Ann Dixon Repost: An Interview with Debby Dahl Edwardson



Our thanks to librarian, children's author, and 49 Writers member Ann Dixon, who gave permission for us to reprint this interview originally posted on February 6, 2011 on her blog Kid Lit North. Above, children's author Debby Dahl Edwardson. 

A while ago I wrote about Blessing's Bead, a wonderful novel by Barrow resident Debby Dahl Edwardson. Debbie has been kind enough to answer some questions about her writing life. Her next book, My Name is Not Easy, is going to press soon with Melanie Kroupa Books.


Debby, I know you’ve lived in Barrow for over 30 years. I’m curious about what brought you there in the first place. It is rather out of the way for casual visiting! Would you mind talking about how and why you first came to Alaska; where else in Alaska you spent time; and how/why you got to Barrow?

I came to Alaska for adventure. I had just graduated from college in Colorado. A group of us were living in New Mexico and decided to drive north to Alaska to work on the Pipeline. For me it became a journey of discovery that has yet to end. I ended up in Barrow because my husband is Inupiaq and Barrow is his home. I moved to Barrow sight unseen, in fact, knowing that it would become my permanent home. It was February of 1980—a time of intense cold and blindingly bright sun. A strong, resilient and ultimately joyful people were bringing in sled loads of caribou and piling huge blocks of crystalline ice outside there homes for drinking water. I was enchanted.

You and I share a common denominator in that as young adults we both spent time in Scandinavia before coming to Alaska – you in Norway, I in Sweden. My time in Sweden was a strong influence in turning my interest northward to Alaska. Was that the case for you, too?

I guess that growing up in Minnesota, living in Norway and settling in Alaska have all fed into my identity as a northerner. My family instilled in me a fierce pride in my Norwegian heritage. My husband, who is Inupiaq, is also part Norwegian so for us there is always a sense of strong Norwegian-Alaskan ties.

Do you maintain connections with people in Norway? Snakker du norsk? (I think I just asked if you speak Norwegian.)

Ya, Jeg snakker norsk, men det har vært lenge siden… no, sadly I have pretty much lost connection with most of the people I knew in Norway. And although I have always wanted to go back, seven children and a busy life have sent me in other directions. My oldest daughter, who is a filmmaker, was invited to present her work at a Sámi film festival in Northern Norway several years ago. This daughter was also an exchange student in Sweden and my youngest daughter was an exchange student in Denmark—so in a way we have extended our Scandinavian connections. And I did actually receive a surprise email form a Norwegian classmate, recently.

He said he was waiting for a bus, listening to his ipod, and when the song “Bye, Bye Miss America Pie” came on and he remembered, suddenly, the first time he’d heard the song. It was played for him by an American Girl by the name of Debby Dahl. He had seen my website and remembered me.

The ways in which the internet connects us are truly amazing.

Living anywhere in Alaska – even Anchorage – is different from living in the Lower 48 states. For most people it requires some adjustment and the learning of new skills. It seems to me that living above the Arctic Circle and marrying into the Inupiaq culture would require significant adjustment and learning, including a non-Western language. Was that difficult for you? How long did it take for you to feel that this was home?

I was thinking of this when I was at Disneyworld recently, attending the NCTE/ALAN conference. It seemed like such an alien place to me! The truth is, that at this point in my life I often face culture shock when I travel south.

I think that living in Norway and learning another culture and language prepared me for the Inupiaq cultural immersion experience that has shaped me into the person I am today. And truly, there was a lot about the Inupiaq worldview that just made sense to me. It helped, also, that I had a good teacher, a cultural mentor who taught me to see the world through his eyes. I married this man.

The odd thing about Alaska was that I never intended to make it my permanent home. I’ve always had wanderlust and I used to think I would just keep traveling and experiencing all the wonderful places the world has to offer. Even after I had married into the culture and lived here a long time, part of me was still keenly aware of the fact that I was living far from my home. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but one day I realized that I was home, in every sense of the word. I actually consider myself to be bicultural at this point. The benefit of this is that I don’t really have to do a lot of research for the books I write—my life itself is the research!

About the book: Where did you get the idea for the bead as a motif to span the generations and unite the two main characters in the novel? Is there a real-life bead that inspired you?

There is a real life bead. In fact the bead on the cover of the book is the real bead that inspired the use of the fictional bead in the story. It was given to my husband and had belonged to an old woman in Point Hope. He was told him it would protect him. I’ve known and been fascinated by trade beads for many years, especially the Russian blues, which were indeed considered very valuable.

Authors usually have little or no control over the covers for their books. Is there a story behind the cover of Blessing’s Bead? I find the photograph of the girl to be evocative, almost haunting. Or was it arranged by editors and art directors? How do you feel about the cover?

Ah, now here’s a story! In fact the girl on the cover of the book is my middle daughter, Susan, whose Inupiaq name is Aaluk (as is one of the book’s main characters.) How did this happen? Well, although it is indeed unusual, my editor, Melanie Kroupa, then at Farrar Straus and Giroux, involved me every step of the way on the cover design. When it became clear that they wanted to do a photo cover—I started sending photos of local Barrow girls (my nieces) who I thought looked the part. None of them had quite the right expression, however. Out of desperation, I staged a photo shoot with my daughter who is an actress and could, I knew, get in character. However, neither she nor I thought she looked “Inupiaq enough.” The full story of the cover—and my thoughts about it, which are actually kind of complex, can be found here.

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Longer days, sunshine, and lots of great instructional opportunities coming up at 49 Writers.   Know any creative teens looking for a fun class during spring break?  Lee Post’s course, The Graphic Novel:  Telling Stories with Pictures, is designed with them in mind.  Of course, adults are welcome as well.  The class runs afternoons during Spring Break, beginning March 7th.  We’ve also got a few slots left in Don Rearden’s Screenwriting 101, beginning March 15th, and then at the end of the month (March 26th), Ronald Spatz of the acclaimed Alaska Quarterly Review will provide an insider’s perspective on Publishing in the Literary Market.

Also coming next month (next week!), we’ll be opening registration for our Tutka Bay Writers Retreat, September 2-5, featuring best-selling author Dani Shapiro, as well as a “staycation” four-day weekend June 24-27 featuring memoir writing with Kim Rich (Johnny's Girl).  Preparations for our Raven Words Summer Youth Writing Workshops are in the works, too.  Watch for the rollout with instructor recruitment.

And stay tuned, stay tuned! April will bring a Crosscurrents onstage conversation with acclaimed author Susan Orlean plus our fun Raven Write-a-thon and a new Synergies poetry event – and of course our continuing line-up of 49 Writers courses, including MaryBeth Holleman’s course in Beginnings and John Morgan’s A Formal Feeling: Getting Started Writing poems.

Today, Friday February 25th, at 1:30pm,Charles Wohlforth presents 'Speaking and Human Nature,' based on his book The Fate of Nature. ConocoPhillips Integrated Science Building, University of Alaska Anchorage.

Rilke's Duino Elegies Discussion Group meets again on Sunday February 27th, at 2:30pm Fireside Books, 720 S Alaska St., Palmer. They're reading Stephen Mitchell's translation.

On Monday February 28 from 5:00pm- 7:00pm, at the UAA Bookstore, Don Rearden presents Raven’s Gift.  Don Rearden has created an amazing story, a  "what if" scenario that is closer to real life than not. Everyone is invited to this special event with Alaskan and UAA CPDS faculty member Don Rearden.  Check out this link for a dramatic inside preview. Don't miss out on a great literary event.  Remember all events are free, open to the public, with free parking available.

On Friday, March 4th, at 7:00pm, poet Cecily Parks will read as part of the Fairbanks Visiting Writers series, UAF Museum of the North, Fairbanks.

