Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

So we’ve heard loud and clear from our Anchorage friends and fans that you’d like a physical space to gather as writers.  Now, courtesy of Out North Contemporary Arts House, we’ve been invited to open a 49 Writers Café in one of their galleries.  It would be a place to gather and write, a place where critique groups and other writing-type groups could meet, and a place where we could host events and eventually classes.  Do you like the idea?  Would you hang out there?  Would you help make it happen?  It all starts with your input.  Read all about it, including fun details like how you can procure your very own bistro chair, and then take our quick survey – by August 1, please - and let us know what you think.  

And if that’s not enough excitement, how about our Third Annual Ode to a Dead Salmon bad writing contest, now open and accepting your best bad work.  Click the salmon on the sidebar for details, including links to past winners.  The contest runs until August 7.  We’ll publish everyone’s entry on our Dead Salmon site, and after our judges comb through for three finalists, we’ll let you vote on the winter.

It’s not too soon to mark your calendars for August 31 when best-selling author Dani Shapiro will appear onstage with Sherry Simpson at 7 pm in our next Crosscurrents event “Writing Memoir: Exposure and Betrayal” at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Auditorium.  For a sneak peak at some of the interesting topics that might come up on stage, check out Shapiro’s essay “The Me My Child Mustn’t Know” published last week in the New York Times Review of Books.

Momentum Dance Collective, an adult contemporary dance company, plans to create a show this Fall that will be inspired by the written word. 

They write: "We are looking for poets who want to work with Momentum  choreographers to bring their ideas to the stage and see their work take on a life in a three-dimensional reality. This could be work you've already written or you might be inspired to create something new.

"The goal at this stage is to get some poets and choreographers together and see what happens. The words might supply a theme for the dance, a mood for the soundtrack, or a central visual image that will help define the direction of the resulting movement piece. The boundaries on form 

and methodology are yet to be defined. If this sounds intriguing, please contact Becky Kendall directly."

On Wednesday August 17, Poetry Parley will celebrate the works of poet and novelist David Wagoner. They're looking for readers now: if you would like to read a couple of his poems, please contact Jonathan Minton. The 'local' poet of the month is still to be decided, so if you'd like instead to read some of your poems, please contact Jonathan about that.

The National Endowment for the Arts showcased Alaska Quarterly Review on July 20. They featured an in-depth interview with editor Ron Spatz about Alaska Quarterly Review and the editing process in "Art Works."  Also included in the feature is a preview of Alaska Quarterly Review’s The Midnight Muse: Singing Poems, a pilot pairing of Irish poet Knute Skinner’s poem “Let Us Know” (from the Fall/Winter 2010 AQR) with music (and singing) by Alaskan songwriter Amy Lou Hettinger. For the full article, see this link on their website. Congratulations to Ron and the AQR for this significant recognition.

Our thanks to Bruce Farnsworth for passing on this article from England's Guardian Newspaper about the business of books, literary events and writing.  

Our thanks to Kris Farmen for passing on this YouTube video showing a real-world enactment of the conflict between E-books and "real" books. 

Surviving Kenyon: A Guest-post by Lucian Childs

The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop is billed as a “boot camp” and they aren’t kidding. June 17 - 25 was a week of little sleep, of daily writing stories, attending workshops, lectures, readings. Heaven.

Heaven, too, Kenyon College. Established in 1824, the campus was named one of the world’s most beautiful by Forbes Magazine.

Each day went something like this:

1. Stumble out of bed at 6AM after staying up too late the night before writing the day’s story from a prompt our teacher gave me.

2. Grab a cup of coffee in the cafeteria and make the final tweaks to the story.

3. Wolf down breakfast in the Great Hall (a dead ringer for Hogwart’s Great Hall).

4. Make it to the seminar by 8:30AM. Be brilliant even though I already burnt my next to last brain cell. Read my story aloud. Expect to have its bones picked clean by our teacher, Nancy Zafris, and my fellow participants.

5. Slump over to lunch. Go back to my “Guantanamo Bay cell” dorm room to begin writing the next day’s story.

6. Skip the 4PM lecture and continue to write.

7. Decide whether to skip dinner. If I do, eat a bag of peanuts from the dorm vending machine.

8. At 7PM, go to the readings. If I’m lucky and don’t have to read that night, use that last remaining brain cell to concentrate on the excellent pieces. If unlucky, sit in the front row until it’s time to read one of my stories from the week. To 100 people, some whose names I’ve seen in the New York Times or who are prestigious prize winners. No pressure—everyone laughs supportively, even though I don’t realize my piece is funny.

9. Have a quick drink at the Village Inn on the way back to the dorm.

10. Stay up way too late again finishing the next day’s story.

11. Repeat until exhausted.

This year, there were 71 participants on that schedule. Astonishingly, given the workshop is in Ohio, three of us were from Anchorage: Myself, Antara Brewer and Susanna Mishler.

Participants were divided into eight sections. Fiction faculty: Nancy Zafris, Lee K. Abbott, Jane Hamilton and Geeta Kothari. Poetry faculty: David Baker and Stanley Plumly. Literary Nonfiction faculty: Dinty W. Moore and Rebecca McClanahan.

I had requested Nancy Zafris, whose work I admire. She was fiction editor for the Kenyon Review for many years and is currently the editor of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction book series. She’s supportive, but tough and can spot a sloppy plot point or an unjustified moment a mile away. She’s also very funny, which softened the sting and enlivened the seminars.

Our fellow, Helen Hooper, has recently been selected as the Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford. She wrote alongside us and set a high bar with her funny, perceptive and beautifully crafted takes on the daily prompts.

My seminar mates—a great bunch and excellent writers. Some have MFAs in creative writing and have worked with Nancy before. Amazing how fond of people you can get after being locked in a room with them for so many hours.

I was a different writer that week. I hope I can hang on to him.

One of our first prompts had been to write a series of postcards, slowing bringing the “bottom” story to the forefront. It was fun, but unexpectedly demanding.

On the last day, we gave a little bag of these postcards as a thank you to Nancy. They were from the POV of a kid writing home from summer camp. Here’s mine. I think it sums up my feelings about the incredible week.

Dear Mom and Dad,

Summer camp is almost over. I’ve been having an awesome time. I like horseback riding best. Our riding instructor is really great. She has been teaching us how to take care of horses. She says you have to listen real close to what the horse is telling you, so you can give it what it wants.

When I get home, I’d like to take care of Pudgy like you asked me. I think I could do a good job now.

See you soon,

Your son

PS. I hope I can come back next year and ride more horses.

Lucian Childs is an Anchorage graphic designer and writer whose short story "Training Wheels" was published in the spring/summer 2011 edition of the journal Quiddity. It can be heard online here. Another story, "Hit Me Back," was picked as an editor's choice and can be read here, in Compass Rose Volume XI.

Susanna Mishler: Sucker hold

Thanks to our featured July writer, Susanna, for this great post-- and just by chance, we have another post about the Kenyon experience coming tomorrow, from Lucian Childs. May those Alaska-Kenyon connections keep flourishing!

A month ago I attended the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. There are many summer workshops that provide writers with networking opportunities, lectures, and feedback, but Kenyon distinguishes itself as a production-oriented workshop. It is geared toward the production of new writing by participants and the discussion of that raw writing. This year at Kenyon I learned to recognize a snare in my own writing process which I think I share with many writers: the sucker hold.

Kenyon workshops meet every morning for six days. At the end of each morning workshop leaders give participants an assignment or prompt due the following day. The next morning we spend reading and discussing our work on that prompt. My workshop leader this year was the poet Stanley Plumly who, though new to the Kenyon workshop, is an old hand at teaching poetry.

