent tonight.)

And isn't that how so many aspects of the writing life are as well? You moan and groan about getting started, stalling in every way possible, but once your mind makes a connection with the story, you're rolling. It's actually pretty warm and comfortable inside that story, novel, or memoir you're creating.

Yesterday, to celebrate my birthday, I did something I'd been avoiding all year: I cleaned my desk. (Pathetic, I know; I also made my two kids tackle the school/family room next to my desk.) There were piles that had been haunting me since dip-netting season -- and well before that. The surprise wasn't how long it took. The surprise was how little time it took. (So why did I put it off this long?!) My kids were just as pleased with the results of their guilt-enforced cleaning.

Desk clean, I've got one less resolution to add to my New Year's List. But there are plenty more -- always. You've probably heard we're having a salon-style "Resolve to Write" potluck event on Jan 14 at 6 pm for members (not too late to join) and volunteers.

Whether or not you're attending that event or a satellite version somewhere else in Alaska, please feel free to announce some of your resolutions here.

I'll get the ball rolling with a little one: I resolve to update or re-fashion my author website. (About time -- even the bio is so out of date I wince every time I think about it.)

And you?

Andromeda/Your Turn: AWP, Yea or Nay?

Anyone going to the AWP (The Association of Writers and Writing Programs) Conference, Feb 2-5, in Washington D.C.?

I'm dedicating today's post to AWP because I figure other Alaska writers, especially ones without a strong university affiliation, may be as unfamiliar with the conference as I was before last year, when I first attended the Denver conference. I'd had friends urge me to go several years running, but I misunderstood the conference's themes. I thought it was all about academia -- professors talking to other professors about writing within academia's walls. Yes, there are indeed panels on pedagogy, as well as an enormous bookfair that demonstrates how many literary journals and small presses are still joyfully cranking out the printed page. But it's waaaay bigger than that.

Picture something like 6,000 participants (rough estimate) wandering several hotel floors, choosing from between about twenty different panels/seminars each 75-minute time block. The printed schedule alone runs about 50 pages. Typical seminar titles: "Ripping More Than a Bodice: Historical Fiction as Inquiry." "Seriously Funny." "Status Update: The Personal Essay in the Age of Facebook." "Undivided: Poet as Public Citizen..." There is no way to attend it all. In fact, there's no way to attend more than about five percent. But that embarrassment of riches is part of what makes the craft-conscious conference such a good deal.

Alaskans will be giving some of these talks. On Thursday from noon to 1:15 pm, Nancy Lord and Sherry Simpson will be on the panel "Imagining Ourselves: The Narrative Stance in Memoir." On Friday from 10:30 to 11:45 am, I'll be on the panel, "How to start a literary center and thrive through the decades." Our 49 writers friend, David Vann, will be doing a reading with other AWP award winners on Friday at 1:30. Out in the bustle of the Bookfair, I expect to spot Ken Waldman -- and no doubt many other Alaskan writers and independent publishers as well. Many, many U of A writers and teachers (Peggy Shumaker, David Stevenson, Kathy Tarr, lots of MFA students) were at the Denver conference, and I expect many of them will be in D.C. as well.

Are you going? Speaking? Selling? Let us know.

And if you can't go this year, the 2012 conference takes place in Chicago.

4.9 things writing teaches: a guest post by Cherie Stihler

Half of what I say is not as good as the other seventy percent I edit out.


Always save another draft.

Nope, And it will never be perfect. It is due. Food gets done.

Make more tea, but turn the email OFF.

If it were not for deadlines, I would never complete anyth......

Children's author Chérie Stihler has made Fairbanks her home since 1996. She is proud to be an elementary educator, and she also serves as the Regional Advisor for SCBWI Alaska as well as a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

Poetry and History: A Guest Post by Tom Sexton

I began these posts by mentioning that I could see Campobello Island, New Brunswick where Franklin Delano Roosevelt had his summer home across a narrow channel of water, Eastern Passage, from Eastport, Maine where I’m spending the winter while I finish a collection of poems about growing up in Lowell, Massachusetts. The only thing the two places have in common is that they are former mill towns, one sardine and the other cotton, and they are both rich in Euro-American history and the tragic history of Native Americans. There is a postage stamp sized Passamaquoddy Reservation on the road into Eastport, a road that splits the reservation in two. There are soldiers who fought in every war beginning with the revolution buried in the cemetery and classic New England churches. It’s a very welcoming place for a poet who is interested in history.

At one time poems about history and historical figures were common and admired, but not so much today. Here is one of my poems based on an historical event. The Millerites in the poem were a 19th century American Christian sect that formed out of the Second Great Awakening. William Miller, a Baptist preacher, believed that by studying the prophecies in the book of Daniel he had determined that Christ would return to earth on October 22, 1844.

A Harvard Millerite Ascends

-Harvard, Mass. 1844

When the fateful day was about to dawn,
the day the preacher’s calculations promised
Christ’s return, his animals were left to wander
the fields. Nothing of this world would be missed.
He regretted only that he lived in a valley
and would not be among the first taken up
and purified. His bible was all he carried
to the roof. The promised return filled his cup.

The preacher had told him to wear a white
robe and he did. He watched the stars fade
and began to weep. What of the comet’s flight
at noon that promised Judgment Day?
He stood shivering in his dew-soaked robe.
Dark clouds gathered, and it began to snow.

I enjoy writing about historical events and figures because it frees me of the burden of self. A lyric poet has to have his antenna up all the time, or at least I feel that way. It’s both instructive and enjoyable to imagine you are someone else. Do Euro-Alaskans, who after all have not been here very long, have a usable past? I’ve written a poem about Vitus Bering and one about the Gold Rush, and Dick Dauenhauer has led the way with many of his poems; I’m sure there are others that I’ve forgotten at the moment.

Here’s a section from my poem “El Dorado”

IV

Baptized Mary Nelligan in Montreal,
my sister lives in Brooklyn and can

hear the bridge singing like a harp
at night. I was slaving in the kitchen
of a rich man’s house on Nob Hill
when I heard the gardener telling
of the Klondike strike. He disappeared.
The cook called me his little Irish blackbird
and made me knead his dough at night.
I know the miners call me Nell the Pig.
Let them call me what they will.
Even curses freeze in hell.
They mew like kittens in my sheets.
On Sunday, after dark, the minister prays
with us. He slips in by the back.
Deirdre thinks all Protestants are bishops.
I sold Olga, my little anvil-thighed lark,
to a Dago for her weight in nuggets.
My lover was the lad who weighed their gold.
I greased his hair to make their fine dust
stick when he ran his long fingers over it.
I rinsed it every morning and hid his stake.
The night he left we sucked blue plums
from China long past dawn. Not long now.
When my steamer reaches San Francisco,
the finest waiting on the dock will say–
that lady is as graceful as a swan.