Registration is now available online for the second annual Writers Conference in Skagway, Alaska; June 1-4, 2011. Best-selling nonfiction writer Howard Blum will be the keynote speaker.
Blum, whose new book The Floor of Heaven is being launched by Crown Publishing in April, will join several recognized authors from the 49th State including Heather Lende, Seth Kantner, John Straley, Deb Vanasse, Kim Heacox, and current Alaska Writer Laureate Peggy Shumaker.
A maximum of 50 participants will be accepted for this year’s symposium.
Conference contact:
Buckwheat Donahue, 907-983-2854 or carlin_donahue@hotmail.com

On Sunday, March 13th, at 7pm, at the Wilda Marston Theater, Loussac Library, Anchorage, author, scientist and poet Dr Sandra Steingraber presents "Toxic Trespass:" Chemicals in our Environment and Effects on Reproductive Health." There will be a reception at 6.30pm, open to the public.

Sara Juday passes on this link: some speculations about the future of books. http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/jefishman/2011/02/15-predictions-for-the-future-of-books/

Medred: Writing should be easy work -- and other thoughts from a long-time journalist

Thanks to Craig Medred, our February featured author, for this final guest-post.

Writing should be easy work. Most of the time, you do it from a comfortable chair inside a warm building. You don't have to worry about hitting your thumb with a hammer or sleet freezing in your eyes.

There is a little danger of falling off a second story and breaking your neck, or grabbing the wrong wires and electrocuting yourself, or crashing the plane and killing a bunch of folk.

Journalism should be even easier work. Writers struggle to create characters and plots. Journalists merely record life for later playback, or at least that's what the best of them do. Any number of journalists now have become little more than stenographers. They write down what those in authority say, never questioning, and then publish it -- in whatever form -- as the news of the day.

Democracy is not particularly well served by the stenographers, but it is an easier way to make a living than real journalism. Stenography is simple to defend in what has become the war zone of American public opinion: "Look, I only wrote down what this guy said. Don't blame me.It's not my fault. He said it!”

Journalism, real journalism, takes a curious mind, a willingness to challenge authority and, God forbid, a little passion. The latter might be the hardest thing to sustain. Journalism is a form of combat thankfully free of bullets most of the time, but always heavy with battle fatigue. Most of the best journalists I know have moved on. Howard Weaver at the Anchorage Daily News was at one time among the best columnists in America. He drank too much. He partied too much. Eventually he decided it would be wiser, and easier, to manage people than to write every day. He rose to great heights on the business side of journalism before he quit to become a Twitter fiend.

Maybe Twitter is the future of journalism. Maybe Howard is one giant step ahead of us in the devolution of news. There are newspaper and now online editors who have been chasing the holy grail of ever shorter stories for decades. Journalism, they contend, needs to shrink to bite size (like junk food) to stay in step with the shrinking attention spans of consumers in the wired world.

All the news that's fit to print really should fit in one sentence, shouldn't it?
Whatever.

Against this backdrop, if you do this particular form of writing known as journalism, as I have done for a long time now, it is easy to get disheartened. The sound bite rules a good part of news these days, and what it doesn't rule is largely owned by people who do the "public relations." I once contemplated going to back to university to write a master’s thesis about them: "The New Real Journalism: How PR Stole the Show.”

A lot of the people who work in the big machine of public relations are essentially what journalists used to be -- beat reporters. They know their beats, too, know them exceptionally well. Many of the people who write the PR were reporters who got out to go somewhere they could learn a lot about something instead of being expected to know a little about everything, and then write about it as if they knew a lot.
Most of these ex-journalists appear comfortable and happy in the PR world. They are well paid, much more so than any of us on this side. They are surrounded by their people. They work for a unified team. If the world doesn't like what they do, it doesn't matter so much. They're still part of the team.

Journalists -- those damn members of what Sarah Palin likes to call the “lamestream media” -- are increasingly out there alone or in shrinking tribes trying to defend what they do against a society divided against itself. The questions reporters most often face these days aren't about the substance of what journalism does, but "Are you a conservative or a liberal?"

Sometimes it's almost funny. Because I work for an organization --AlaskaDispatch.com -- that raised questions about the ethical lapses of U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller, a self-proclaimed conservative with a history of collecting government benefits, I ran into people who refused to be interviewed because "you're a damn liberal.” And the truth is that ever since self-proclaimed "common-sense conservative" Gov. Sarah Palin led a tax assault on the state's oil industry that netted the state billions of dollars but might have jeopardized Alaska long-term economic future, I'm not at all sure where the lines are drawn between liberal and conservative in this state anymore.

By and large, it shouldn't matter either. Good journalism doesn't worry about such things. It focuses on rooting around with a flashlight in the dark corners of politics and government. It recognizes the need to rattle the towers of power because in this country there aren't supposed to be towers of power, because in this country the power is supposed to remain with the citizenry.

As a young journalist, these were easy things to believe. It was easy to maintain that passion about American democracy and the role of journalism in it, and the passion, when you get down to it, is the essence of any good writing. The problem is that as one gets older, it gets more difficult to keep burning the fire in the belly.

It's not so much that the writing gets any harder; it's that the living does. If you are good at what you do, you end up pissing off not just your enemies but a lot of your friends because the world is not a simple place with issues always painted in black and white.

There are a lot of grays. People can get as angry when the grays mess up their perfect black-and-white vision as they can when you wash away all the grays to expose the underlying black and white. The result is a lot of blowback. There has always been blowback in journalism. There seems now, though, more than ever. It makes this particular kind of writing known as journalism increasingly hard.

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places,”' Nobel prize winner Ernest Hemingway once wrote. "But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.”

Hemingway was one of the greatest of American writers and a pretty decent journalist at times. He eventually put a shotgun to his head and killed himself. Writing might be easy work, but it's dangerous nonetheless.

Good writers spend too much time inside their own heads. Good journalists -- those writers who aren't imaginative enough to be real writers -- are only slightly better off. They spend too much time thinking and questioning, always questioning. It is the essence of what they do, and the real danger in the job. It is the contemplation not the stenography that makes the easy job of writing journalism damn hard work.

But it is nice to work in a warm, well-lighted place. There is that.

Craig Medred is the author of "Graveyard of Dreams: Dashed Hopes and Shattered Aspirations Along Alaska's Iditarod Trail." He was the outdoor editor of the Anchorage Daily News for 20 years and now writes for the online publication AlaskaDispatch.com.

Andromeda: Butt in the chair time -- and a call for guest posts!

Not a fancy phrase there, but elegance would only obscure the issue. Yes, I'm talking about how to simply stay seated, stay focused, stay off email, and keep writing. It's a problem for writers at every level and in my experience, it doesn't get any easier. I've often shared the fact that I was a more disciplined writer when my children were babies, because I understood how limited my uninterrupted time was and didn't want to squander it. My time is stretched in other ways now, and I have no one to blame but myself. So I keep looking for tricks. (At the bottom of this post, I'll be looking for yours!)

After I write this, I'll spend 2.5 hours working on a novel edit. I'm doing some late-stage stuff: inputting changes I've manually written on a printed manuscript. I did well yesterday by parking myself at a cafe and keeping an eye on the clock, demanding 50 pages of corrections per hour for about three hours. Note the exact times, the pagecounts -- yes, that's how I keep my butt in the chair. Much harder to do when you're at the creative stage, starting a novel for example. You can sit three or four hours and still not end up with 500 to 1000 words, though that's what I aim to produce in that amount of time. This may all seem elementary, but I'd written for several years before I stumbled upon the very encouraging math: if you write 3000 words a week, and keep only 1000 of those words, you still have half of a good-sized novel at year's end. My 'problem' (if it is a problem) is that I toss so much of what I write and revise for as many months -- often more -- than I spend writing a first draft.

For me, all of this can be easier when I'm writing in a public place, because then my self-distraction options are more limited. Yes, I wander off to the bathroom, but I have to hustle, worrying about the laptop left back on the table. (Very old laptop. Hopefully no one will ever steal it.) At home, I'd probably end up flossing my teeth and doing the dishes rather than hurry back to the page.

In her January blogpost, Marybeth Holleman referred to a great trick by Ron Carlson. She wrote: "He calls it the twenty-minute rule. When you start to leave the page and get up for a break, make yourself write for another twenty minutes. Sometimes it’s only the twenty, which is something, but sometimes (oh miracle of miracles) it stretches to 30, 60, even 120 minutes."

So, we've got wordcounts and pagecounts. Hourly minimums or perhaps a minimum number of days per week (curse that Stephen King, who says he writes every single day, even Christmas). We have Carlson's twenty-minute rule. What else?