It wasn’t long before Stanley’s prompts were the running joke in my dorm. My roommates and friends would return from workshop with very specific, labored assignments – “Write a story in nine parts in which there are four main characters (A, B, C, and D) who move the plot forward in each scene in the following ways . . .” or “Write a poem in tercets that includes the words ‘dishrag’, ‘tundra’, and ‘stallion’ and that contains an oxymoron.”

Whereas my prompt for the night was, “Landscape with ________.” Another night my assignment was, “Weather report.” A third night it was, “A parent”.

About mid-week, Stanley explained that he holds a deep mistrust of assignments and writing prompts. He almost never gives them, but they seemed to be a requirement at Kenyon. “They detract from the principal impulse that brings the poem to the page,” he said.

What did he mean? What could be so bad about something as innocuous as a writing prompt? It was as if Stanley were protecting a difficulty that everyone else is constantly trying to escape: the empty-handed poet facing the blank page.

One night I flipped through my notebooks looking for an idea and re-discovered “truth table,” a term for the diagram printed on an electrical relay that shows how to connect wires to it for the desired function. What a great title, I thought, and jotted it down at the top of a blank page. I didn’t know anything else about the poem but that it should be titled “Truth Table” because it seemed too good to pass up.

The more I worked on “Truth Table,” the more I felt stuck. The poem just wasn’t going anywhere interesting. There’s a term used in rock climbing – “sucker hold” – for an obvious, easy hold that lures climbers in and makes them reluctant to leave it. Nothing else on the climb is as appealing as the sucker hold. A climber unwittingly organizes her whole climb around the sucker hold even though there’s an entire wall to work over with far more interesting routes on it to test her capabilities. A sucker hold is an easy grab, it’s a comfortable place on an otherwise uncomfortable plane.

Sure enough, the first thing Stanley said about “Truth Table” in workshop the next day is that the title of the poem I’d attempted was definitely not “Truth Table.” That title was my sucker hold. I was fixated on it. It obscured the principal impulse that brought the poem to the page. The poem was being cramped around that stupid title when there was a whole playground of electrical concepts waiting to be reckoned.

Assignments, too, can be sucker holds. Workshop participants strive to be good students. Good students, we are taught from grade school, follow the teacher’s assignments. But an assignment to write a poem should only lead the poet to that impulse that brings a poem to the page. The poet’s fidelity ought to belong to the impulse, the emotional core of the poem, not the assignment. The assignment, when it derails that impulse, is a sucker hold.

Stanley’s broad assignments were almost impossible not to follow. “Landscape with __________” only needs a landscape (a term broad enough to include cityscapes) and something else (anything) and the assignment is satisfied. What seemed absurdly general about his prompts was really a generosity – a trust that the poem that needs to be written that night will be written. And that poem has little to do with whatever prompt he might choose. He was trying to remove, as much as he could, the sucker hold effect of assignments. Assignments, prompts and other fixations can provide a way onto the wall, but my job as a poet is to attend to the poem, and to let go of the sucker.

Susanna Mishler’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Hotel Amerika, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Michigan Quarterly Review, RATTLE, and elsewhere. To read some of her work online, visit the current issue of Cirque, see Michigan Quarterly Review's archives, RATTLE's archives, or poet Jeff Oliver's website. She lives in Anchorage and earns her bread as an electrician.

Kayla Beth: Recap of Your Alaska Online Travel 'Zine with Jenna Schnuer

Question: What do you get when you bring together six talented young writers, one travel writing New Yorker, and a giddy summer intern, all in a room full of MacBooks and iPads?

Answer: An online travel ‘zine for teens, of course!

This past week saw the launch of 49 Writers’ newly re-branded youth outreach effort, WYAK: Write Young Alaska. For WYAK’s first youth workshop, travel writer Jenna Schnuer joined the 49 Writers team and volunteered her time in order to bring the free travel writing course to kids in the Anchorage area. Jenna was joined by six brilliant young writers who together created an online travel ‘zine of their very own—written by teens and for teens—by the end of the week.

Throughout the week the workshop simulated the pace and organization of a real newsroom. Each writer was an editor of a specific portion of the ‘zine, and each morning began with an opening staff meeting where the kids would report in on the progress of their particular sections. Through writing exercises, mini fieldtrips, and even an interview with the principal of Bethel Regional High School, the kids explored for themselves what it means to bring a sense of place to their writing. It was a joy watching these young writers bring their voices to the page, each expressing their own unique perspective of Alaska. Their work from the week is showcased on their own webpage, Alaska Out Loud: Teens Travel Alaska. Check it out and see for yourself just how hard these kids worked last week. Special features of the ‘zine include video footage of their interview with Bethel Regional principal, Janelle Vanasse, and a photo essay of the Loussac Public Library.

Be on the lookout for more exciting things coming from WYAK this fall as we aim to bring more programs like this to young writers in Alaska. Projects in the works for the coming months (for which this intern will mournfully be absent) include a mini write-a-thon at Spenard Farmer’s Market and a zombie themed writing contest!

Also, on behalf of the whole 49 Writers staff, I’d like to give a huge shout out to the folks at Teen Underground and the Loussac Public Library for hosting this workshop. Teen Underground proved a primo location for this project, and we are incredibly thankful that we were able to use such an awesome facility for our first WYAK event. Be sure to head on over to the WYAK Facebook page to see photos from the workshop, and to stay posted on upcoming events.

49 Writers Cafe: Tell us what you think!

Does your writing group need a place to meet?  Would you like to share open studio space with other writers?  Have a place to hang out and talk writing over a cup of Raven’s Brew coffee?  Know there’s a place where you can write among friends?

If so, we think you’ll like our proposed 49 Writers Café.

THE BACKSTORY:  We’ve heard loud and clear from our Anchorage friends and fans that you’d like a physical space to gather as writers.  On a survey conducted in March of 2011, you ranked a physical gathering space for writers as one of the most important functions of our Center.  That wasn’t surprising – the little house on L Street that was our first beyond-blog home was a huge rallying point for 49 Writers.  But the house was sold, ending our lease, and without a project like the guesthouse we ran there to pay the rent, options are limited on our growing but still tiny budget.  Our nice shared space at 3^rd Avenue won’t last forever, so our Board has already been looking at other options for space.

THE SCHEME: Enter Out North with an offer we like:  a 49 Writers Café in one of their gallery spaces.   Primary uses of space would include open studio (drop in, hang out, think writerly thoughts, pound out that novel or screenplay or essay or poem among friends), literary groups and meetings, and literary events, with an eventual transition to use for instruction.  To pay our share of expenses associated with the café, 49 Writers volunteers would run the already-existing concessions when the café is open. The café would open this fall – maybe even in early September – with our use of the space increasing incrementally from 2011 through 2012.   The café would serve as a model that might be incorporated into what we hope will be a new multi-disciplinary multi-use arts facility in coming years. 

Each term (Fall, Spring, Summer) we’d draft our use and staffing schedule, with the café available for other Out North functions when we’re not scheduled there.   We’d likely reserve Tuesday and Thursday evenings for classes, with Monday and Wednesday evenings for writing groups and meetings.  Friday evenings would be for events.  Weekends would be open studio time, with some meetings and classes on Saturdays, too.  We’d ease into our schedule, subject to volunteers willing to run the concessions for their writing groups or during open studio time.  We’d have the option to expand to weekday use for open studio and writing groups if there’s a need and if there are volunteers ready and willing to make it happen. 