“Eldorado” was the first part of a long poem I intended to write about the Gold Rush in the Yukon and Alaska. Nell the Pig is a real character. I just might get back to it one of these days.


Tom Sexton began the creative writing program at UAA in 1970. His latest book, I Think Again of Those Ancient Chinese Poets, will be released by the University of Alaska Press in February 2011.

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Happy holidays!  In the sidebar to the right, we've left a couple of electronic gifts for you:  a link to a podcast of Deb's "Crash Course: Characters" (powerpoint slides included) and a link to a post by Dana Stabenow about online book promotion.

Last-minute shopping? You might consider a writing center gift certificate, or membership for a special literary someone on your list.

If you are a member already, start thinking about what writing resolutions you might like to share at our upcoming members' and volunteers' salon-style gathering in Anchorage on January 14, "Resolve to Write." Epicenter's Kent Sturgis and authors Don Rearden and Bill Streever will be among the special guests. Official invitations will be on their way soon. Would you like to host your own satellite version of this event? Contact Deb.

Another date to mark on your calendar: Jan. 25 at 7 p.m., when we'll be inaugurating the first event in our new CROSSCURRENTS conversation series: "Environmental Writing and Activism." Join Alaska writers Nancy Lord, Marybeth Holleman, and Charles Wohlforth for an onstage conversation about environmental writing, writing as a form of activism, and their experiences as writers concerned with global oil-reliance and climate change.  Wohlforth will moderate this lively discussion with reference to Lord's new book, Early Warming: Crisis and Response from the Climate-Changed North and the paperback release of Holleman's The Heart of the Sound: Paradise Found and Nearly Lost.  A question and answer session and book-signing will follow. Location: Out North on 3800 Debarr.

We made our fundraising goal with the book event, thanks to so many of you. Through the end of December, we still have a few packed bags for sale if you're interested; some great signed books remain in the mix!

The year isn't over yet, but if the dark days make you long to look ahead, check out our fantastic class schedule. Registration is underway with the first class beginning January 9.

An end-of-tax-year reminder: Have you considered making a donation to the 49 Alaska Writing Center? Easy to do at our website. We're happy to apply your donation to the many events and other literary offerings we're planning for 2011.

Writer/photographer Bill Hess of Wasilla has won the Best Photography Blog of 2010 award from Blogger’s Choice.  Of his work, Hess says, “In my mind, my style of working is kind of like composing a baroque fugue - two lines of the same theme, weaving together and playing off each other. One line is words, one line is photos.”  Here is Bill’s blog.

Dana Stabenow's Liam Campbell books are now available in e-print. As a special Christmas gift, you can download the whole of Fire and Ice to your e-reader for free! The download page can be accessed from Stabenow's website.  The book comes with a free 'Readers Companion.' The second in the series, So Sure of Death, is also available, also with a free 'Readers Companion,' for just $4.99.

Issue # 3 of Cirque is now live online.

Issue # 3 is on sale at MagCloud.

Note that this month Cirque hard copy prices are 25% off the full price.

Contributor copies will be sent out as soon as they arrive from MagCloud.

Deadline for Issue # 4--March 21, 2011

Here’s a fascinating opportunity for writers and other artists, from an Anchorage-ite who is trustee of a tower in Northern Ireland that is used as an artist’s residency.  Check out the details on the Curfew Tower.

Happy, Peaceful Holidays to All!

A Harper Lee Christmas story for writers

Happy Holidays, 49 Writers friends! This is a re-run from Dec. 23 of last year -- the most appropriate Christmas greeting I could think of. Please feel free to share your holiday greetings with others in the comments.

Original post:

A few months ago, I was looking up some detail about Harper Lee's life when I stumbled across a link to a short essay she wrote about a particularly touching Christmas gift she received from her closest friends, a couple living in Manhattan.

In our family we celebrate Chanukah, which just ended, and I'm not usually the type to look for holiday-specific items to post, but this story moved me -- and I think it would move any writer imagining the best possible gift one could receive at this or any time of the year.

The author of To Kill a Mockingbird published this piece, "Christmas to Me," in McCalls Magazine in 1961.

Rather than ruin the story for you by publishing just a paragraph or two, or risk infringing on someone's copyright, I send you to one of the few places I could find that has the entire (very short) essay online, here...

Andromeda: The U-Bend of Happiness -- For Writers?

With time to kill at various airport newstands this week, my eye was drawn to the current Economist lead story about what they've tagged "the U-bend of happiness" -- the fact, noticed by economists only since the 1990s, that happiness drops around middle age and then picks up as people age. The idea of a mid-life crisis is conventional, but not the second half of this concept, which is that post-middle age, people get much happier again, and are in some ways more content at 70 than they were in the bloom of youth.

Since I'm turning the big 4-0 next week, I admittedly studied this article and its graphs with an even keener eye, looking for that low spot on the graph (age 46 globally, more like 50 to 53 for Americans) where statistically, happiness reaches its nadir and then prepares to rise again.

Why should older people be happier? Not necessarily -- as I would have imagined -- just because they're past typical mid-life challenges like raising cranky teenagers or dealing with particularly demanding jobs or the lack of a job, for example. Even when researchers controlled for things like unemployment and children, the U-bend was noted. It seems to have just as much to do with internal as external circumstances. In other words, the happiness of age seems to be a state of mind: a deepening appreciation of the present moment (perhaps), or declining ambition and increasing acceptance of life as it is (perhaps again). The article quotes William James, the psychologist and brother of author Henry James, as saying, "“How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young—or slender.”

Is the day also more pleasant when we give up being extraordinarily famous, renowned, or well-compensated writers?

Back home now and still thinking about faculty I met at my Antioch MFA residency as well as authors I've met throughout this year, I can't help applying the U-bend to the writing life, wondering if there is something to be said for a mild decline of ambition -- at least the commercial kind -- and a reckoning with the fact that most of us will remain obscure. What a relief it is, frankly, to understand how the publishing world works and that it is not designed to provide us with either long-lasting riches or any kind of security. Liberated from that misconception, we can reapply ourselves to what matters: the writing itself.

At Antioch, there are instructors whose books have sold a half-million copies teaching alongside instructors whose books have sold (I'm guessing here) in the low-thousands or even hundreds. There are instructors and visiting guests with immediate name recognition and ones without. There are people who sold a book very recently and ones who have been unpublished and out of print for quite some time. And yet, we all talk about what books we're reading now, what craft issue we're puzzling over, or what ideas in general are obsessing us lately; we all talk feverishly about literature and the writing life, leaving aside (usually) those burning questions about royalties and copies sold, which are bound to make anyone anxious.