This is your chance to share with your fellow wordsmiths. I'm looking for three or four guestposts about how you keep your butt in the chair. Or how you fail to do so -- but keep trying. Please send to lax@alaska.net.

I'll run them in early April, when we'll be having - thematic tie-in - an incredibly fun new event called the Raven Write-a-thon. Five hours (or better yet, 4.9!) of butt-in-the-chair time at a private, catered gathering held at Snow City Cafe on Friday April 8, with afterparty to follow, or in the convenience of your home, or at a satellite celebration (please contact us if you'd like to get organize one in your locale). This event is modeled on a similar font-raising/fundraising event in San Diego called "Blazing Laptops," as well as community writing 'lock-ins' held at other writing centers, like Grub Street. Registration for the write-a-thon will open in March. More details coming soon.

But look at the clock! I'm supposed to be writing/editing...

Deb: On Mentors

At the recent AWP Conference in Washington DC, I attended a session called “Writers on Mentors and Literary Friendships.” Part of my interest came from requests that our 49 Alaska Writing Center offer formal mentoring opportunities for writers statewide. The other part came from my admiration for session organizer Jayne Anne Phillips, who has been something of a long-distance muse for me.

Phillips’ own Lark and Termite as well as a number of books that she teaches in her fiction workshop at Rutgers have helped me write deeper and better. She taught me to take risks in language, to consider the spiral form of the narrative, to consider connections that are beyond space and time, to feel one’s way into a story through the words themselves.

On the panel, Phillips spoke of her own mentor, publisher Seymour Lawrence, noting that “literary friendships sustain us.” A mentor convinces you that might actually be able to do this fuzzy and impossible thing we call writing. Though the relationship may in some aspects be personal, Phillips says she believes it is primarily based on the work. As a mentor and teacher, Phillips considers most of her duty to cultivate “addictive, passionate readers.”

Agreeing that a mentor’s primary influence is in matters of craft was Alexander Chee, who says Annie Dillard taught him to write around the best sentences in a piece and to abandon voices that were trapped, nervous, or lazy. From Dillard, he also learned that “you can’t invent the details that matter.”

Washington Post book columnist Michael Dirda spoke of how mentors ease the way into publishing, a comment that sparked some heated discussion about the publishing odds and what good mentoring is all about. From a somewhat surprising source – the organizer of this year’s AWP Conference – came this thought: “The mature writer lives and thrives in solitude.”

Solitude, yes, but most of us also appreciate at least some sense of community. Perhaps the idea is more that there is a season to be mentored, and a season for giving back, even as we continue seek out writers who inspire us.

49 Writers volunteer Lorena Knapp took time recently to introduce me to a couple of online mentoring groups she’s involved with. Technology offers more ways than ever for emerging writers to build relationships with established writers I don’t know yet exactly what sort of mentoring opportunities will grow out of 49 Writers, but e-mentoring is one of the potential programs we’ll be studying over the next several months. If you have thoughts or suggestions, we’d love to hear them.

Deb: Young Writers

What are your early memories of writing? Like many of you (I suspect), I grew up in a house filled with books. My parents didn’t go in much for fancy furniture or artwork, but our living room walls were lined with bookshelves, the practical metal kind that stretched on tension rods from floor to ceiling. To squelch my whining about being bored, my parents assigned me to alphabetize our home library one summer. That might sound tedious, but I loved handling our hundreds of books, thumbing the pages, imagining the wonders between the covers.

But neither our freshly-organized home library nor the boxy modern downtown library could compare with the library at Silas Willard School, with its big sunny windows, wide polished woodwork, walls that curved into a cove filled with picture books, and ceiling so tall that to a six-year-old the place it seemed a cathedral. Next to wandering the stacks, running my finger over the spines, savoring the difficult choice of which three books to choose every week, I loved nothing more than the privilege of perching at the big oak desk, poised to stamp the due date each book as it was checked out.

There must have been a librarian in that magical place, but I’m embarrassed to say I have no memory of that person, though gender roles in those days, I’m pretty sure those books were guarded by a woman – guarded, because that’s how I felt about books even then – there was nothing in my young life of more value.

Despite my huge love for stories, I don’t recall ever aspiring to write one. No one ever talked about authors, or the excitement of creating with words. I was a post-Sputnik child, and all the writing we did was strictly school stuff. Packaged curricula were the rage, and when I blasted through the SRA box, my teachers assigned my reports out of Time-Life books for adults, which I dutifully completed. I wonder what might have happened if someone had suggested I write a poem or a story; if there were some hint that in creative writing I might find an avocation if not a vocation.

I should add that what my parents didn’t spend on lavish furnishings they were happy to spend on enrolling me in extracurricular activities. In our little college town, I took ballet lessons, horse-riding lessons, pottery lessons, and swim lessons. I went to scout camp and day camp. But there were no options for kids to explore and celebrate their love of the written word.

Of course much has changed since I was a child. Thanks to programs like the National Writing Project, teachers now encourage students to write for discovery and, yes, pleasure. But as school days tighten around standards and outcomes, there seems to be a disconnect between creativity and excellence, a topic I’ll be exploring in a teacher inservice for the Pribilof School District in April. Across Alaska, there aren’t enough opportunities for young writers to pursue their love of words, of stories, of books.

One of our goals at 49 Writers is to explore ways to extend our mission to support Alaska’s young writers. We’ve got a number of great models to study. Seattle and Portland, among other cities, offer vibrant Writers in the Schools Programs that create extended residencies for creative writers in school classrooms. Writing centers like the Loft offer workshops for young writers, while Grub Street and Lighthouse offer drop-in programs, the latter run by former Alaskan Megan Nix.

This term we’re starting with a teen-friendly Anchorage-based course, The Graphic Novel, offered afternoons during spring break. Early in March, we plan to also take applications for instructors to teach summer youth writing workshops in a program tentatively titled “Raven Words.” We’ve got wonderful models for the sort of fun, creative, inspirational summer writing workshops we’ve got in mind: True Ink in Asheville, Badgerdog in Austin, Summer Creative Writing Workshops in Houston, and the Bard College Young Writers Workshops.

We hope to inspire young writers in ways that are richer and more meaningful than anything that might have had open to us. We’d love your thoughts on the best ways to make that happen.

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Registration is open for these 49 Writing Center March courses: Graphic Novel with Lee Post starts March 7th. Alaskan Screenwriting 101 with Don Rearden starts March 15th. A two-hour clinic, Publishing in the Literary Marketplace with Ronald Spatz, takes place March 26.

Also: 49 Writers and the 49 Alaska Writing Center are asking writers, readers, and everyone in the literary community to take our 2011 planning survey. Ten questions, three minutes. Thanks so much for your input.

Midnight Sun Visiting Writers Series: Jeanne E. Clark will be reading her poetry this Friday, February 18th, 7pm, at the Museum of the North, Fairbanks. Books will be for sale, and signatures available.

On Friday February 18th at 6:00pm, there will be a Poetry Slam & Open Mic at The Canvas, 223 Seward St., Juneau, AK. Hosted by Na Haan & Christy Namee Eriiksen with DJ Manuel. Slam winner takes home $25. All ages, all abilities welcome.

On Friday, February 18th, at 7:00pm, Fireside Books, 720 South Alaska St #B, Palmer, AK 99645 presents Chulitna: A Conversation in Poems with Mike Burwell and Randoll Bruns.

On Saturday February 19th at 1:00pm, the Pulpwood Queens present Storytime at Barnes and Noble, 200 East Northern Lights Blvd, Anchorage, AK

Juneau writers (Writers United) will be meeting again downtown at the Rookery cafe (111 Seward St., next to Shoefly) at 2 p.m. on Saturday, February 19th. One of their members sent this link to Stanley Fish's interview, which led to a proposed discussion of "favorite sentences" as part of the meeting. At the top of the print interview there is a link to the audio interview with NPR. Check it out. All writers, artists, and friends are welcome.  Bring your favorite sentence!

Rilke's Duino Elegies Discussion Group meets again on Sunday February 20th, at 2:30pm Fireside Books, 720 S Alaska St., Palmer. They're reading Stephen Mitchell's translation.