THE DIGS:  The 49 Writers Café would be in the Emerging Artists Gallery, just to the left as you enter the Out North Facility at 3800 DeBarr.  There’s a small parking lot plus free street-side parking.  And you do know that Out North is rebranding as a Contemporary Arts House, right?  Art on the walls would change every month; Out North will handle that.  They’ll also pull out the carpet and install hard surface flooring with ambient or track lighting so we won’t need the ceiling fluorescents.  They’ll supply sixteen café tables that can be easily scooted together for larger group seating.  They have chairs we can use, but they’re a bit of a hodge podge; for a real café feel, we’ll give you a chance to donate a bistro chair (more on that below). 

HOW YOU CAN HELP MAKE IT HAPPEN:  First, we want your input.  Click the icon in the right sidebar to take our quick 49 Writers Café Survey, where you can let us know how you’d use the café, when you’d like it to be open, and how you’re willing to help.  By August 1, please.

To get rolling this fall, we’ll need ten to sixteen 49 Writers volunteers:  one café coordinator plus back-up, and concessions crew persons to sell goodies when the café is open.  We’d ask each writing group that wants to use the café to provide a concessions volunteer for the time period they’re using.  Out North will help us train the concessions crew, and they’ll handle stocking and counting the till. 

And those chairs:  For $79, you can purchase your very own 49 Writers bistro chair for the café.  It will look something like this (except the upholstery will likely be all-black):

On the back we’ll affix a flexible 1” x 3” engraved plaque that will look something like this:

You’ll be able to customize your plaque.  But we do ask that you share your chair when you’re not around!

Questions?  Comments?  Email us at 49writers@gmail.com.  And don’t forget to complete our quick café survey by August 1.  It’s the best way for us to gather up all the information we need to make this happen.

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

First, a big thanks to all who turned out Tuesday night for the CLIA award presentation, and to those who were with us in spirit, with thanks as well to the Alaska Center for the Book for honoring us with this recognition. Here's some coverage from the Juneau Empire.  Another big happening this week has been our first-ever workshop for young writers, hosted by Teen Underground at the Loussac Library and taught by travel writer Jenna Schnuer.  Watch the blog next week for a write-up on all the fun they had, as well as a link to the travel ‘zine they created.

Watch, too, for our official announcement next week about Alaska Book Week, our “field of dreams” project in which we proclaim that everyone shall celebrate books by Alaskans and/or about Alaska during the week of Oct. 8-15.  We’ve got a lovely logo and website set up so you can tell us how you’ll spotlight Alaska books during the week.  

So we’ve heard loud and clear from our Anchorage friends and fans that you’d like a physical space to gather as writers.  Now, courtesy of Out North Contemporary Arts House, we’ve been invited to open a 49 Writers Café in one of their galleries.  It would be a place to gather and write, a place where critique groups and other writing-type groups could meet, and a place where we could host events and eventually classes.  Do you like the idea?  Would you hang out there?  Would you help make it happen?  It all starts with your input.  Read all about it, including fun details like how you can procure your very own bistro chair, and then take our quick survey – by August 1, please - and let us know what you think.  

And if that’s not enough excitement, how about our Third Annual Ode to a Dead Salmon bad writing contest, now open and accepting your best bad work.  Click the salmon on the sidebar for details, including links to past winners.  The contest runs until August 7.  We’ll publish everyone’s entry on our Dead Salmon site, and after our judges comb through for three finalists, we’ll let you vote on the winter.

It’s not too soon to mark your calendars for August 31 when best-selling author Dani Shapiro will appear onstage with Sherry Simpson at 7 pm in our next Crosscurrents event “Writing Memoir: Exposure and Betrayal” at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Auditorium.  For a sneak peak at some of the interesting topics that might come up on stage, check out Shapiro’s essay “The Me My Child Mustn’t Know” published last week in the New York Times Review of Books.

Due to a last-minute cancellation, we have a sudden opening for our August featured author spot. The featured author supplies four posts of up to 800 words. Maybe you’ve been reading 49 writers for a while and storing up ideas; maybe you’ve been reflecting on your own writing or publishing life and would like a nudge to get those thoughts down on paper (or screen). Emerging writers and past featured authors welcome. Contact Andromeda if you’re interested at lax@alaska.net.

Congratulations to our own Deb Vanasse for her publication of Lucy's Dance, published in both English and Yup'ik. See the Juneau Empire's write-up here. 

On Monday July 25 at 1.45pm, Tom Sexton will present readings from I Think Again of those Ancient Chinese Poets at the UAA Campus Bookstore, 3211 Providence Drive, Anchorage. All are welcome.

Matt Shields of 49th Films 49thfilms.blogspot.com has published an interview with David Hunsacker, who recently ran a screenwriting event for 49 Writers. It can be viewed here.  He also has an interview with Nigerian-American writer/director Chinonye Chukwu, who recently finished shooting the movie "AlaskaLand" in Fairbanks. You can read that interview here. 

The Alaska State Council on the Arts is recruiting for an Arts Education Manager. This position is responsible for the management of all arts education grants and programs, including Artist in Residence, Rasmuson Foundatin Cultural Collaborations, the annual high school Poetry Out Loud statewide competition and the Teaching Artist roster. In addition, this position works closely with districts, individuals and the Alaska Arts Education Consortium to advance arts education in Alaska's schools. The position also manages a small presenting and touring grants program. Deadline for applications is August 1. For more information, go to their website.

Nominations are now open at the Alaska State Council on the Arts for the Governor's Award for the Arts in the following categories: Margaret Nick Cooke Award for Alaska Native Arts and Languages, Business Leadership, Arts Advocacy, Individual Artist. The nomination forms and guidelines may be found on the ASCA website.  Nomination deadline is September 1, 2011. The awards will be presented at the annual Governor's Awards for the Arts and Humanities on Wednesday October 19 at 6pm at the Hotel Captain Cook, Anchorage. Nomination information for the Governor's Awards for the Humanities is at www.akhf.org.

Alaskabibliosnubitis--Bringing prejudice to reading, Alaska style: A Guest-post by Steve Kahn

Years ago I was bending nails for cash in Anchorage. You know, a construction job—think insulated Carhartts, temperature dropping, long hours. Rather than commute back to the Valley each day a friend and I stayed in a tiny cabin behind his sister Kathy’s house off of Rabbit Creek Road. One evening before stumbling back to the cabin and lapsing into my nightly coma Kathy and I started talking about books. She had just finished a woman’s account of fishing a set net site on the west side of Cook Inlet. (You guessed it—Fish Camp by Nancy Lord.) Kathy asked if I wanted to borrow it. I politely declined.

I was catching a cold and so exhausted from work I could barely read my watch without planting my nose into my morning oatmeal. Fish Camp never had a chance. Cormac McCarthy would have had to plumb and wire The Road for espresso and electric shock delivery to keep me awake. But I’ll admit there was more to it. Being a lifelong Alaskan I figured I knew enough about the lifestyle—I wasn’t keen on a treatise on slime and Xtra Tufs. (Please forgive me Nancy.)

Flash forward several years—I’m wandering the isles of a great independent bookstore (Yup, TitleWave) and pick up Fish Camp. Being well rested, virus-free and a bit more open when it comes to literary and other manners, I thought, I’ve heard the author is pretty good, I should give it a try. I’m glad I did—it was a great read, interesting and informative. But more than that I think the book helped me come face to face with one the biggest limitations I had as a reader, my own prejudices. And because reading is such a big part of writing …

A friend refuses to read Into the Wild because, “McCandless was idiot.” Debatable as his point may be, I read the book for several reasons. I trusted Krakauer as a writer, and my experience with Fish Camp gave me permission to think outside of the fish tote.