I'm referring to Antioch because that's where I spent the last week and had access to hundreds of writers in a small space, sharing thoughts and exhibiting their joy or their neuroses. But apply this to any other group of writers you know, or all the writers in Alaska, and the thought -- or the question -- remains the same.

Have more (certainly not all) writers in their 50s, 60s, and 70s and older made peace with their labors and where they stand in the world? Are they free at last from the unrealistic aspirations and at least some of the personal agonies? Are you?

I apply this also to authors who seem successful by any standard. My favorite literary example is Philip Roth, who has been publishing for 51 years and recently celebrated his 31st book publication. Roth seemed to go through an exceptionally rocky middle age, and was written off by many of his peers, who did not shrink from writing scathing reviews of his books. But something happened in the last fifteen years or so, resulting in a second wave of productivity -- a new novel nearly every year -- and acclaim, including a 1997 Pulitzer for American Pastoral. The day Roth wins the Nobel, and I'm sure he will, I plan to raise my glass, not only to the man and his many works (my favorites include The Ghost Writer and The Plot Against America) but to what he represents: enduring success of the more meaningful kind, and hopefully some measure of happiness, on the right side of that U-bend.

Resolve to Write

No one said it would be easy. Whenever I think I’ve mastered this simple truth about writing, it seems I have to re-learn it. I like to think it’s because as we advance as writers, we embrace greater challenges, but in truth I know it’s also because sometimes we simply don’t know how we managed to come up with that last great novel or story or sentence, so we end up reinventing as we go.

My current challenge is the second chapter of the novel I’ve been working on since early September. Lest you think I’m progressing Flaubert-like, one precise word at a time, I should explain that I’d drafted about half the book before embracing a few key changes that sent me scuttling back to the start. It feels like a stronger novel already but, oh, this second chapter. I’m grateful to David Vann, who reminded us at last fall’s retreat that second chapters are both crucial and tough. With patience – and joy, I remind myself, the Gaudete duo of Advent – I’ll take another swing at it tomorrow, because that’s what writers do. We resolve to write.

After another ten days, the calendar flips. We’ll wipe the slate of what didn’t go as we’d planned in the old year and set our sights forward. As you ponder your writing resolutions for 2011, I offer this familiar cautionary note: be careful what you wish for. A few years back, one of my new year’s resolutions was to find a way to get better connected with other writers. Through this blog and the entire 49 Writers effort, my small resolution materialized in an almost embarrassing richness of community.

With the solitary demands of our craft, it’s no wonder writers crave community. That’s why at 49 Writers we’ll be inviting members and volunteers to a “Resolve to Write” potluck gathering on January 14 to share our writing resolutions for 2011 and to visit with a couple of local writers about their successes and challenges. Kent Sturgis from Epicenter Press will also be on hand to chat with guests about editing and trade publishing.

To keep the event informal and intimate, we’re limiting the Anchorage gathering to 49 Writers members and volunteers. Not a member or volunteer yet? If your resolution includes getting more involved in the writing community, we’ve made it easy to sign on as either a member or volunteer (or both!) at www.49writingcenter.org – click the “Get Involved” tab.

Beyond Anchorage, we’d love to see this event replicated in communities statewide, with no worries about crowds to limit the gathering to 49 Writers members or volunteers. Whether you’ve got two writers or twenty willing to swap resolutions, let us know if you’d like to host a “Resolve to Write” gathering in your hometown. And if you’d like to schedule your gathering for the same night as the Anchorage event, we could even arrange a short Skype to say hi, including a few moments with Kent Sturgis or one of our guest authors.

So be it resolved: save the date – January 14, 2011 – and watch for invitations to follow.

Influences: A Guest Post by Tom Sexton

I suppose pay attention to detail and know what you’re writing about is not the advice most poets are looking for, so I’ll finish with a discussion of influences. I mentioned in an earlier post that after I wrote “earth’s inviting bend toward Asia” in “Poolshark,” I sensed it was pointing me in a direction I needed to go.

I’ve admired the ancient Chinese poets since I read translations of their work by Ezra Pound and Kenneth Rexroth many years ago. I gradually came to realize that I shared a mountainous landscape and a love of solitude with those poets. I also admire their brevity and attention to detail. They would be my mentors and guides. I could have a conversation with them, and by having a conversation with them I could broaden the range of my own poetry. I’m always surprised how little today’s poets seem to read the work of other poets beyond a few contemporaries if even that. I’ve often been inspired to write a poem after reading another poet’s work, and I believe I’m a better poet for it. For me the aim of writing poetry is to become a better poet.

Here are two of my “Chinese” poems:

The Marsh in Spring

At first light, an alder flycatcher
sings to the full moon

that has yet to fade.
A breeze moves our wind chime

so softly it could be the echo
of a distant bell.

I think of that ancient Chinese poet
who, picking lice from his robe,

placed them on a bit of silk
so they too could enjoy the dawn.

I do not know whether he was wise or foolish,
only that he was seldom melancholy.

* * *


Thinking of Tu Fu on a Summer Evening


At the end of a long day stacking wood

for winter, I sit on the cabin’s
stair and drink a glass of wine.
My thoughts soon turn to Tu Fu’s
long life of exile and wandering.
I imagine that I can see a path
into the mountains beyond the marsh.
If I were to set out, I would come
to a stream flowing into the Range
where no one has ever traveled
and there I would find Tu Fu
chanting a poem to the mountains.
He would ask of my long journey,
and I would tell him of the swans
nesting on a thousand small lakes,
that the fisherman’s net is heavy
that brown bears roam the meadows,
how the hair on your neck stands on end
when you sense movement in tall grass.
But most of all I would tell him
of the summer light: how at dawn
it is like a silk fan beginning to open,
and how long after midnight has passed
when that one is almost closed
another fan is opening far to the east.


Now to contradict myself. I’ve just finished a book of eight line poems, I Think Again of Those Ancient Chinese Poets, based roughly on the Chinese shih form which will be published by the University of Alaska Press in March, but at seventy I’m looking back to where I came from, and I’m finishing a second book about growing up in Lowell, Mass, but at the same time I feel an urge to get back to Anchorage and walk along the inlet. Perhaps I’ll see Denali or a cargo ship headed for port. I’ll end with two of my “Lowell” poems, one old one new.


Memoir

To dispel my melancholy, I write another poem.

Tu Fu

I read that line years ago at dawn
and imagined melancholy as an old sweater
worn and thinning at the elbows,
a dark conceit to be used one day.
Today is the winter solstice.
The light barely touched the ground

when I went out to check the mail
where I found my sister’s unexpected memoir
and discovered that we had different fathers,
hers revealed by an aunt in her cups.
What am I to do with this image of my mother
hanged by her own hand in our basement
when I was learning how to be a soldier?
It’s already pitch black to the north.
I’ve pulled on that sweater to keep out the cold.