Pastries and Page-turners takes place Sunday, February 20th at 3:00pm, at the Downtown Library, Juneau. Bring your favorite books to review and see what others are reading. For more information contact Carol at 586-0434.

On Monday February 21 from 5:00pm-7:00pm, the UAA Campus Bookstore presents Ice Floe:  In the Beginning with Shannon Gramse. The poetry journal Ice Floe had its beginning in 2000.  Editors Shannon Gramse and Sarah Kirk continued to place circumpolar poetry side by side in beautiful bilingual winter/summer issues for a decade.  In honoring the success of the journal, selections from Ice Floe have been compiled into the book Ice Floe New & Selected Poems, published by University of Alaska Press in 2010.  Shannon Gramse teaches in CPDS at UAA.  At this event he will discuss how Ice Floe came together. All bookstore events are free, open to the public, with free parking available.

Write For Your Life" group takes place 10-11am every Wednesday, Mendenhall Valley library, Juneau. Share a journal, memoir, a letter or poetry. Details: Dixie, 907-789-2068

SCBWI (the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) will meet on Wednesday, Feb 23, from 7 – 8:30 p.m. in the conference room at the Starbucks on E. Dimond (across from Borders Books)... Annette Drake will be leading the meeting. She will be sharing information about "Agent Vs. Writer" that she learned at a conference. Also, please bring your own writing news, questions, and information to share. There will also be time for critiques.  If you have a short manuscript, feel free to bring it.

On Wednesday March 16 at 7 pm, in honor of Irish Awareness Month, Poetry Parley will be celebrating the works of Seamus Heaney. So if you have a poem or two of his you'd like to read, or if you'd just like to read in general, send email to Jonathan Minton.

Rose Metal Press Announces Its 2011 Open Reading Period for Full-length Hybrid Manuscripts! From February 15 through March 30, 2011, they are actively seeking full-length hybrid and cross-genre manuscripts for consideration for publication in 2012. Particularly desirable are short short, flash, and micro-fiction; prose poetry, novels-in-verse or book-length linked narrative poems; flash nonfiction or book-length memoirs in shorts; and other literary works that move beyond traditional genres to find new forms of expression. Submissions welcome in all styles and on all subjects, and encourage a broad and expansive interpretation of hybridity.

UAA's MFA program has announced that essayist Richard Rodriguez will be the keynote speaker for their 2011 summer residency. His keynote address to MFA students and faculty follows on Sunday, July 10.  The free, public event will be held on Sunday, July 10th, when Rodriguez presents an evening author reading at UAA.

The University of Alaska press has just released Tom Sexton's new book, I Think Again of Those Ancient Chinese Poets. You can order a copy from them, from Amazon, and from The University of Chicago Press. Bookstores can order it. The ISBN # is 978-1-60223-119-1.

Andromeda: Pull-outs, Pilot Bread, a party and a panel

So, Borders is pulling out of its South Anchorage location and shuttering about 200 stores nationwide over the next few weeks. It's not unexpected, and for years, I felt torn between the big-box bookstores and our smaller indies, but not so torn that I failed to spend hundreds of dollars in the conveniently located store, year after year. Our Dimond Blvd. Borders did a particularly good job in its early years serving children, and my do-or-die weekly routine included stopping at the Borders storytime with my toddlers. I could sip coffee and thumb through new books, refreshing my desperate mommy brain while my kids enjoyed the kind attention of several excellent story ladies. Even on the morning of 9/11, when the world had flipped upside down and emotions were running high, the storytime continued, and I remember other parents with glazed, worried expressions, grateful for the continuation of that tranquil, edifying routine in our young children's lives. (Farewell kudos also for the excellent Alaskana collection at Borders and get ready for some great clearance sales.)

So what do you do when bookstores continue closing and the ones still standing don't offer many author events? You get creative and make your own party - as Don Rearden did last night, at Snow Goose Restaurant, celebrating the launch of his debut novel, The Raven's Gift. Forget about a quiet room of somber bookworms: picture instead a Bethel 1993 high school reunion meets hip-lit-night-out meets an Alaska-style night at the Grammies. Tables were decorated with survival-theme centerpieces: Spam, Pilot Bread crackers, and huge cans of fruit. There was free buffet food; there were giveaways; there were Sarah Palin satires and a funny MC named Eskimo Bob. Joan Kane and Jeremy Pataky did wonderful poetry readings. A guitarist-songwriter named Kevin Morgan gave a performance I would have paid to see at any local nightclub, followed by an astounding performance by two of the members of Yup'ik funk-fusion band Pamyua, whose intense harmonies made the floor hum. All of it ran on village time - meaning there was no hurry. And oh yeah, after all those phenomenal acts, sometime after 9 pm, I think, it was Don Rearden's turn to read, something he does with ease. He kept it short, but no problem there - nearly everyone in the audience had already bought their Raven's Gift copies. Good job, Don; you've set the bar high (maybe too high!) for book launches to follow. Those of us not cool enough to have grown up in Bethel aren't quite sure what to do when it's our turn.

Music and humor, food and wine certainly jazz things up. But let me turn now to a very different literary event, if only to reassure the quieter among us that simplicity works, too.

Folks have been asking me how AWP went. Short answer: good trip, lots of chances to learn about and network with writing centers and other organizations. Nonprofit 'business' aside, my greatest pleasure came from one particular panel: "The 1960 National Book Award Revisited: What Makes Fiction Last?" Fifty years after Philip Roth won the NBA for Goodbye Columbus, a self-selected committee of talented and opinionated modern writers and booklovers -- Peter Grimes, Steve Almond, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Brock Clarke, Michael Griffith, Jodee Stanley -- decided to re-read a slew of books from that year and cast their own ballots for the ones they thought should have won. The retroactive new winner: Mrs. Bridge by Evan Connell, with a very close runner-up, Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow.

But simply announcing the panel's "winner" doesn't capture what made the panel so great, agreed several of us lucky to be there. (UAA's David Stevenson also attended and had praise for the panelists.)

In fact, the notion of a single winner - of literary competition - was beside the point. Each panelist championed different books, discussed what they saw authors accomplishing or failing to accomplish, and reflected on authorly ambitions and new insights made possible by hindsight. (Would John Updike, who did not win for his quirky first novel, Poorhouse Fair, and who did win later prizes for his Rabbit books, have become a different kind of writer if he had not been so rewarded - or overrewarded - for the latter?) All agreed that we tend to praise or bestow awards upon books in a conservative fashion, favoring certain kinds of tomes that we think are "good" (or "good for us") rather than the books we simply love. The panelists made a plea for idiosyncracy, for passion, for discussing books openly rather than bestowing singular prizes based on secret meetings, given that we learn and benefit from the discussions themselves more than from the prizes. The panelists were so eloquent -- and so generous. They did us all the favor of role-modeling how literature should be discussed. They also said they plan to continue the experiment next year, when they'll rejudge the 1961 NBAs. I hope they keep it going as long as possible.

Anyone know of a link to the essay that was evidently published about this 'Re-judging the NBAs' experiment? Please share if you do.

Andromeda: If you haven't yet, please take our survey!

One of those amazing coincidences: as of this morning, 49 of you have taken our 2011 planning survey. (No kidding!) Of course, that's a very special number for us, but nonetheless, we'd love for even more of you to add your input. If you haven't already (and we know that many loyal blog readers have) please take three minutes and share your thoughts and priorities for our organizational future.

Please click here for survey.

Deb: Haines to the Rescue, an AWP Retrospective

Flying from off the road and off the grid to the state’s largest city, I developed a love-hate affair with groceries. In the village, I fantasized about strolling the aisles of an Anchorage Carrs store (Fred Meyer hadn’t entered the scene yet), plucking flat tins of smoked oysters and fancy boxed crackers for transport back to the mostly empty shelves in the two-room house where I lived by the meandering Johnson River.

But as I clomped through the city in snow pants and Sorels, the stores overwhelmed me. So many cereals, so many boxes. Bright, colorful, beckoning. Captain Crunch. Frosted Flakes. Six different kinds of granola. I’d wander aisle after aisle, unable to make up my mind, having forgotten whatever it was I had come for.