Other now-favorite northern books I avoided for years for various reasons: The Arctic Grail (too long), Shadows on the Koyukuk (loyalty to On the Edge of Nowhere), 50 Years Below Zero (I have no clue why, always loved the title) and The Blue Bear (others had already written about Michio Hoshino.) Of course, this is only a partial list, and I haven’t touched on fiction or poetry.

What a shame when a been-in-Alaska-longer-than-you or climbed-more-peaks or kayaked-the-Sound-more whizzing contest gets in the way of good literature. The older I get the more I realize I don’t know diddly about a lot of things (and I don’t even have teenaged children to tell me so!) Not that I intend to go out and read every book ever written about commercial fishing—or kayaking or climbing for that matter. How many times can a person read about running the Iditarod, climbing McKinley, floating the Yukon? And what if you are a veteran dog driver, climber, or paddler—does that make you want to relive your experience through other’s words, or just make you more critical? Or bore you? Depends on mood, attitude and background. Maybe most importantly, it depends on the words themselves. If the writing is excellent somehow we forget many of our preconceptions.

It’s valuable that we all have our preferences in genre, subject and styles—heck, we couldn’t read everything out there even if we wanted to. For me, I’m just trying to lighten up my prejudices—who knows, one of these days I might even read Coming into the Country (I think I’ve avoided it mainly because it was so popular). Since I’m stepping into the confessional blog booth (say three hail St. Marys and one Tuntutuliak) I’d feel a bit less alone if others shared some of the books they have snubbed then loved. I’d like to know I’m not the only one with such a checkered past, and besides, don’t all guest bloggers secretly fear the stigma of zero comments?

Steve Kahn is the author of The Hard Way Home.

Susanna Mishler: Liar-Lyre

Many teachers say that learning to write well is paramount to learning to think complexly. As a writer and sometime teacher I believe this. Laying thoughts on paper where we can look at them teaches us to see flaws in argument, persuasion, logic, sequence, etc. It’s not hard to see how writing a persuasive essay can sharpen one’s thinking or how writing a personal essay can increase an understanding of the self and personal history. But what kind of thinking is benefitted by writing a poem or a story?

The implication of “learning to write well = complex thinking” is that language itself is key to higher thinking. The ability to use language also created the ability to lie. Fiction and poetry particularly exploit this ability. To write fiction or poetry well means developing complex abilities with untruths. In writing stories and poems we strive to be better and better liars.

The kind of lying that writers are engaged in is not the schoolyard lie (“Jasper tripped him, not me!”) designed to conceal truth. In fact, many writers will tell you that they lie in order to tell the truth. What can this mean? Is it an argument for the ends justifying the means – that the lie is a justified, well-oiled prop for delivering emotional insight? William Carlos Williams famously wrote that a poem is a machine. Does this mean a poem is a construct designed to deliver a particular action? That a poem in its construction would have a blueprint and an outcome?

When I’m writing a poem I don’t feel like I’m building a machine – not a machine in the sense of something blueprinted and predetermined. Writing a poem feels more like driving in the dark with no headlights. I become mired in a process and don’t see where it’s going much less where it might end. The lies I tell don’t have a blueprint or predetermined function. And that is perhaps why I keep on with them – they compel me because I can’t see their (our) destination. If I’m lucky I find later that the lies seem resonant with a larger experience than my own, that is, they smack of truth.

But perhaps this idea of a machine as blueprinted and product-generating is too limited. Rube Goldberg’s machines are elaborate, innovative, delightful, and completely purposeless constructions. If a poem or story is a machine, it could be a Rube Goldberg machine. It is a constructed whole of which the parts are studied and crafted to interact with one another. But to ask what the machine does, as in what task it accomplishes or what knowledge it reveals, may be missing the point.
A motor is designed with a specific function in mind. Poems and stories are feral. They are born in captivity and thrive in their escape.

Just what kind of thinking are we engaged in as poets and writers? As liars? Thinking and knowledge are not necessarily the same thing. Poems and stories insist on a kind of thinking that is not in pursuit of fact and knowledge. The making of a story or poem is process-oriented rather than product-oriented. The reading of a poem or story also can and arguably should be experiential rather than goal-oriented. Poetry, especially, insists that language – the composition of it, the reading of or listening to it – is sensory experience. Sound, rhythm, and repetition matter and the sense of the words (the fact or meaning) is often secondary to the sensory experience of the words (the sounds, the images). The liar and the lyre feed off each other.

It’s when I find myself compromising “what really happened” in events that are basis for a poem that I feel on the right track: the poem is asserting itself and becoming what it wants to be rather than a cherished outcome of mine or adhering to what I remember to be a true sequence of events. When I start lying I stand a chance of discovering something.

Writing a poem or story is a kind of thinking with the heart. The conscious mind wants goals, outcomes, products – let it have them. Emotional thinking happens with music and metaphor and what didn’t happen. The heart’s thinking unfolds in darkness, with no headlights, beat after beat after beat.

Susanna Mishler’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Hotel Amerika, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Michigan Quarterly Review, RATTLE, and elsewhere. To read some of her work online, visit the current issue of Cirque, see Michigan Quarterly Review's archives, RATTLE's archives, or poet Jeff Oliver's website. She lives in Anchorage and earns her bread as an electrician.

It's back!!! The Third Annual Ode to a Dead Salmon Bad Writing Contest

Summer's in full swing, the fish are running, and you know what that means: our hugely popular "Ode to a Dead Salmon" bad writing contest is back. Take a look at last year's finalists, sharpen your pencils and follow that smell. We want your best worst writing, submitted to 49writingcenter@gmail.com by August 7, 2011.

The idea for the contest came from our interview with Alaska's Writer Laureate Nancy Lord. When Andromeda asked why she didn't immediately write about her Alaskan experiences, Nancy said, "I think I was scared off, years ago, by something John Haines wrote in “The Writer as Alaskan”: a kind of condemnation that new-comers to Alaska always mined the same myths, 'odes to dead salmon,' and that it would take generations to develop a worthy Alaskan literature. I’d written a few odes to dead salmon and knew that I needed to get beyond the obvious."

Last year we got bad writing from all over the world. We posted it all and let our readers vote. Our winner got some great press, including a write-up in Alaska Magazine.

Now it's time to do it all over again. We want your best tongue-in-cheek "Ode to a Dead Salmon" bad Alaskan writing, poetry or prose, fiction or non. We'll publish all entries at our Ode to a Dead Salmon webpage so the world can read them, and we'll post the finalists here at 49 Writers. And yes, famed and fishy Alaskan artist Ray Troll has once again offered an autographed T-shirt of choice to our winner. But the main goal, of course, is to have fun.

The rules:

1. Entries must conform to our editorial policy.
2. We need your real name and real email address. If you want your entry to be posted under a pseudonym or left anonymous, make that clear in your email.
3. No more than three entries per person.
4. No more than 800 words per entry (shorter is just fine with us: limerick, haiku, opening lines).
5. Entries must be your own original work.
6. You keep the copyright, of course, but by entering you're giving us permission to post.
7. This is our contest. We make the rules (that's the beauty of blogging, folks), and the rules may change as we see fit. We'll let you know if they do.
8. All entries must be emailed to 49writingcenter@gmail.com by midnight on August 5.

Join us in accepting the CLIA award July 19 at 7:30 p.m.