* * *



Woman Waiting, 1942

Slant light, the light Vermeer taught us
how to see, falls upon three women
who stand before a worn railroad station
where it seems a train has just arrived.
They wear dark winter coats that narrow
at the waist the way an hourglass narrows.
The tallest seems no stranger to sorrow.
Her face alone is turned to face the camera.
Another holds a small box tied with string,
a treat perhaps. The third wears an apricot
colored hat tilted to almost touch one ear.
There is new snow on the station’s iron roof.
Light and shadow, the secrets of the heart.
They stand together, and they stand apart.


I believe over the years I’ve fused my two worlds into one which unknown to me was my aim in the beginning.


Tom Sexton began the creative writing program at UAA in 1970. His latest book, I Think Again of Those Ancient Chinese Poets, will be released by the University of Alaska Press in February 2011.

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Our fundraiser book bags (five books, logo tote, $80) will continue to be on sale through the holidays, and the next two people who order will receive, as part of their surprise mix of books, one guaranteed addition: The Winterlake Lodge cookbook by Alaska chef Kirsten Dixon, signed. If that sounds like a great book to keep or help you with your gift-giving, place your order now at www.49fundraiser.blogspot.com. Predictably, I can't guarantee a cookbook or any other particular mix beyond the first two orders. Send me (Andromeda) a note if you have any questions.

A holiday gift from 49 Writers and the Juneau Public Library:  a free podcast, with powerpoint slides, of our Crash Course: Characters.  The link’s on the bottom of our website homepage.  In other exciting instructional news, we’ve opened a Fairbanks section of the popular An Agent’s Perspective:  The 3 R’s of Writing for Children, and we still have a few slots left in visiting author Cindy Dyson’s Writer v. Grinch:  The Fine Art of Micro-Editing.

Join F Magazine and La Bodega for a Beer Tasting and Haiku Party at Taproot, 3300 Spenard Road, Anchorage, tomorrow, Saturday December 18th, 7.30-10pm. $15 limited seating; live music all night. Bring your own 'Beer Haiku' to be performed and judged. A portion of event proceeds will be donated to the Scholastic Writing Competition.

We passed on last week that Mike Burwell is teaching a Writers' Workshop with an emphasis in Poetry at UAA next semester and that it needs a few more participants to guarantee its existence. Here are some more details:
CWLA A352 Writers' Workshop: Poetry 3.0 CR
Jan 13, 2011 - April 28 2011; Thursdays, 5.30-8.15pm.
Main Campus, Room 210 Eugene Short Hall, 2601 Providence Drive

Anchorage author Bill Streever (Cold) has been busy as ever.  Recently he did a live interview with Martha Stewart, with make-up and the works.  Next month he's off to Italy for a book talk on the Italian version of Cold.  He's been at work on a sequel of sorts:  Heat.  A great winter project, no?

Anchorage author Arne Bue has issued a press release about his ebooks from Smashwords. 

Margo Waring offers her services as a thoughtful and detailed reader, as well as a technical and copy-editor for getting books publication-ready. She is based in Juneau and can be contacted at margowaring@gmail.com

From Bill Hess: Barrow's final sunset/sunrise of 2010

Andromeda typing here -- still traveling, bad internet connections, didn't get a full blogpost up today. But related to yesterday's post (where comments are still invited) I wanted to share this link to photos of Barrow's final sunset/sunrise, thanks to photographer and blogger Bill Hess. He provided us some other links via his comment, but they're not hyperlinked properly; this will take you more directly and you just may find yourself sticking around for a while.

Andromeda/Your turn: Heading toward the solstice, what has helped you through dark times?

You probably don't want to hear that I'm experiencing t-shirt weather right now in L.A., where I'm working on my MFA -- though honest, I've been in classrooms, not lounging poolside as I hoped. (And still hope!) Yet, I have not forgotten how dark and cold Anchorage was feeling when I left, and I sure know there is PLENTY of dark and cold waiting for me when I get back.

So here's the question I've been saving: What have some of your darkest times as a writer been? And how do you know when you're getting to that point -- I suppose it could be called rock-bottom, though that has such a negative ring to it -- when things are about to turn around?

A little aside:

I had the pleasure of hearing Tobias Wolff do a reading two nights ago, and one thing he mentioned was that he fairly recently dropped a novel he'd been working on for 18 months, when he realized that it just didn't have enough life in it. This surprised some audience members, predictably. (An old pro, "failing" at a novel? But of course, it happens all the time.) Wolff didn't seem crushed. He is writing another novel, again. And though I wasn't taking notes, I believe he said something about age and experience helping. We can only hope -- for our own less-experienced sakes -- that it does.

In any case, I've asked you to share your stories, and with that in mind, I'd better share one of my own. I think my darkest time came not when I had to set aside a novel (which I've done twice now) but when I effectively lost the attention and confidence of my first agent. Losing my trusted professional reader, my advocate -- and having no idea how to fill the gap, no faith that I'd ever find an agent or editor again -- felt like exile to Siberia. I was back to square one. And it's not something you realize at first, in this writing life: that you may be set back to square one again, and again, and again.

What was my "solstice" moment -- the darkest time before the turn? Not when I got a new agent (that would come later) but when I officially finalized the de facto break with agent number one, in the form of an amicable letter that I hoped would communicate what had gone wrong, and why we were better apart, and all that other awful divorce stuff that hurt to say. By complete coincidence, it was the month of December, one year ago, when I wrote that letter. I'd wanted a clean break for the new year. And I got it. Freedom granted, I could hear the whistling sound of my career ending, quietly, peacefully, as the snow fell, blanketing everything.

Brrrrrrrrr.

Oh yes -- what helped? (Part of my question, after all.) What helped was realizing that commercial success is so beyond our control anyway, and all we can do is write what we want to write, and even if no one is available to read it professionally (much less publish it), that's really OK. I've come to that realization more than once, but then I get amnesia, and I have to learn it all over again, usually when things aren't going well. But when I truly believe it, it feels good every time: liberating, and bracing. A shock of cold, clean air on the skin. Or a snowball suddenly hitting the tender back of your neck. You can get mad or just turn around and start playing.

So, what have your literary solstice moments been? A particularly painful rejection letter? A bad review? Writer's block? A sudden loss of interest in a topic once held dear? A life crisis that got in the way of a writing dream? Share if you dare, and let us shiver alongside you, looking forward to the glimmer of light and hope at the end of your dark tale. If no one comments, I'll just have to assume you're all so full of mid-winter happiness that you can't remember any tribulations.