The recent AWP Conference in Washington DC felt a lot like those grocery store aisles. It wasn’t the sheer volume of people – I’ve attended larger events. It was the large-scale consumerism. The bookfair, with what seemed like miles of literary journals, all hungry for readers. Dozens of MFA programs craving enrollments. So many hopeful writers seeking wisdom and courage and jobs.

So there I wandered, dutifully attending session after session, feeling all snow pants and Sorels, displaced in a way I couldn’t explain. And then came noon, the second day of the conference. A Tribute to John Haines. It was only fitting, I thought, that someone from 49 Writers should be there to honor the state’s best-known author.

The honor was mine. With the help of Haines, present not in body but spirit, I was restored.

Steven Rogers, editor of A Gradual Twilight: An Appreciation of John Haines, opened the tribute by calling Haines “one of the mythic wonders of the twentieth century.” He lauded the poet and essayist for his economy of language and his precise imagery that found their “genesis in labor done to stay alive.”

“He started writing poems as naturally as one learns to speak,” Rogers said of the author of nine books of poetry, including Winter News and The Owl is the Mask of the Dreamer, plus six nonfiction books, including the memoir The Stars, the Snow, and the Fire,“There still lurks in our collective dreaming a desire to do what John Haines did after the war,” Rogers said – to come north, to live off the land, to write from a place of fullness and meaning, alone and apart.

Poet Dana Gioia, whose Interrogations at Noon won the American Book Award and who, while chair of the National Endowment of the Arts, launched Poetry Out Loud and the Big Read, made five significant observations about Haines, calling him “a unique figure in our national literature…archetypal but almost singular in letters.” Like John the Baptist and St. Francis, Haines cut himself off from society by moving to “the outmost extreme of American territory” where he “reinvented his life alone in the wilderness,” giving him “a different sort of insight.”

Thus, noted Gioia, Haines is “primarily a spiritual writer rather than a literary writer, trying to get to the very essence of a thing itself.” In the process, “he made himself marginal,” coming into a place of surrender, submission, and humility before nature. Nonetheless, Gioia claims Haines as “one of the most important literary essayists of our times,” with a gift for stripping away the non-essential.

Finally, said Gioia, Haines “reminds us of the decision some great artists make: to put aside a kind of ambition to gain a kind of freedom.” As he spoke of how Haines found at the margins a spiritual clarity, my discontent slid off like scales, knowing where I’d come from and where I’d return.

Poet Sheryl St. Germain, author of the memoir Swamp Songs: The Making of an Unruly Woman, spoke of how she’d picked up a volume of Haines after her dream of Alaska was shattered by a broken relationship. She praised his clipped, economical prose, his “vision crystalline as a winter day,” agreeing with the Washington Post that Haines “crafts each sentence piece by piece as if building a harpsichord” and with Barry Lopez, who said Haines writes “like someone who has seen the face of God.” Through Haines, she fell in love with the lyrical essay, awed by how he could create “a world utterly present and utterly symbolic.”

Baron Wormers, former Poet Laureate of Maine who himself lived off the grid, noted how for Haines, writing is “tied in with a quest to find out who one is when the necessities of life are not provided by others,” a quest “to meet oneself in solitude.” He spoke of how Haines honors the mystery of silence, of connectedness, and of gratitude, bringing him to a sense of proportion, of not using more than one needs. Rather than struggling to choose one among many, it’s about appreciating what already sits on your shelf.

“John is now living in a hungry winter season,” Rogers said in concluding the tribute. “He was afraid when his time ran out, he would be forgotten.”

Don’t worry, John. We haven’t forgotten.

How to Host an Alaskan Style Book Launch: A guest post by Don Rearden

So the moment you’ve waited for your entire life as a writer has passed, and once again you didn’t win a Pulitzer, despite your best intentions and also not actually having anything published at the time and/or anything worthy of such an award. So you’ll settle for a party to drown your sorrows and launch your recently published or, in my case, debut novel.

Now of course you could have the party at some swanky place near the center of some shining metropolis say New York City or Detroit, or perhaps you could go for somewhere exotic. Somewhere slightly quaint, but still with a population of folks that actually read real books. (As far as I know they haven’t designed the technology for authors to sign eBooks. Yet…shoot, I better copyright and patent that idea!)

I’ve chosen to launch my new novel in the exotic sub-subartic destination of Anchorage, Alaska. I could have selected my hometown of Bethel, Alaska, often called the Flower of the Tundra, but for reasons of expense (in today’s publishing world you will most likely be paying for your own party, too) I’ve decided to host the party in a place where a bag of Doritos doesn’t cost $8.99 and a gallon of orange juice $17.99 a gallon.

So I’ve crafted a quick list of things you need to do in order to host a killer launch party. Seriously, I need you to do some of these things for me…

1. Pick a Date and Time that you think is cool but will work for only a fraction of the people you know. (Trust me, this will save you some money in the long run.) I chose Wednesday, February 16th, from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. This way your friends who watch the Biggest Loser or Minute-to-Win-it will stay home. It’s not like you have anything against them, but you don’t like how everyone cries on those shows and you suspect your friends cry while watching and you don’t want them crying at your party. This is, after all, your party and you’re the only one who gets to cry (if you want to).

2. Select a cool venue. This should be easy in Alaska, as we have many cool places. Or if the room is too hot, you can just open the door. I decided on Anchorage’s Snow Goose Theatre for a couple reasons other than the beer flowing right into the room. The place has ambiance. Which is a fancy word for the kind of cool for which you don’t need to open the outside doors. My logic here is that if folks don’t like your book or the costume you’ve worn, they’ll at least say, “This place has nice ambiance.”

3. Don’t wear a costume. Unless you’ve written a children’s book, I suggest leaving the costume at home.

4. Invite Morgan Freeman or Kiefer Sutherland to do a dramatic reading from your work. (How cool would that be?)

5. Invite some other cool people. Again, this should be easy in Alaska. We’ve got tons of cool people. Some of them might even be your friends, or maybe some are just nice and pretend they are your friends, so as not to hurt your feelings. I won’t name drop, but I’ve invited some cool people. Heck, you might even be one of those people. If you’ve read this far, then you too are cool, and you should consider yourself invited to the party.

49 Writers and other cool people who read and write are invited to celebrate the launch of Don Rearden’s novel The Raven’s Gift.


Cool Time: 2/16/11 7-9 pm

Cool Place: Snow Goose


Cool People: Poets Joan Kane & Jeremy Pataky, Music by Bethel guitar virtuoso Kevin Morgan, members of Pamyua, and host with the Eski-most Eskimo Bob

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Congratulations to our own Deb Vanasse, Program Director for 49 Writers, who is one of three winners in the Guide to Literary Agents “Dear Lucky Agent” contest for literary fiction. Agent judge Lindsey Clemons of Larsen-Pomada Literary Agents selected Deb based on an excerpt from her current novel-in-progress. The winners receive a free year of WritersMarket.com access as well as a critique on their first 10 pages from Lindsey. Along with Matt Roesch, Deb is teaching a 49 Writers Fiction Workshop beginning February 17th: there's one more week to sign up. This class is structured to help you share your work in a rigorous, supportive environment and set a project completion goal; don't miss it.

Courses also coming soon: Alaskan Screenwriting 101 with Don Rearden (starts March 15), and -- a great choice for teens looking for a spring break option -- The Graphic Novel with Lee Post (starts March 7).

Anchorage Press Wanna write for the Press? Think you've got what it takes? Wanna prove it? We're meeting with prospective freelancers on Friday, February 11 at an undisclosed location. If you're interested, email .

On Friday February 11 from 1:00pm-2:00pm, FSDC Co-Chairs Present Global Civil Rights Stories with Dr. Natasa Masanovich and Dr. Patricia Fagan.  Dr. Patricia Fagan presents "The Guise of Self-Serving Philanthropy: Vestiges of Colonialism in Contemporary Latin American Docudrama". And Dr. Natasa Masanovic presents "Black Tea with three Cubes of Sugar: Cosmopolitan Anxieties in Turkish-German Novel”.  Sponsored by DAC and Languages Department.