This year, 49 Writers is one of two winners of the Contributions to Literacy in Alaska (CLIA) award, selected from among applications sent in from across the state. "Our selection committee was most impressed with the broad range of resources 49 Writers has pulled together for established and aspiring writers," says CLIA Awards Chair Carol Sturgelewski. "Starting with the blog, you have created a potpourri of courses, retreats, support, and information that benefits all Alaskan writers."

Of course none of this would be possible without you: our volunteers, donors, members, friends, and fans. So we invite all of you to share this recognition with us on Tuesday, July 19 at the University of Alaska Anchorage Fine Arts Building. A dessert reception begins at 7:30 p.m., followed by a brief awards ceremony at 8 p.m. Immediately afterwards, authors Sherry Simpson and Rich Chiappone will present readings as part of the Northern Renaissance Arts and Science Reading Series, held in conjunction with the MFA program in creative writing at UAA's Department of Creative Writing and Literary Arts. All events are free and open to the public.

We'll be in great company. Emilie Swenning of Nanwalek is also being recognized for her work in establishing a library and reading support for children in her Kenai Peninsula village. She assembled community backing to qualify for an Imagination Library program, in which children under 5 receive free books. She created a makeshift library space and has gathered more than 2,000 books for the community. Now, Nanwalek is hoping to create a library for all ages.

Alaska Center for the Book, the state affiliate of the U.S. Library of Congress Center for the Book, presents the CLIA Awards each year to people and institutions who have made a significant contribution in literacy, the literary arts, or the preservation of the written or spoken word in Alaska. Founded in 1991, ACB is a non-profit, all-volunteer organization. ACB participates in Reading Rendezvous, Letters About Literature, LitSite Alaska, the National Book Festival, Alaska Native/American Indian Heritage Month, and other events and programs.

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Our thanks to screenwriter Dave Hunsaker for leading a great Screenwriters Roundtable this week, and Bill McCallister of KTUU-TV for covering the event.  Look for more fun as we hit a midsummer’s peak at 49 Writers, with the launching of our Third Annual Ode to a Dead Salmon contest on July 19 and a staff of teen writers developing their own travel 'zine for teens under the leadership of visiting writer Jenna Schnuer July 18-22.

Meetings.  We try not to have too many, but sometimes it’s nice to come out from our writers’ corners for some face time as we focus on mission-rich projects.  On Monday, July 18, our Alaska Book Week and Media and Promotion Teams meet.  On Thursday, July 21, our Teen Advisory Council meets, followed by our Youth Programs Work Team.  We welcome more help, so if you’re interested in spending a little time with a great bunch of committed writers, email us at 49writers@gmail.com and we’ll get you set up to help.  Most of our teams meet only four times a year, so you shouldn’t find yourself over-committed (and if you do, we’ll let you off the hook).

The deadline for entries for the 2011 Fairbanks Film Festival is midnight tonight, July 15. The showing and award ceremony will take place October 15, 7pm in the Theater at the Pioneer Park Centennial Center for the Arts. Click here for the prospectus and entry guidelines.

The Northern Renaissance Arts and Sciences Reading Series continues on Saturday, July 16 with readings by David Stevenson and Craig Childs.
On Sunday July 17,  Eva Saulitis, Josip Novakovich and Carolyn Turgeon will read.
On Monday July 18, visiting author Curtis White and Linda McCarriston will feature,
and the finale on Tuesday July 19 will be Sherry Simpson and Rich Chiappone.
All readings take place in the Fine Arts Building auditorium, room 150. All readings begin at 8pm (doors open 7.30) and end by 9.30.
See the website for more information.

The Creative Writing Workshop at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival is about to start: it will run Monday through Friday, July 18-29. Faculty are Peggy Shumaker, Jeanne Clark, Frank Soos, Jonny Gray and Margo Klass. They will be writing in the mornings and in the afternoons, Margo Klass will be teaching the art of making handmade books. See www.fsaf.org for more information.

On Tuesday July 19 at 7pm,  the Alaska Writers Guild presents John and Jona van Zyle, Loussac Library, 3600 Denali St, AK.

On Wednesday July 20, 5.30pm, the Bunnell St Gallery in Homer will host a poetry reading featuring Linda Martin and Erin Hollowell. Reception to follow.

Also on Wednesday July 20, at 7pm, Poetry Parley presents its 3-year anniversary gathering at Out North, 3800 DeBarr Rd, Anchorage. Contact Jonathan Minton for more information.

F Magazine is requesting feedback in order to make some decisions about directions it's taking. Please go to their website and take this three-question survey--it'll take you less than two minutes. The July 2011 edition of the magazine, Graffiti, is now available at selected locations in Anchorage and around the state. Check out their website for many happenings and plannings.

Dana Stabenow's fifth Kate Shugak novel, Play With Fire is now available across all e-Formats--for iPad/iPhone, for Nook, for Kindle. You can also now buy Dana's novels directly from her website.

Mark your calendars for two upcoming high-profile visitors to Alaska:

Pulitzer Prize-winning literary critic and Washington Post Book World editor Michael Dirda is coming to Anchorage for the weekend of August 27 and 28. On Saturday August 27 he will be the Freshman Convocation Speaker at UAA; on Sunday 28, at 4pm, he will give a public talk at the Wilda Marston Theater, Loussac Library, with reception to follow.

Author David Vann, whom some of you met when he led last year's 49 Writers Tutka Bay Retreat, will be touring Alaska in the final week of October. He will be in Ketchikan October 24 and 25, at the Ketchikan Public Library.
October 26 and 27, he will be at the Juneau Public Library.
On October 28 and 29, he will be at the Anchorage Public Library, and on October 30 and 31, at the Fairbanks Public Library.

Faint praise lavished by ADN on Alaska bookstores: A Guest-post by Brian Lax

On June 24, the Anchorage Daily News released their eagerly awaited 2011 Best of Alaska Awards. I was working that day, so I saved the special experience of reading through all 35 full-color and informative pages for the next morning with a fresh cup of Saturday morning coffee (from Kaladi Brothers—Platinum winner, page 23). Yay! I chuckled in admiration of the savvy of those crack ADN marketers. Through some mysterious, but, I am certain, rigorous evaluation, each category had three “winners.” Or, maybe, one winner and two second places? In any case, there was always a Platinum awardee and two Golds. Perfect! Not only does the Daily News get to sell advertising in this lovingly designed circular to three businesses in each and every category, but whether or not you won, came in second, or second second, you get to either label yourself as Platinum or Gold. Yay, again! Everyone’s a precious metal.

Inside this delightful publication, you will find not only three of numerous types of restaurants from family dining, breakfasts and burgers to romantic dining, sushi and Mexican. (Oddly enough, Thai food was not deemed prevalent enough here in Anchorage to warrant a category.) But not to worry. Aside from restaurants, you may find out your fellow citizen’s ratings on physical therapists, financial institutions, fur and leather shops, dentists, tires, flooring establishments, real estate professionals, day spas and plastic surgeons. From each of these categories, you may choose to patronize either the Platinum or two Gold awardees. Anchorage is bursting with all of these thriving types of businesses.

Except for one, sleepy category. Can any of you fellow bibliophiles guess which one it is? Correct! Bookstores. At least bookstores (unlike Thai restaurants) were deemed by the judging panel (or overworked Special Sections Editor? or last-hired marketing rep?) to have managed to break into the Anchorage mainstream and thus, be worthy of a category. Apparently, however, there were not enough of these esoteric establishments from which to pick three metallic awards. Remember that awarding three medals in each category is in the best interests of everyone involved.