Why Learn Storytelling: A Guest Post by Brett Dillingham

As a group, writers are generally a lot more comfortable in front of a keyboard than they are before an audience.  But in today's competitive market, authors must often perform - at readings, at book talks, at school visits, and at other author events.  To help bridge the gap between the written word and live performance, 49 Writers was thrilled to be able to catch respected story-teller and author Brett Dillingham on his way through Anchorage next month; on his stopover, he'll be teaching a three-hour storytelling course. 

I’m going to have the opportunity and honor to teach a storytelling class for 49 Writers this coming January 9th. We’re going to pack quite a bit into this three-hour class - everything from a simple and powerful way to create a story to how to tell that story in such a way that your audience will be pleased and satisfied. The workshop is the culmination of over twenty years of work as a storyteller on every continent except Australia and Antarctica.  Master storytellers, elders, wide-eyed children, felons, reading specialists, jaw-dropping international acclaimed storytellers, my Grandma Una - many have contributed to my understanding of how to teach people to write and tell stories. For those who attend, I will do my best to pass on what I’ve learned and honed working with all ages, colors and stripes of people. I’ll teach a process for creating stories and how to tell them to a real audience.


Why learn Storytelling?

Storytelling is much less common in classrooms, homes and libraries than reading books out loud, but most people prefer oral stories to reading. Reading a story and telling a story are not the same. A story remains fixed on the page, a one-to-one correspondence between speech and print. The language of text is more formal than speech. While the reader may embellish the text with vocal inflection and tone, the creative repertoire for enhancing meaning is limited. Because the reader holds the book in her hands, there is much less body movement and eye contact. A reader may enhance the text with illustrations and pause for discussion and clarification, but the experience of being read a story is less active and often less enjoyable than being told a story.

In contrast, telling a story often involves improvisation and audience participation. A storyteller is more likely to embellish a story with facial gestures, body movements,  and props. Storytelling is multi-sensory, stirring the emotions and stimulating the imagination. The content and style of delivery are easily modified to meet the needs of the audience. The same story can be told very differently to a class of bright-eyed, eager four-year-olds than to a group of academically advanced fifth graders or college students or community audience.

The audience in storytelling helps create the story. Storytelling is open, fluid, and sensitive to the moment. The storyteller draws upon her/his experience and culture in telling the story. Storytelling is intimate and the storyteller is an active participant with the audience, while the author of a read story is more distant and cannot respond to the listener as easily as a storyteller.

Storytelling grabs the attention of the listener quickly, with the focus on the unfolding external action. Time is more concentrated in storytelling with much happening in a short time. An event described in print might take several paragraphs to convey, whereas in storytelling a sentence, with the aid of gestures, may convey the same meaning. A picture is worth a thousand words, so perhaps a storytelling performance is worth ten thousand words. Storytelling can offer more ideas, provide richer communication, address difficult content, and survey cultures more efficiently than reading aloud. It’s a wonderful and powerful skill for teachers, librarians, writers, parents… really, for anybody who wishes to communicate.

Juneau resident Brett Dillingham has performed live storytelling on National Public Radio, the Calgary International Children's Festival, the National American Reads conference, the Reading Association of Ireland, the National Migrant Education conference, the World Congress on Reading and the International Reading Association. In his workshops, Brett teaches storytelling and poetry as performance literacy. Brett is also the author of the children’s book Raven Day (McGraw Hill, 2001) and the textbook Performance Literacy Through Storytelling (Maupin House, 2009). Past president of the Alaska State Literacy Association, he is a sought-after educator and speaker and is frequently invited to present keynote addresses at conferences in the U.S. and Europe. Register today for Brett's Storytelling Creation, Craft, and Performance on Sunday, Jan. 9 from 4-7 p.m.; $29 for members and $35 for non-members. 

The Meaning of Place: A Guest Post by Tom Sexton

Since I’m talking about poetry and place, I need to define what place means to me. I’m wedded to the particulars of where I live. Denali not a mountain. Cook Inlet not an inlet. I want to know every detail I can about Alaska. This seems rather obvious and not in the least profound; however, it might not be that obvious. When I began teaching, I’d take my creative writing students to Elderberry Park at the end of 5th Avenue. Once we got there, I’d ask them to write about what they saw. They never failed to disappoint me because they almost always wrote about how they felt about what they saw, and often all they “saw” was how they felt about something that had absolutely nothing to do with what they were looking at. It seemed at times that the physical world was only there to express how they felt at the moment. They soon tired of my constant repetition of William Carlos Williams belief that there are no ideas but in things. I believed it then. I still believe it now.

When I decided that I was not leaving, I began to wonder what it means to be an Alaskan poet as opposed to a poet who lives in Alaska, if that question is even worth asking. For me the obvious answer was to know the place well and to get it down right. The rest would follow. As Williams said “no ideas but in things.” The first poem I ever wrote that might be considered an Alaskan poem is “Poolshark.” It combines both of the worlds important to me, and without knowing it at the time it pointed me in the direction my poetry would take.


Poolshark

He was an ancient gambler
long banished from the window table
where the game became a way of life.
Dim-eyed and reptilian, Willie Provencher
sat on his favorite bench near the door

and scanned the murky room for fish.
We came duck-tailed and dumb
from school to lose at nine ball
to that dank and wrinkled shark
who held a dime store magnifying glass
against one eye to line his shots
before he ran the table.
He took our quarters one by one.

A fingerling anxious for the light,
I left that world. There’s no small change
in this Alaskan city where I live.
You can see earth’s inviting bend toward Asia,
and at times the coastal mountains buckle
clouds that form a vast and empty moonlit
room above us. At times I long
to shine like bait in Willie’s hand.


I was becoming comfortable with Alaska as a subject. It was long after that I wrote the following poem:


The Wedding of Cecelia Demidorf

-Ninilchick, Alaska


Waiting for the priest to arrive,
I marvel at how rain gilds the scene:
the wedding party
on the steep path from the village,
spent fireweed,
fishing boats in the harbor,
gulls over blue-green water.

The ceremony begins:
I listen to the deacon chant
the names of ancient saints and patriarchs
and see their kinship in the faces
of these Aleuts, fishermen who
number fewer than their dead.

Invited by the groom,
I have come to observe with doubt
this antique rite of golden crowns and ikons.

I know the genealogy of the Cossack names
and forced servitude in the name of the Lord.

When the bells peal in celebration,
we slide down the path–a scene from Gogol’s steppes:
white crosses, blue domes,
flame-burnished clouds,
the priest’s black cassock,
now a billowing demon in the wind.
The bride rides beside her lover
in her father’s battered yellow pickup truck.
Warm rain on every tongue.


The marriage didn’t last, but I hope I’ve captured the moment in the poem. Looking back, I’m amazed to discover how many of the poems in The Bend Toward Asia are on one level about places in Alaska. For the past few years, I’ve been writing historical poems for lack of a better word. While my poems are still based on observation, I’ve tried to expand their range and subject matter.