On Friday, February 11, 2011 at 8 pm, ACT-SO presents SpeakEasy featuring Baltimore Poet Komplex with R&B Musical Guest "Jaquisa" hosted by Wisdom. Wilda Marston Theater - Loussac Library 3600 Denali. $15 in advance; $20 at the door. For tickets & info call (907) 444-1199

Middle Way Cafe presents "Text Me," opening Friday, February 11th and running through April 6th; opening reception Friday, February 11th, 6-8.30pm.  Over 30 local artists were invited to interpret 'text' in some way and create an art piece based on their interpretations. Northern Lights Mall, Anchorage.

Mike Dillingham presents Rivers: Unknown Trails on Saturday, February 12, 11:00am at Pandemonium Books, 1325 E. Palmer-Wasilla Highway, Wasilla, Alaska

Rilke's "Duino Elegies Discussion Group:  Sunday, Feb 13, 2:30pm
Fireside Books, 720 S Alaska St., Palmer, Alaska. We'll be reading Stephen Mitchell's translation. Each week we'll delve into one of the Elegies. We'll take a very simple approach to each week's poem. First we'll read it out loud together, taking turns doing the reading. Then we'll do a closer reading of as much of the poem, to see how much of the poem we can make sense of. Finally, we'll read the poem again to see what the poem has to say to us in the 21st Century.

On Monday February 14 from 1:00pm-2:00pm: Love in the Afternoon--Love poems recited from UAA faculty and staff in celebration of Valentine's Day. UAA Campus Bookstore.

Are you a Fablehaven Fan? Excitement is growing about author Brandon Mull's upcoming visit next Tuesday, February 15th at 4:30pm in the Loussac Library, Wilda Marston Theatre, level one. Books will be available for purchase and signing after the presentation. This event is open to school-age youth and interested adults.

Gregory Button presents Uncertainty in the Wake of Environmental Disasters on Wednesday, February 16, at 6:00pm, UAA/APU Consortium Library, 3211 Providence Drive, Anchorage, AK. This event is sponsored by EPSCoR and the UAA Campus Bookstore. All events are free and open to the public with free parking.

Poetry Parley is here again on Wednesday February 16th, at  7:00pm, featuring Nikki Giovanni. Out North, 3800 DeBarr Road, Anchorage.

UAF Visiting Writers will feature poet Jeanne E. Clark on Friday February 18th, at 7:00pm
UAF Museum of the North, Fairbanks, AK

Have you taken the Alaska Council on the Arts Strategic Planning Survey? http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/456068/Final-ASCA-Strategic-Planning-Survey-2011
Speak up for literary arts funding/programming and your own interests as a writer and reader, as well as your views about the arts in general. Deadline is February 28th.

Short Story Contest for all Alaska Women:
Each entry must contain a cover sheet with author’s name, address, phone number, email, story title, and word count.
The short story must be between 250 and 5,000 words and contain some lesbian content. Stories should be on 8.5-x-11 size paper, double spaced, 1-inch margins, no less than size 10 font. Do not put author’s name on the story. The fiction and lesbian stipulations may be interpreted by the author, but we are not seeking poetry or non-fiction. Erotica is acceptable. Electronic submissions are not accepted. Unpublished submissions only.
Author must be a woman living in Alaska as of January 2011.
April 1, 2011 is the postmark deadline for entries.
There is no entry fee.
Winner receives $500 and the winning short story will appear on and may also be published in the Alaska LGBT literary journal.
Honorable mentions will be given at the judges’ discretion.
Winners will be announced at Celebration of Change April 23, 2011. For list of complete list of winners, include a SASE with entry.
Mail entries by April 1 to: Radical Arts for Women Short Story Contest, PO Box 244436, Anchorage AK 99524-4436.

Librarian and author Ann Dixon has posted an interview with Alaska author Debby Dahl Edwardson, author of Blessing's Bead.

Fairbanksian Sue Ann Bowling's science-fiction novel, Homecoming, is a finalist in the 2010 Reader Views literary awards.

Writer Ann Chandonnet will be reading from and signing her two latest books on April 6, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., at the Burke County Library, 204 South King Street, Morganton. Write Quick: War and a Woman's Life in Letters, 1835-1867 (Winoca Press, Wilmington), based on family letters including several from her great, great, great grandmother.  The Pioneer Village Cookbook (Native Ground Books & Music, Asheville) is a cross-country collection of information, home remedies and recipes that would have been used about the time of Daniel Boone and a bit later, as folks moved West. Free and open to the public.

Ann is also going to be going to be one of the presenters at the Blue Ridge Bookfest, May 20 and 21, in Flat Rock near Hendersonville, on the campus of Blue Ridge Community College.

Paths Not Taken: A Guest Post by Rich Chiappone

I’m sitting in the back yard of our house in Phoenix, homesick for my wife and cats, but grateful not to be in Anchor Point too, because the 65 degree sunshine here makes the countdown of days to my impending neck surgery a little more pleasant than the January freeze/thaw cycle ongoing at home might.

Phoenix is a phenomenally noisy place, as maybe all large cities are. Dogs bark ceaselessly from morning to night, their owners gone for the day or simply deaf to it. Jet airplanes roar in and out of Sky Harbor airport with similar constancy; one morning when atmospheric conditions were just right, their persistent white contrails made tick tack toe boards across the sky overhead. Even the birds are noisy here.

OK, nobody can complain about too many birdsongs –not even a known crank like me. In truth, sitting outside all day long here working on my writing (something my heartfelt loathing of snow keeps me from doing at home) I am aware of the noisy feathered buggers in a whole new way. Though I can’t actually hear the gang of chipping sparrows chatting amongst themselves in the pyracantha bush (I can see their lips move) the mockingbird’s constant song, the curve billed thrashers’ pushy shrill, the male grackles’ watery warble might turn me into a real live birder yet. But it is another sound that caught my ear today.

Early each morning as soon as the sun is high enough to hit the curved-back wicker chair under the tangelo tree, I have coffee and listen to the first birds of the day. Today their music was overwhelmed with a sound much more familiar to me: hammers hammering. Later, walking the neighborhood, I found the source: roofers replacing shingles on a home around the corner. It reminded me of something that happened shortly after my first book was published.

In the spring of 2004 I found myself a visiting writer, of all things, at the Interlochen Institue of the Arts in Michigan, a guest of the writer Jack Driscoll who taught there for more than thirty years. Interlochen is a high school for talented young artists and must be endowed rather fabulously by its famous alumnae. Graduates include singers and musicians and actors and writers whose work we have all paid money to hear or watch or read. The campus encompasses acres of gorgeous wooded land and even a lake or two. I arrived in Traverse City late at night, and was delivered to a little guest house sitting on the shore of a lovely small lake. It had a grand piano in the living room. In the morning I would do a reading and Q and A, just like a real writer. I think I fell asleep holding onto my book, worried that the actual author, whoever he was, might show up and take it from me.

That next morning I set out on foot, my book safely under my arm, heading for the writing center a half mile away, walking a woodsy path through clusters of woodsy guest cabins and even woodsier trees. I kept repeating my mantra: They think you are a writer. They think you are a writer. They think you are a writer. I was halfway there when I heard a sound that stopped me: hammers hammering. Actually, it was nail-guns nailing, but the effect was the same. I was in the vicinity of something I actually knew something about: construction.

I followed the Siren sound to the site of a new performing arts building going up, overlooking the little lake. Framers were framing walls, laborers were shoveling debris. A man in a hard hat hoisted a two by twelve up to a carpenter straddling the roof rafters. Somebody ran a chop saw somewhere around the side of the new building. The back-up beeper on the front loader called to me.

All metaphors aside, the path truly did fork. One leg of the Y headed toward the writing center just as Jack had told me it would; the other leg led directly to the job. I’m not really a trained carpenter either, but I had been a union painter and paperhanger since 1972, and I had built my own house by hand. I had put on a hard hat and strapped on a tool belt and worked on construction sites like this nearly every weekday of my adult life. I could fake being a framer just as well as standing in front of a room full of precocious teenage geniuses trying to convince them and myself I belonged there. Maybe better.