Is this a grievous oversight by the ADN (akin to the omitting of Thai food completely)? Or is this something much, much more horrifying? Could it be that of all the ballots returned by all of those discerning and motivated ADN readers who picked Romano’s as best Italian and La Mex as best Mexican only two bookstores were mentioned? Only two? Really? Are there any more than two in Anchorage? (I realize that we were all a little confused by the “Best of Alaska” contest title. I had a difficult time finding a winning establishment in Eagle River. After an intense 4½ minute search, I found one, the Alaskan Brewing Company, located outside the Anchorage municipality.) So I suppose it would be far too much to expect either Fireside Books in Palmer or Pandemonium in Wasilla, both worthy bookstores, to get even one mention.

Can our city of 300,000 literate and dynamic residents truly support no bookstores other than Title Wave and Barnes and Noble? What about Metro Music and Books, just for example? A quick (1 minute) glance at the yellow pages reveals several more specialty and used book stores in the Anchorage Bowl and Eagle River. How could none of these receive even one mention? Imagine all of the establishments that affect our collective lives on a daily basis. When we as a community sat down to enter our choices onto these ballots, we were able to come up with at least three employment agencies, but we could only name two bookstores.
My stomach has begun to hurt. At least I know where to go to find three award-winning family physicians.

Brian Lax is a science educator at BLM's Campbell Creek Science Center, in Anchorage. His literary claim-to-fame (according to his wife) is that as a biology major at Brandeis University, he also co-edited the college poetry journal.

Susanna Mishler: In Praise of Rejection

It happens often: an envelope arrives in my mailbox addressed to me in my own handwriting. It’s a classic existential moment, like a past self (or group of selves) sent my present self a letter. The message? We don’t want what you’ve got. But thanks for thinking of us and good luck.

Then in December last year I received an envelope that was different. It was an SASE in my handwriting, a cancelled stamp, postmark Southern CT. All seemed normal until I opened it. The envelope was empty. I shook it upside down and ran a finger around the inside edges. Nothing. Not even a tiny slip of paper with the word “NO” on it.

I am here to tell you that there is something worse than getting a lot of rejection letters, and that is getting a completely empty envelope addressed to yourself in your own handwriting. I had no idea that I valued that little form letter until it wasn’t there. When I submit work to a magazine or send a book manuscript out for consideration, each submission represents hours of work – not just in composing and editing the poems but in researching journals and contests, reading what the journal or publisher has published, selecting pieces that I think may appeal to the publisher, writing cover letters, and paying entry fees and postage. The one thing I can rely on getting back from this effort is a rejection slip. If you’d asked me before December last year what a rejection slip means to me I’d have told you it means nothing. Then some intern in Connecticut forgot my rejection slip and I was pissed.

The party line for rejection letters in the writing world is that they don’t mean a thing. Maybe the editors all had five-alarm wings for lunch and read your poems with severe heartburn. Maybe your poem was about trains and they already had three poems about trains for an issue that’s not supposed to be thematic. Never give up, keep submitting – that’s the party line. They can’t be used as a benchmark for the quality of your work.

But submissions and rejection slips do matter. They matter in a number of ways that have little to do with an editor’s opinion of what you sent:

1) Rejection slips are evidence, from yourself and to yourself that you are doing the work of writing. They are evidence that you are seeing pieces through to a publishable state and that you have the guts to send them out into the world. I keep a box of rejection letters in my closet. Sometimes I actually root through them to find what an editor wrote by hand on one or, just now, to find that empty envelope and see where it came from. And when I feel on occasion like I’m not writing much or writing well then I can look in that box and see that I must at one time have written something that felt worthwhile.

2) Getting a submission together can be part of an editing process. To hold a printed poem in my hands and know that a complete stranger will soon read it makes me see the poem differently. I get more distance from the poem and can more effectively edit it if I know I’m sending it out. I almost always tweak and polish pieces before I lick the envelope.

3) The ubiquity of rejections means there’s a lot of good poetry and stories being written. This is a good thing for us collectively, though it may not always feel good individually. But a competitive publishing market pushes individual writers to better our work. I don’t mean this as code for “selling your writerly soul and writing what’s in fashion.” I mean that rejection forces reconsideration and re-reconsideration of the work to take its best and most effective form.

4) If it were easy to get published, there would be no victory in it.

5) If rejection letters are what we can expect as a response to our writing 98% of the time, then the writers who stick around are the ones who are writing for the sake of the writing process. Rejection letters are one of the many things that help distinguish those who are interested in the process of writing from those who want to be writers. If there is no glory or glamour to be expected, those who want to be writers will quickly find something more romantic to be.

The publishing world today is far from perfect. Plenty of poorly written pieces get press and publication while excellent work sits in the slush pile. But this is the system we are dealt as contemporary writers and if it can be made into a tool to improve our work and our outlook (even if it doesn’t get us an audience), so much the better.

Susanna Mishler’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Hotel Amerika, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Michigan Quarterly Review, RATTLE, and elsewhere. To read some of her work online, visit the current issue of Cirque, see Michigan Quarterly Review's archives, RATTLE's archives, or poet Jeff Oliver's website. She lives in Anchorage and earns her bread as an electrician.

Meet our summer intern, Kayla Beth Moore

We're thrilled to welcome Kayla Beth Moore, 49 Writers summer intern.  You'll be hearing more from her in the next several weeks as she assists with several projects here at the 49 Alaska Writing Center.

The godsend that is Google landed me on the 49 Writers website. I was sitting at a computer desk in my school’s library doing what I spend most of my time in the library doing, procrastinating. I had been trying my best to figure out what I might do with my last summer as a college student, and every rabbit trail I’d chased had resulted in a dead end. Once I found the 49 Writers website and blog my heart began to race a bit and I immediately sent an email inquiring as to whether the center would be open to accepting a rookie, non-Alaskan, summer intern— not in those exact words, granted. After a few more emails back and forth and a submitted resume, this shot in the dark became a reality when I booked my ticket for Anchorage. I have been thrilled about making the journey to Alaska and the 49 Writers community ever since.

I am an east Tennessean, born and raised in and around the Smoky Mountains. I lost my brother to The Last Frontier about three years ago and ever since then I have been anxious to see for myself the incredible Alaskan landscape he can’t seem to stop talking about. I double major in English and Religion at Carson-Newman College, a small liberal arts school in Jefferson City, TN. I am a rising senior and I don’t exactly have a plan for after graduation yet. I’ve just finished a term of study at Regent’s Park College of Oxford University where I did some research in church history (I won’t bore you with the details) for a thesis I’ve been working on for a while. Oxford was great but I got sick of the bowties really quickly and I spent the five days I had back in Tennessee soaking in the humidity and eating my body weight in blackberries to make up for lost time. I love academia but I also have a deep love for creative writing and I’m thrilled about transitioning away from academics for a while. 

Right now, some of my favorite books are Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions by Maurice Manning, Thirst by Mary Oliver, A Mercy by Toni Morrison, and Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger—although, isn’t that one of everyone’s favorite books? I’m currently reading Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt and Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. A lot of my own writing has to do with travel and sense of place. Right now I’m working on a collection of poems called “Wayfarer” which documents some experiences I’ve been lucky enough to have in Panama, Thailand, and India. When I’m not studying or writing I love to be outside and I spend as much time as I can outside: kayaking, hiking, and biking with my friends.

What I most hope to gain from an internship this summer is insight into how a community of writers work in support of one another’s craft and also reach out to their community. I want to watch and learn how the 49 Writers community operates and functions, and jump in and help wherever I can. I am honored to have been given this opportunity and look forward to meeting the faces of the 49 Writers community very, very soon.