Steller’s Sea Cow, 1742-1768

Steller took it as a sign from a benevolent God
when he killed the first sea cow. Commander
Bering was dead. The shipwrecked crew had
skin as white as the paper he used to sketch
“that marvelous beast that moves across a bed
of kelp the way a cow moves across a field
before it raised its head and snorted like a horse.”
Steller sketched. He would be remembered now.

They boiled its flesh to give them strength.
Scurvy was the ghost that haunted them.
Those who made it back to Siberia told
of a land to the east and a fabulous cow
whose flesh would feed a crew of otter
hunters for a year while they collected pelts
so fine and soft the Czar would envy them.
“Its flesh was tender veal, its fat was almond oil.”
Wounded, the last calf sank before it disappeared.

Tom Sexton began the creative writing program at UAA in 1970. His latest book, I Think Again of Those Ancient Chinese Poets, will be released by the University of Alaska Press in February 2011.

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Unalaska seems to be blessed with more than its share of dedicated readers. We had one book bag order at the beginning of the week, and then three more yesterday. Thanks J.B. and S.T.! We’ve got a few more bags to go – really nearing the finish line, now! – so if you have been procrastinating, this is your nudge. Order at www.49fundraiser.blogspot.com.

Maybe you’re not in need of any new books at the moment and are more concerned about writing your own. Check out our bigger-than-ever Winter/Spring term with writing classes starting January 9. If you need a dose of inspiration before then, we still have room in our December 22 micro-editing clinic, “Writer v. Grinch,” with Cindy Dyson.  Note, too, that we've just added a Fairbanks section of "An Agent's Perspective:  The 3 R's of Writing for Children" with instructor Kendra Marcus on Feb. 22.  For details and registration for all our Spring classes, visit our website.

Our 49 Alaska Writing Center Board has two new Directors: Karen Benning and Eric Larson. Both have been active volunteers for much of 2010 in the areas of fundraising and financial management. Kirsten Dixon and Don Rearden also joined the board earlier this fall. We appreciate all of their combined expertise in  matters fiduciary and literary and will have a better 2011 because of their willingness to serve.

As mentioned earlier this week, we’re taking requests from authors who want to be featured in 49 Writers First Friday book signings at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in 2011.  Email 49writers@gmail.com with your name, book title(s), and the month you’d prefer, with a second choice if you have one.  Authors are asked to donate 25% of proceeds to 49 Writers for hosting the signings.

Tomorrow, Saturday December 11th, at 1.pm there will be a book signing at the Homer Bookstore, 332 E. Pioneer Ave, Homer, with George Harbeson Jr. and Serge Lecomte.

Back in Anchorage, also on Saturday December 11th at 1pm, the Pulpwood Queens Book Club share a storytime at the fireplace at Barnes and Noble, 200 E. Northern Lights Blvd.

On Wednesday December 15, at 7 pm, Poetry Parley will be celebrating the works of Frank O'Hara. Out North, 3800 DeBarr Rd, Anchorage.

Early warnings: 

Join F Magazine and La Bodega for a Beer Tasting and Haiku Party at Taproot on Friday December 18th, 7.30-10pm. $15 limited seating; live music all night. Bring your own 'Beer Haiku' to be performed and judged. A portion of event proceeds will be donated to the Scholastic Writing Competition. 

Mike Burwell of Cirque will be teaching a Writers' Workshop in Poetry at UAA next (Spring 2011) semester. Currently, four more enrollments are necessary to ensure that the class goes ahead: please consider joining in!  The course will be held on Thursdays from 5:30 -8:15 p.m. beginning January 13. 

Nancy Lord's new book Early Warming: Crisis and Response in the Climate-Changed North will be out in January from Counterpoint Press and can be pre-ordered now from bookstores or a link at her website.

An op-ed by Nancy Lord that draws from the book and is a response to the Alaska being portrayed on the Sarah Palin TV show was distributed this week by OtherWords, an organization that provides editorial material to 1700 newspapers.  The link is

http://www.otherwords.org/articles/this_isnt_sarah_palins_alaska.

Mark your calendars: Wednesday April 20 from 5:00pm-7:00pm at the UAA Campus Bookstore: 

The Influence of Theodore Roethke: “I Teach out of Love” plus the short film  “To the Moon: A Tribute to Theodore Roethke,” by Sandra Kleven author of Holy Land.

Description:

 Theodore Roethke taught poetry at the University of Washington from 1947 until his untimely death in 1963, at the age of 55.  His classes were open to the public resulting in a “wonderful mix, from kids to grandparents” .  Although he was a drinker, a charmer and, occasionally, quite mad –being hospitalized many times during bouts of mania-- his teaching methods in the classroom brought forth new poets; Richard Hugo, David Wagoner, James Wright, Jack Gilbert, and Carolyn Kizer, among them. 

This special presentation includes readings of poems written by his former students; a segment from a play by David Wagoner called First Class that shows Roethke holding forth in the classroom; and the short film, “To the Moon: A Tribute to Theodore Roethke,” by MFA candidate, Sandra Kleven.

Andromeda: ...And a call for First Friday authors

And the second part of our call for participation this week: we're looking for our 2011 First Friday authors for signings which take place at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art (see our new 'First Friday') pages tab* above for 2011's current lineup.

Paula Bryner, who coordinates the events for 49 Writers, volunteers for this particular effort because she enjoys meeting and spending time with authors. She says that a wide range of genres and titles really make the FF signings more successful, so don't hold back because of your genre. (As an example, recent FF participants Anne Coray and Steve Kahn, a poet and memoirist, sold quite a few books at their event.)

The IGCA setting is absolutely hopping on First Fridays with a diverse and eclectic, art-loving crowd. All these elements combine to make this more than just your typically sleepy signing in a quiet bookstore. If you're eager to tap into that downtown energy, contact Paula at 49writers@gmail.com. The January 7 slot is available, as are slots on First Fridays from April onward.


*A quick thank you to Lorena, one of our great blog volunteers who is helping re-organize/clean up the site a little, including adding these new 'pages.' People like Lorena, Ela (roundup queen!) and Paula (FF hostess extraordinaire) keep this blog going, as do readers like you, and of course, people who send us blogposts and news, and let's not forgot those who take time to leave comments. Thanks to all of you.

Andromeda: Calling new 2011 Featured Authors

It's my absolute favorite part of this blog: the featured author posts that help us make sure this corner of the internet remains a truly community-wide gathering of writers, readers, and book-lovers.

I love hearing how other writers are finding their way, mastering the craft, facing self-doubt or other life challenges, getting published and promoting their work. Everyone has their own take on guest-blogging.