I mean, I really wanted to throw my book in the lake and pick up the tools I knew how to use. Really.

Today I finished hand correcting and revising the hard copy of something I’ve been working on for a long time. Tomorrow I need to pick up the manuscript again and go back through it page by page typing the penciled changes into this keyboard, this tool I have had to learn to use because I wrecked my neck bones using those other ones, this tool I’m just now beginning to feel competent with.

Just the same, I hope those guys down the street finish that roof soon.

The noise is bothering the birds.

Rich Chiappone's latest book is Opening Days, a collection of essays, stories and poems.

Medred: Noisy Silence

Silence amplifies every sound. It is an odd thing, but in thesilence you hear the crunch each time a ski pole punches through thefresh, untracked whiteness into old and weathered snow beneath.

You hear the hiss of skis on the surface of the buried trail, and a clatter when the skis cross the unseen ice formed by water percolating out of the hidden soils of the muskeg.You hear the crinkle of the cold-stiffened nylon of wind pants, the jingle of the rabies tag on the dog ahead and the tiny whisper of the wind in the tops of the spruce trees.

And when you catch and pass the old dog at last at the end of the long climb into the valley, and make the turn for the long, fast downhill race back home that forces you to stop occasionally now to wait for him to catch up, you hear his heavy breathing as he comes down the trail, panting in the dark. You hear it long before the beam of the headlight probing the night finds the reflective dots of his eyes, and you shatter the night with your words.

“C’mon, Hoss. Atta boy. Let’s go.’’

And some writers think the great white silence of the north silent.

Almost never is the silence silent. Even when you stand perfectly still to put an end to the man-caused disturbances, there are often sounds. You hear the trees when they pop in the cold. You hear the earthquakes coming, as one did just the other day, seconds before they arrive for reasons not clearly understood. You hear the northern lights crackling overhead. And you hear that wind every time the planet breathes.

When it breathes heavily, you sometimes hear the wind too much. It can become a banshee. I remember mountain biker Kathi Merchant describing how its insistent, never-ending scream almost drove her mad along the Bering Sea coast one year on the Iditarod Trail to Nome.

Sometimes out in the great while silence you cannot escape the sound no matter how much you might wish to do so. Once, out in a white winter maelstrom with a friend, I remember contemplating whether wind noise and a snapping parka hood could threaten one with hearing loss. I actually did a little research later and discovered a study of motorcycle riders concluded wind noise can, indeed, do damage.

The sound at speeds of 65 mph or above can get up around 103dB, whichis normally thought of as the noise-generating territory of chainsaws and pneumatic drills. Some authorities on hearing protection recommend earplugs for motorcyclists, even those wearing helmets. The research makes you wonder if ear plugs might not be a good idea at times for mountaineers at times.

But this isn't about protecting anyone’s hearing. This is about how we, as writers, see and hear because good writing isn’t really about words. It is about observations. To quote a writer far, far better than me, good writing is about "the good and the bad, the ecstacy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”

Students of the game will, of course, recognize that quote as stolen from the late Ernest Hemingway, a man of simple words and powerful observations: "What was his talent anyway? It was a talent all right,but instead of using it, he had traded on it. It was never what he had done, but always what he could do.''

You have to wonder if Hemingway was writing about himself there in "The Snows of Kiliminjaro.'' Good writers are the most insecure egotists you'll ever meet. It’s somewhat inevitable. It takes great confidence to be a good writer in a world where there is no definition for “good.’’ You can use the same exact words to tell a story that inspires as to tell as a story that bores. It is the reason good writers are always on edge.

I was sitting in the kitchen of one of those writers the other day, drinking a beer while she confessed her fears about how the book on which she was working might turn out to be a flop. It won't. I know the raw material fairly well, and it is extremely good. And I know the writer. She sees and hears wonderfully, and that is what this is about.

To write well, it is probably best to forget about writing. Get the words out of your head. Let the movies in. Watch them. Listen to them. Try to grasp the feel and taste. Let the the good and the bad, the ecstacy, the remorse and the sorrow of the characters become yours. And then describe it as best you can.

It’s all really that simple; and that damn difficult.

Craig Medred is the author of "Graveyard of Dreams: Dashed Hopes and Shattered Aspirations Along Alaska's Iditarod Trail." He was the outdoor editor of the Anchorage Daily News for 20 years and now writes for the online publication AlaskaDispatch.com.

So you want to create a graphic novel: A Guest Post by Lee Post

Lee Post's comic strip, "Your Square Life," appeared in the Anchorage Press over seven years, for a total of 300 comic strips. Since then, he has had four books published and distributed locally, including two children's books and a 'best of' compilation of the comic strip. Most recently, Post drew the first chapter of A Native Lad by Sarah Hurst and had a large retrospective of his work on display at the Dorothy G. Page Museum in Wasilla. His blog, www.yoursquarelife.blogspot.com , contains a sample of recent projects.

So you want to create a graphic novel.

Step 1: buy a pencil, a small stack of paper, three erasers, and a comfy chair.

Step 2: Say, “so long for now” to your family and friends.

Step 3: Retreat to a dark room with a lot of coffee.

Step 4: Write and draw whatever you want for pages, pages, and pages.

Step 5: Get some rest and swear you’ll never do that again.

Step 6: Repeat.

What is forgotten when someone, namely me, sits down to create some comic art, is how long everything takes. Just sitting down to a word processor is only a tiny part of the process. There’s the sketching, the writing, the researching, the drawing, the refining of the drawing, and the lettering to worry about. It can be quite the tedious drag.

What I forget even more frequently is the power of that process. There are countless options available to any comic creator. By teeter-tottering between words and pictures and adding in a few word balloons and sound effects, within an instant, any amateur has a finely tuned control over the reader’s focus, perception of time, and mood.

Comics are usually lumped in with memories of kids running around with bathroom towel capes and moody teens, often for good reason. They are the territory of crashing fists, magical elves, and ever-young teen hijinks. The comics of our youth travel in action, melodrama, and slap-stick humor. Because the styles became so familiar over time, like a bad TV sitcom, the narrative power of most comics turned into a pale imitation of themselves.

What gets forgotten is that comics are a direct line into the imagination, giving the artist total control over every bit of information offered to the reader. Putting it into practice, nevertheless, is just a lot of work.

Up for the challenge?  In just a few weeks, Lee Post will be teaching The Graphic Novel:  Telling Stories with Pictures at the 49 Alaska Writing Center in Anchorage.  Lee looks forward to working with students of all ages, and to make it accessible to high school students, we've scheduled the class over the course of four afternoons during Spring Break. 

Things My Fancy Author Friends Never Told Me: A Guest Post by Don Rearden

I’ve had the great fortune to have some incredible authors as both friends and mentors, from the start of my fledgling writing career as a goofy kid from the tundra who knew nothing about writing or the publishing world to a goofy professor who seems to know even less about the former or the latter (this sentence as a case in point).

Even with all that luck and all that great advice there are still a few things that my fancy author friends never told me. Perhaps they knew I had to learn some stuff on my own, or just maybe there is a secret society of writers who refuse to share that very information that makes them so darn fancy.

So, in the long-standing tradition of Alaskans who go rogue, I am now officially sharing the five most important top secret writing and publishing tips that all writers need and until today no one was willing to share.

So here, without further ado here are the things my fancy author friends should have told me:

1. Find a US publisher. Sure it’s really cool to have your book translated into Canadian, but this confuses people. At first your friends will point out they can’t get your book on Amazon.com, as if you weren’t aware of this, or they will call the local book store and ask for your book and then the local bookstore will call and ask why they can’t get your book in the US. (Then there is the whole problem of “color” being spelled “colour” and your friends think you don’t know how to spell colour!)

2. Change your name. This seems obvious right? You should have a cool writerly name that looks good on book covers and in reviews. A name that is easy to say, easy to spell, and is sexy. For starters, try not to have a name that also has a body part in it, as in “ass” or “rear.” If your name is chronically misspelled, perhaps just change it to the misspelling.