49 Writers Interview: The Clara Nevada by Steven C. Levi

What piqued your interest in the Clara Nevada?

The saga of the CLARA NEVADA is fairly well-known.  But I didn’t believe that the ship had actually come UP after it had gone DOWN.  So I check the newspapers and found that, yes, it had come back up.  And the more I read the more I realized I was looking at a robbery. Here we have a ship with 15 tons of dynamite yet only one stick goes off—in the boiler room! – and there are 100,000 ounces of gold ($13.6 million in today’s dollars) in 20 feet of water and it’s never found?!  I saw a robbery.  But how to prove it?  Well, I had to find someone who was ON the ship when it supposedly went down that was alive with a lot of cash later.  So I took every name I could find in the newspaper – passengers and crew – and ran them through the 1900 Census, two years after the CLAR NEVADA went down. I got a solid hit: the captain had a new steamboat on the Yukon in 1900.  He bought it 9 days after the CLARA NEVADA went down.  In Seattle.  And even today that’s a trip that takes about five days.  Then I started putting the book together.

Describe your research process:  where you began, how long you researched, where your big breakthroughs came?

Historical research is a never-ending story.  There is always somewhere else to look and you will always have this white-knuckle fear that right after you publish the book someone is going to come up with a diary you knew nothing about that proves you wrong.  I was the first person in the newly-opened federal archives in Anchorage during my free time.  My father referred to those months as unemployed but I put my time to good use.  And I came up with nothing, zip, goose egg, for four months of eight-hour days.  I went through hundreds of thousands of documents and, on the second to last roll of microfilm I hit pay dirt.  The Captain had refused to pay his crew while the ship was stuck on a mud bar in the Yukon River.  After eight months they jumped ship and filed a complaint with the American Ambassador in Dawson. That gave me the name of the ship and linked the captain to its sale.  Then I went after its history.

Tell us about the most interesting discovery you made in writing the book.

I made enough ‘discoveries’ of the Alaska Gold Rush to write a book -- BOOM AND BUST IN THE ALASKA GOLD FIELDS – and since I was reading the newspapers, I am now swamped with interesting tidbits some of which are attached.

How did you decide to organize the material you gathered?

Historians do not write books, the documents create the book.  After ten years of gathering the bare bones, the book was basically organized.  All I had to do was find the gristle and bone to wrap around the skeleton.

Tell us about your experience with The History Press as a publisher.

Excellent people.  A publisher that is willing to take a chance.  Writers like me need people like The History Press.

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

In comings and goings this week, we thank James McLain for his great posts on screenwriting as our featured author for June, and we welcome poet Susanna Mishler as our featured author for July.  We also welcome our lovely and oh-so-helpful summer intern, Kayla Beth Moore, all the way from Tennessee.  And then there’s travel writer Jenna Schnuer, bringing scads of enthusiasm, energy, and generosity all the way from New Jersey to train up a local corps of young travel writers in our first Raven Words Young Writers Workshop at the new Teen Underground at the Loussac Library beginning July 18. 

If you haven’t yet registered for Screenwriters Roundtable with the equally enthusiastic, energetic and generous Dave Hunsaker, we still have a few slots open.  It’s a great chance to talk shop with one of the most active and accomplished screenwriters in the state.  And did we mention he’s donating all the proceeds back to 49 Writers?  Join us Monday, July 11 at 6:30 p.m. at Out North, 3800 DeBarr Rd.  Registration is required; $29 for members, $35 for non-members.

You’ll find a few 49 Writers regulars signing books tomorrow, July 9, at the Midsummer Garden and Arts Fair in Palmer. Board President Don Rearden, Director Deb Vanasse, and member Kris Farmen will be part of the fun. Thanks to Fireside Books for organizing this opportunity for local writers.

If you haven’t already, mark your calendars for Tuesday, July 19, and join us at the UAA/MFA faculty readings in Anchorage at 8 p.m. in UAA Fine Arts 150.  We’d love to pack the room with 49 Writers friends, fans, volunteers and members to enjoy readings by longtime 49 Writers supporters Sherry Simpson and Rich Chiappone and to share the limelight with us as we receive the “Contributions to Literacy Award” from the Alaska Center for the Book.

Today, Friday July 8th at 3pm, the UAA Campus Bookstore presents a conversation with poet Linda McCarriston.

Linda McCarriston is full professor in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at UAA. She is known for being an outspoken poet and the author of three works of poetry: "Talking Soft Dutch," "Eva

Mary" and "Little River." Everyone is invited to attend this special event where reflections on life, poetry, words and politics will be examined. Everyone is welcome to attend. More information: contact Rachel Epstein at 907 786 4782.

On Saturday, July 9 at 1pm, the Pulpwood Queens present a storytime at Barnes and Noble, 200 E. Northern Lights Blvd, Anchorage.

On Sunday, July 10 at 8pm, the Summer 2011 Northern Renaissance Arts and Sciences Reading Series, presented by the UAA MFA program and the College of Arts and Sciences will open with the Keynote speaker, Richard Rodriguez. UAA Fine Arts Building, Room 150, 3211 Providence Drive, Anchorage.

On Monday, July 11 at 8pm, the UAA Summer Reading Series continues with Judith Barrington, Ed Allen and Anne Caston. UAA Fine Arts Building, Room 150.

On Tuesday, July 12 at 8pm, the UAA Summer Reading Series continues with Jo-Ann Mapson, Ernestine Hayes and Derick Burleson. UAA Fine Arts Building, Room 150.

On Wednesday, July 13 at 8pm, the UAA Summer Reading Series presents the Graduating MFA Student Reading. UAA Fine Arts Building, Room 150.

On Thursday, July 14 at 6pm, lifelong Alaskan Jonathan Faulkner will be signing copies of his first novel, The Ghost of Fannie Guthry-Baehm, set in the Van Gilder Hotel in Seward, at Barnes and Noble, 200 E. Northern Lights, Anchorage.

Also on Thursday, July 14, at 8pm, the UAA Summer Reading Series continues with Nancy Lord, Valerie Miner and Zack Rogow.

Congratulations to Anchorage Artist Jean wn Bundy, who writes the monthly Art Column for the Senior Voice magazine and is likely to be featured on the new KSKA radio blog also.

(Un)civil Disobedience: Guest-post by Susanna Mishler

Welcome and thank you to poet Susanna Mishler, our July featured writer and a long-time volunteer for the 49 Alaska Writing Center.


One of my favorite writing exercises is called “negative inversion.” It goes like this:

1) Find a one-page poem or a paragraph of writing that you want to take apart in some way. You might want to tinker with it because you love it. You might want to dismantle it because you hate it. It could even be a piece of your own writing.

2) Rewrite the piece by replacing each word with its opposite. Do it quickly. Don’t agonize. Your inversion will not make sense and isn’t supposed to. Leave conjunctions alone (and pronouns and prepositions, if you wish).

3) On a good day your inversion will suggest something compelling to you – a scene or story or feeling that surfaces in the gibberish. You might be so lucky as to have what feels like the first draft of a poem. On an average day you’ll have combinations of words that you’d never have come up with on your own. You may have a fresh phrase that serves as your next prompt or that you can pull out of your back pocket for a later piece.

What I like about this exercise is that it is reactionary and disobedient. It lets me start with something other than a blank page – I get to write by simply reacting to what someone else wrote, I use the other piece as training wheels to get some words on the page. But the real magnetism of negative inversion is in its misbehavior. It is contrary, it undermines, it resists. When you’re done you’ve turned something refined inside out and it’s ugly.