I still remember Cinthia Ritchie's post about buying lots of different pairs of eyeglasses (cheap and online!) to help her slip into various writing personas.

I've gone back more than once to re-read Marybeth Holleman's post about the importance of poetry in her life, and how a particular poem helped her cope following the murder of her brother.

It was through his guest-posts from New Zealand that we first got to know Adak-born David Vann, our featured author in April 2009.

This week's wonderful guest-post by poet Tom Sexton reminded me of another post by poet John Morgan about how he first started finding his voice as a "first semester" poet.

I could spend the whole morning fishing for favorite old posts, with a dash of eggnogg in my coffee and the fireplace at my back and NPR on the background. (Oops, getting a little too comfy here!) My point is: we love these featured author posts, and we'd love for you to consider being a guest-poster in 2011.

Here's how it works: I'll be assembling a roster over the next two weeks. Email me at lax@alaska.net by December 22 if you're interested, with preferred month(s) if you have any. I'll get back to you by the end of the month. Tell me just a little bit about you, including your genre or other bio basics in a sentence or two. If you're selected, you'll be responsible for four posts of about 800 words or less.

Please note that each time we put out the call, we get more authors than we can slot. We try to balance genres and make room for new voices and new potential topics -- so if you've already guest-posted for us, please do apply again, but understand we may give preference to a few first-timers in the mix.

Also remember that if you don't want to write four posts or sign up for an entire month in advance we encourage guest-posts at any time. Just email me (lax@alaska.net) or Deb (debv@gci.net) with those occasional postings.

Deb: And now for a word from one of our instructors...

Wondering what to expect from a class called "Writer v. Grinch:  The Fine Art of Micro-Editing," with instructor Cindy Dyson (And She Was)?  Dyson, pictured here in her best Grinch get-up, stopped by with a clarification that's too good to leave buried in our comments section:

...I'm thigh deep in my yarn and macramé Christmas projects at the moment. I know what it's like those last few days. But...

It [the course] will be fun. I promise.

This ain't a lecture. This is about you, and your work.

Go to the Fifth Avenue Mall and buy your least favorite relative a bottle of perfume that smells like a regurgitated lump and costs way too much. Get a way-too-expensive scarf for your brother-in-law who's done the family wrong. Then scarf down a meal at the Brew House and treat yourself to a riotous Raven Place time.

I'm bringing a box of bad wine and and an uncompromising belief in the power of the sentence, where idea meets character and plot and slams its foot into the soft goo of language.

Not a lecture. Not editing. Just a break from the buying spree to delve into the beauty of what you want to say.

I'm not a great writer. But I am pretty darn good at listening and understanding what a writer wants to do. At helping carve away the fat and sinew.

At least it won't be boring.

Writer v. Grinch: The Fine Art of Micro-Editing meets on Wednesday, Dec. 22 from 6:30-9:30 p.m. at the 49 Alaska Writer Center Anchorage (aka Raven Place), 645 W. 3rd Ave.  The cost is $29 for members and $35 for non-members.  Online registration is easy, and Dyson is donating all proceeds to support the programs of 49 Writers.

Poetry and Place: A Guest Post by Tom Sexton

I’m spending the winter in a small town in Maine less than a mile from Campobello Island, New Brunswick. Being away from Alaska has me thinking about how place can influence a poet or at least how place influences me as a poet. Excuse me if my posts seem overly self-interested, but I believe the best way for me to discuss poetry is to discuss the evolution of my own work. Place may not be important to many poets, but it is to me. I can’t imagine Wordsworth without England’s Lake District or Frost without the landscape of Vermont and New Hampshire. A poet needs a familiar place to stand and observe the world unless the main focus of his or her work is confessional as it is in the poetry of Ann Sexton and Robert Lowell. I arrived in Alaska more than fifty years ago as an eighteen year old army private, and all I wanted to do was finish my tour of duty and return to Massachusetts where I knew I belonged. When I had a three day pass during basic training, I hitchhiked from Fort Dix, New Jersey to Lowell, Massachusetts , and I believed I could tell when the car I was in entered my home state. The light was different and the landscape greener, or the snow deeper. The feeling became more intense as I got closer to Lowell. I laugh when I think of that now.

When I returned to Alaska with my wife in an old Volkswagen bus to attend school in Fairbanks in 1968, I wrote a poem about Whitehorse that was included in my first book, Terra Incognita. In it I wrote about the men who arrived there leading a white horse. I’m slightly embarrassed by that poem now since I later learned that the town was named after the Whitehorse Rapids which were thought to resemble the manes of white charging horses. So much for knowing a place without knowing it.

Looking back , I realize that the brief poems in my first book, Terra Incognita, consisting mostly of poems from my MFA thesis, lack a sense of place because at the time I had no place, and I was under the influence of the imagist poets. I still treasure Pound’s “ In A Station Of The Metro” which reads :”The apparition of these faces in the crowd/Petals on a wet black bough.” The imagist poets were not interested in narrative or place. They were the perfect poets to emulate at the time because I lacked a connection to Alaska and to the North. My mind and my heart were still in Massachusetts.

The following two poem are from Terra Incognita:

At Daybreak

Covered with frost
the peas
lie flat, their blossoms

turning brown like an
old man’s
fist on a white sheet.

It’s time to
turn the dogs loose.

* * *

December

The night
moves slowly
like a black glacier;

a woman
in her kitchen
bolts the door.


In “December” I was beginning to move closer to a true awareness of what it means to live in the North. It shows some awareness of place. I wrote it during our first winter in Fairbanks, and I might have been reading John Haines’ Winter News at the time. I do know that it was around -30 for all of December, and I had discovered Robert Bly’s brief imagistic poems

I continued to write in this style for a few years; it was a good brief style for someone teaching three genres of creative writing, but I knew that eventually I needed to develop a style that was capable of telling a story, and I needed to develop a voice, but what voice? I grew up in a blue-collar family in a decaying mill town, and I was now living in a place most people still considered the frontier. At the time, if you mentioned Alaska to someone they quoted Robert Service. I remember students at the university with knives attached to their belts as they made their dangerous way from the dorm to the commons or to the library. Believe it or not, someone quoted Service to me just last week in Massachusetts.

In retrospect, one poem in Terra Incognita was beginning to take me in the direction I needed to go even if I didn’t know it at the time. Here are two stanza’s from that poem, “Uncle Paul.”


Uncle Paul

I still remember walking with him
and my father in the warehouse
on Suffolk Street where Paul worked
until it closed. We made our rounds
checking doors and punching clocks.

Few mills were left when I was seven.

Paul would sit in our front room for hours
with my father talking of going to Arizona
or Alaska. By the end of August, he was dead.
He fell and broke his neck while picking apples.