3. Learn how to sign your changed name. For whatever reason, some people want you to deface their new book with your chicken scratch signature. Consider actually holding a pen or pencil in your hand and relearning how to write. Or if you never really did properly learn how to write your name with a pen or pencil, consider hacking off your writing arm with a Swiss Army knife. Then write a book and movie about that experience and people will be excited about the little scrawl you’ve dashed out inside their book.

4. Write something fun and cheery. Unless you cut your arm off with a dull pocket knife, or you’re some kind of Tiger Mom, or are dead with a collection of novels in your dresser titled The Girl With… you’ll definitely want to write happy fun stuff. You don’t want to be in an interview with a reporter and have to tell her you’ve killed off most of Alaska, but it’s just metaphor and it really is a novel about hope and love.

5. Never Ever Ever Ever check your Amazon Rating. Even if you didn’t follow my advice for step one, and you landed a Canadian publisher, and you also didn’t change your name, learn how to sign it with your one good arm, or write something fun and cheery --- then promise me you’ll never ever, ever, ever, check your Amazon rating. Ever. Even Amazon Canada. I have warned you. This magical meaningless number will consume your waking hours. The numbers will go up and down like your blood pressure after the whole Swiss Army knife thing. You might even break into the top 100 for days on end if you’re lucky and your book is fun and cheery enough or you’ve changed your name to Snookie. Whatever the number, whatever the temptation to see where your book sits in the mysterious Amazon list, don’t do it. Don’t check. This is the crystal meth of the writing world. One hit from the Amazon pipe, and one moment you’re at 30,005 and then 23, higher than a Kite Runner (9,735), and then you’re falling going completely rogue and at 57,386.

Follow those bits of sage wisdom and you’re sure to find success in whatever you choose to write, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll become one of those fancy authors you’ve always dreamed of becoming --- the kind who doesn’t need advice like the rest of us.

Don Rearden Reardon author of The Raven’s Gift has both arms and a Swiss Army knife. He checked his Amazon Canada ranking twenty-eight times while writing this and at press time his novel was at 6,754, sailing above Kite Runner and Going Rogue, but beneath The Belly Fat Cure.

[Tip from a writer who is body-part challenged (see #2, above):  Check out Don's recent post "How I Got My Agent" on The Guide to Literary Agents Blog.]

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Today, Friday February 4th, is First Friday! 49 Writers presents Marybeth Holleman at 5.30pm, at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art, 427 D Street, Anchorage. Right after that, you can catch Marybeth again: Mike Burwell and Cirque Journal are holding a First Friday reading at MTS Gallery, 3142 Mtn View Drive, 8-10pm, with Marybeth Holleman and others.

Alaska Quarterly Review also holds a 'First Friday' tonight at 7pm at Jitters, 1401 Old Glenn Hwy Eagle River. The musical guest will be the UAA Jazz Combo. There will be readings from Alaska Quarterly Review. Admission is free.

In celebration of the release of Dana Stabenow's 18th Kate Shugak novel, Though Not Dead, Dana will be giving readings all over the state this week. Today, Friday February 4th, she'll be at the Juneau Public Library at 7pm. On Saturday, February 5th, she'll be at Loussac Public Library in Anchorage at 3pm. On Sunday, February 6th, she'll be at Wien Public Library in Fairbanks at 2pm.

Join author and activist Stacy Malkan on Wednesday, February 9th, at 12:00pm to discuss her book, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, and learn more about the products you are using. UAA Student Union, 2921 Sprit Way, Anchorage, AK. Brought to UAA as a part of Healthy Sexuality Week.

Beginning with the 2011-2012 school year, the Alaska State Council on the Arts is requiring that all artists working through the Artist-in-Schools Program complete Teacher Artists Training.

The Winter series 1 in Fairbanks began this last Wednesday, February 2nd, and continues on Wednesdays and Saturdays through February 12th. The Spring series will run May 4th-14th. Cost is $50 and space is limited. Contact melissa@fairbanksarts.org or nancy@fairbanksarts.org; telephone 456 6485, extension 226 or 227.

On Saturday, February 19th, 9am-4pm, join Writer Laureate Peggy Shumaker in Fairbanks for an all-day workshop titled 'Writing in the Dark.' Flyer and registration form is here, or call Carey Seward at 456 6485, extension 222, or email carey@fairbanksarts.org for more information.

January's edition of F Magazine is out and available now: look out for it in selected locations in Anchorage, Homer, Palmer and Fairbanks.

Medred: It's not the gift, it's what you make of the gift

Welcome and thanks to our February featured author, Craig Medred.

The strange thing is to be asked to blog for a website for a bunch of people interested in writing. I’ve never thought of myself as much of a writer. A decent storyteller, yes, but a writer?

Writers do fancy shit. They have a certain sophistication, a style, a flair. I chop wood. I’m a reporter. My daughter is a writer. She could be a great one if she wanted to be. Instead, she has chosen to study philosophy and quantum physics and dabble in poetry.

That might be easier than writing. Writing is hard work, except, of course, when it is so ridiculously easy you don’t want anyone to know because in the space of 45 minutes you’ve punched out a story that should have taken days.

Writing is that hard easy thing. Some of the best writers I’ve known in the twisted, writing-related business of journalism had to be pushed into crisis to make it work. If they had a deadline a week on, they’d piss away six and a half days or more then start writing furiously.

I know the feeling. There is something to the idea of a deadline fix. I won the American Society of Newspaper Editors deadline reporting award in 1987 for a bunch of stories about the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race scribbled quickly in long hand, ripped page by page from a notebook while standing next to a Bush plane with its prop turning, and sent back to Anchorage with various volunteer pilots in the hope the story made it and, if it did, someone would be able to read the scribbles.

An editor, who knows damn near nothing about writing, later credited much of the award to the guy who deciphered the handwriting. The guy who did that, an editor named Mike Campbell who was a writer’s editor back in the days when there were such things, forever after wanted more scribbles. He understood where good writing lives.

Good writing lives in torment. This is not to say good writers are crazy, although some of them are. It is to say the minds of good writers are constantly in turmoil, constantly processing what they see in the world around them, constantly rolling over words and thoughts and phrase, constantly in need of someone or something to push the record button on the movie playing in their heads.

Maybe the smart people are the ones who walk away from this madness early on. Good writers wake up in the middle of the night thinking about stories and can’t get back to sleep. There are a lot better ways to make a living than being a writer, and everyone is a writer at some point in the beginning.

Writing is a talent like any other. The best of it, you are born with. The rest of it, you learn.

There are plenty of decent writers born with marginal abilities. They succeed through hard work. The world vitally needs these people. In the age of the internet, we are more dependent on the written word than ever. People who can string words together clearly and concisely are the backbone of the Information Age, but most of them, sadly, are never going to be great writers no matter how great their desire.

Great writers are born with a gift. Most of them will never fully develop it. Some have the sense to run away. Others are just plain lazy. They are blessed with talent, but cursed with a lack of desire.

To write well, you must read always and often in a way that sees not just substance but construction. You must teach your eyes to see and your ears to hear in much the same way. Really good writing is in the details. Really good writing doesn't differ much from really good painting, which is in the fine strokes, or really good film making, which uses the lone eye of the camera to steer the view of the moviegoer.

Over the years in Alaska, I've been blessed to know a few truly great writers -- some of whom lived up to their talent, some of whom decided writing was too much work and went off to do other things. All of them were the same, though, in that they saw the continuum of life in bits and pieces. Where others saw and heard a movie roaring along with the fine points hard to catch, they saw a high speed slideshow -- click, click, click, click.

Some of them, I'd guess, didn't even know it. But their way of seeing was always obvious in their best work:

Stop. Freeze frame. Zoom. That's it. There's the story.

Writing is this damn simple, and this damn difficult.

It is in that way a little like splitting wood. If you have or develop the skill to hit the round just right, it will part nice and clean on the first swing. And if you lack the skill, well, you can chop away at that sucker for a long time and really never get much of anywhere.

Craig Medred is the author of "Graveyard of Dreams: Dashed Hopes and Shattered Aspirations Along Alaska's Iditarod Trail." He was the outdoor editor of the Anchorage Daily News for 20 years and now writes for the online publication AlaskaDispatch.com.