Or is it? Good writing should surprise and writers don’t often surprise readers unless we surprise ourselves. And surprising ourselves takes some disobedience, some dismantling of our own expectations. Unconscious use of cliches and received language is everybody’s privilege but the writer’s. And entrenchment in a set of expectations as to what a story or poem is, what it should look or sound like, can work against good surprises and good writing.

Writers work against habit and convention; this is true on a cultural level but also on an individual level in prying apart our personal habits and conventions. Poet and critic Dean Young begins Recklessness (Graywolf, 2010), his book-length essay on poetic craft, with a passage that includes this:

No one knows how to write a poem. [P]rescription and intention are traps. [A]ny intention in the writing of poetry beyond the most basic aim to make a poem, of engaging the materials, SHOULD be disappointed. If the poet does not have the chutzpah to jeopardize habituated assumptions and practices what will be produced will be sleep without dream, a copy of a copy of a copy. The poem always intends otherwise.

Poets do not get to be comfortable with our own cherished outlooks, not if we hope to write worthwhile poems. Nor can we receive cultural norms without pulling at least some of them inside-out. Poets and writers are the people who watch from the edge of the party, noticing things that can’t be seen from the dance floor.

It helps a contrary nature like mine to have something to push against, and writing a negative inversion creates the needed resistance out of any short piece. When I was stumbling through the construction of a book manuscript, I took a workshop with poet and critic Linda Gregerson. She suggested I try using epigraphs for each section of the book and to try writing “against” the epigraphs. While I didn’t ultimately choose this structure for the book, the exercise taught me a productive strategy: take something received and push back on it, kick it over, vandalize it.

Susanna Mishler’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Hotel Amerika, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Michigan Quarterly Review, RATTLE, and elsewhere. To read some of her work online, visit the current issue of Cirque, see Michigan Quarterly Review's archives, RATTLE's archives, or poet Jeff Oliver's website. She lives in Anchorage and earns her bread as an electrician.

Andromeda: Editing and a note on Hemingway

July 2 marked the 50th anniversary of Ernest Hemingway's way death, so old Papa has been in the news a lot this week, as well as in Woody Allen's charming and entertaining "Midnight in Paris" (which convinced my teen daughter that she must find a way to visit Paris in two or three years) and in a current New Yorker story by Julian Barnes.

Hemingway was also mentioned in a lecture I attended last month, in which one of my Antioch University mentors, Leonard Chang, discussed how Papa H. rigorously edited his own work, with some essential last-minute help from F. Scott Fitzgerald of Gatsby fame (another intense self-editor who got further revision help from the famous Maxwell Perkins). Evidently, The Sun Also Rises was already in galley stage, practically ready for publication, when Hemingway made the decision, based on Fitzgerald's suggestions, to completely cut the first two chapters of the novel. (A link here to one online source I found for this bit of literary history.)

I took inspiration from that anecdote last week, as I was responding to publisher copyedits of my second novel, to be published next February. At the copyedit stage, most focus is on issues of grammar and punctuation, as well as the odd bit of last-minute fact-checking, including how we use certain foreign-language words in the text. But more line-edit scale issues still arise, especially where the latest fresh set of eyes feels something is unclear and says so. As I responded to the copyedits, I had to decide when to simply accept minor changes made (which I did in nine cases out of ten), when to insist upon my original choices, and whether to take an additional stab at certain sentences or paragraphs to tweak characterization or voice, or make some aspect of the story more clear.

The polite, "don't-make-things-any-more-complicated" side of me wanted to leave everything as is. The "Hemingway" side of me continued to use the holiday weekend to puzzle over the opening paragraph, a significant and purposeful voice shift at the start of the second chapter, and so on. I added two long new paragraphs in those places, and let my husband Brian read the revised draft. He thought the chapters worked better without those latest additions. Out they came again. No doubt when I see my book in print, I'll feel the twitch of those missing paragraphs like phantom limbs. I'm still too close to the work to know whether every of one of my last-minute decisions were the best ones.

This is all my way of saying that revision is never completely finished, and looking back over the last decade, I can say that I've spent many more months editing than first-drafting, usually by a factor of two to one.

I wrote more drafts than I can count of this novel before I shared any of it with other readers. I made major changes when a new agent took me under her wing and offered her critique, with which I strongly agreed. After my publisher, Soho Press, bought the novel, I discussed the possibility of opening the novel in a completely different way (ten years after the story's main action starts) that changed how the reader perceives the main character; I hadn't wanted to make this major change until I had an editor onboard, willing to comment on both versions. By the line-editing stage, revision was limited mostly to eliminating inadvertent authorial "tics," deleting instances where I had explained too much and adding material where I had explained too little. By the copy-editing stage, only two or three particularly troublesome areas remained.

For the first time last week, reading the full manuscript one more time, start to finish, I felt like I had a completed novel in my hands. Do I resent all those editing steps? Not one bit. I'm grateful for the opportunity to correct, to improve, to rethink, and most of all, to learn from the comments of all those keen-eyed readers who took the time to help. I'll still get one more chance to read my novel at the proofreading stage, in August.

For another Alaska author's detailed explanation of the stages of editing and pre-marketing leading up the publication of her first novel, The Snow Child, check out Eowyn Ivey's blogpost, "Am I in the second trimester yet?"

49 Writers Interview: 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.  He recently returned from teaching a workshop in comics at the Homer Public Library, and he's teaching a Raven Words workshop called Comic Adventures for kids ages 10-14 beginning July 25 in Anchorage.
 

What do you love about creating comics?

I love that every time I put my pencil to a piece of paper, I get a rush of freedom and creativity.  Comics are unique in that they end up being more than the sum of the words and pictures on the page.  Its a constant joy trying to find new ways to put the two, words and pictures, together. 

What inspired you to work with young writers?

I’ve worked with children and teens my entire career and most recently I’ve been mentoring a number of young artists. Cartooning for the most part is a solitary activity and I enjoy sharing all the lessons and mistakes I’ve made over the years to give kids a head start on learning to express themselves without getting frustrated by the boring and intimidating technical aspects of making comics. 

Tell us about the workshop you have planned.  How did you come up with the idea for the workshop?  What sort of fun can young writers expect there?

I’ve been planning this workshop for a while now. In the last year, I worked with a lot of teens at McLaughlin on several cartooning and art projects, some of which were participating reluctantly, but the cartooning activities I developed became some of their favorites and I was able to find a good balance between technical information and having fun with the art. 

It will be five days about building comics from one panel newspaper-type comics, all the way to a full page sequential story.  My focus is not on learning to draw per se, since I don’t think someone has to have a lot of artist skills built up to be a great cartoonist, just a desire to learn and a lot of enthusiasm.  The class will teach the students, regardless of experience, how comics work and offer some simple tools to make their own, even if they only use simple shapes and a few choice words.  I’ll be putting a lot of emphasis on experimentation and keeping pencils moving, as one of the most intimidating things about starting comics is just putting the pencils to paper.  The hope is that the kids will come out of the class with a stack of comics they’ve drawn and the experience and confidence to continue on long after the class is over.

What creative project are you working on now?

I just completed producing a book for the Alaska Immigration Justice Center called “Portraits” , in which five artists were paired with five writers to document the stories of recent immigrants to Alaska.  Last year I did the first chapter for “A Native Lad” by Sarah Hurst.  In between my big projects, I’ve been developing my graphic design skills by doing design projects for different non-profits like the Bryants Good Cookies , The Alaska Waterways Councils’ Scoop the Poop campaign, and Anchorage United for Youth , in addition to doing some caricatures for wedding invitations and special events.