“Uncle Paul” is my first published poem that develops a narrative, and in a very small way I’ve fused my two worlds with my brief mention of Alaska. I knew that I was heading in the right direction.

Tom Sexton began the creative writing program at UAA in 1970. His latest book, I Think Again of Those Ancient Chinese Poets, will be released by the University of Alaska Press in February 2011.

Sunday Auction Countdown

Our online literary auction will speed to its cyberconclusion, with last bids accepted between approximately 10:30 and 11:30 pm tonight at our ebay auction site. Click on the link to see bids, and keep coming back through Sunday evening. Thanks!

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Remember the 49 Writers First Friday book signing from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. tonight at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art, 427 D St. in Anchorage.  Deb Vanasse will be signing read-aloud titles for young readers (Under Alaska's Midnight Sun, Totem Tale, Alaska Animal Babies) and books for older readers (Amazing Alaska, ages 7-10; A Distant Enemy, ages 10-14; and Out of the Wilderness, ages 10-14). She'll also have titles for adults: Picture This, Alaska; Insider's Guide to Anchorage and Southcentral Alaska, and Alaska Off the Beaten Path.

If your plans for 2011 include writing, note that our next classes begin on January 9.

December's Poetry Parley (Wednesday the 15th, 7pm) will feature poems of Frank O'Hara and they are looking for readers. Email Jonathan Minton if interested.

Michael Engelhard asked us to remind you that the deadline for submissions of up-to-3000-word personal essays to the anthology Northwords is looming: December 21st is the date. The full details and original call for submissions can be found at this round-up post from earlier in the year. Send submissions to Michael Engelhard.

Ken Waldman is back from seven weeks in Colorado and Wyoming. Some newsworthy notes from his trip can be found here and here. Some books and CDs from him may be found in the book bag fundraiser!

Via Peggy Shumaker: Alaskan poet Joe Enzweiler is in Ohio for treatment of a brain tumor.  He enjoys postcards, but struggles with longer letters.  Anyone wishing to contact him may use this address:

Joe Enzweiler
6765 Maple Street
Cincinnati OH 45227

It's just two months until publication for Dana Stabenow's 18th Kate Shugak mystery, Though Not Dead. Here are some reviews to whet appetites. Publisher's Weekly's review, Kirkus' review, Booklist's review  and a review from a 'Danamaniac.'  The anthology Unusual Suspects, edited by Stabenow, is also now available in mass-market paperback.

Sitka Authors mother and son Tracie and Justin Harang have just self-published their second book, "Sitka Tango Journeys to Juneau, Alaska," following the adventures of the Harang family and their retriever, Sitka Tango, as they take the Fairweather Ferry to Juneau and ride the Mount Roberts tramway, hiking and camping en route. This picturebook story is the sequel to "Sitka Tango Explores the Causeway." More information on their website.

Our thanks to November featured author Tricia Brown for her posts. Beginning next week, we'll feature poet Tom Sexton as our December author.

Andromeda: a personal guide to our auction ending in three days

How could you not want this? I want this. Two nights at Sheep Mountain Lodge, for cheap! I would bring skis, rum, and a bunch of books: maybe Cloud Atlas, which I've been meaning to start, or The Women, or maybe Cold Mountain, which nearly everyone has read except me. Cold Mountain for Sheep Mountain. I like that.

Only three more days until you won't hear about our fantastic online auction again, but today I have to give you a personal tour.

Item one: the lodge stay. I've written often at this blog about my intense desire to hide away somewhere and read. It's my #1 fantasy, well above the beach resort holiday. (Beaches require shaving. Sheep Mountain does not.) So, yes, I did bid on it. I told myself I'd stop at $100. Just minutes ago, I just went a little above that. (Oops.) But my goodness, it's a 2-night lodge stay! But now I'm done. I promise. (I have no advantage over anyone else bidding for these items, so I hope it won't seem less than kosher. And anyway, I'm really done now. Waaah!)

If I had the means to bid for and get them all, I would, and here's what I would do with them:

The David Marusek pet cameo. I would give this to my mother, now living in Beijing, who would be charmed to discover her dog 'Buster' appear in a science fiction novel or story by one of Alaska's most successful authors. Easier than trying to mail a book or sweater to Beijing, that's for sure.

The social media consult with internet guru Aliza Sherman. Tough call: keep it for myself, or give to a friend with a new book coming out soon. Fine, I'll pretend to be more generous than I am and say I would give it to a friend.

The research consult with librarian extraordinaire Michael Catoggio. I've had a goldrush novel in the back of my head for a while now. I'd ask him to help with some historical questions to give the idea a chance to grow.

The New York editor's partial manuscript critique. Easy. This would be for a friend who is celebrating Chanukah as we speak, who is writing a marvelous memoir and wouldn't mind an opinion besides mine. (I think her manuscript is marvelous.)

The book club talk with Hope Edelman. For my own book club, without a doubt. It would be fun to add a new twist with help from an author phone/skype visit. I've already heard Hope speak and I know she is a dynamic person, and the subject of Hope's books -- mother-daughter relations -- is a universal.

The five-book collection by Peggy Shumaker. Of course I'd like it for my own library, but I think I'd enjoy even more donating this to my kids' high school library. Wouldn't that be a great thing to start: donation of poetry by notable AK writers to Alaska schools?

Thanks for letting me fantasize. To check out the latest bids through Sunday, go to http://stores.ebay.com/49alaskawritingcenter.

Andromeda: New Books in Our Fundraiser Book Bags

Everything you ever wanted to know about talent, and about -- ahem -- "coupling" as the subtitle of "Bonk" puts it. In two books. (Well that covers almost everything, doesn't it?)

These fascinating books, by authors Dan Coyle and Mary Roach, just came to my p.o. box as donations to our Book Bag fundraiser. For me, checking the mail has been a little like Christmas (or Chanukah) -- nearly always a surprise waiting.

But of course, I don't get to keep these signed books. They're going into the next ten pre-packed tote bags, along with great books by Jo-Ann Mapson and Heather Lende, as well as various other novels, memoirs, poetry books, cookbooks, and more. For $80, payable in an easy click at http://www.49fundraiser.blogspot.com/, you get four or five books plus a raven logo tote, shipping included.

Why did we decide to run this particular fundraiser, one of two online fundraisers this fall? (The other being our online auction.) Because we thought it would be good all around. We keep nearly all of what you're paying and use it to fund the 2011 events we're currently planning. You get a pile of great books that are worth more than what you're spending. That mutually beneficial outcome is made possible by the generosity of over 80 donating authors, plus the time of volunteers who contacted many of the authors.

Thanks -- and quick, before the holidays are here, let us know if you'd like a bag or two sent your way. If you need a gift mailed quickly to a family member or friend, we'll stand in the post office line for you.