Landscape of Story: A Guest Post by Kris Farmen

            During my college days at UAF, I was assigned to read Bruce Chatwyn’s The Songlines for one of my anthropology classes.              If you haven’t read it, The Songlines is many things, not the least of which is a travelogue of the Australian outback.  It is, however, best known for Chatwyn’s description of what Australia’s Aboriginal people refer to as Songlines.  The concept, in a very brief nutshell, is that the oral traditions and creation stories of the Aboriginals (often referred to as Dreaming Stories) are linked to physical points on the landscape.  There are endless cultural and metaphysical ramifications of this, but the practical application is that these stories and songs serve as a mnemonic to guide the Aboriginal traveler through places he or she might not be familiar with.  The traveler “sings” his or her way through the bush, reciting as they walk, and in this way they are guided to water, shelter, game, and anything else they might need.  These Songlines stretch along specific, well-defined paths that crisscross the continent, and the traveler always knows where he is because he knows the song.

            These Songlines are without a doubt among the more beautiful of humankind’s creations.  Given the amount of time I spend in the woods, I confess that I have been more than a little envious of them over the years.  There have been plenty of times when I could have used a song to guide me to good drinking water or to a big spruce tree that would provide shelter from the rain.  Or perhaps to warn me that a particular creek was choked with brush and devils club and overrun with surly brown bears.

            More recently, I read A Dena’ina Legacy: The Collected Writings of Peter Kalifornsky.  This wonderful book is a collection of stories and place names from the territory of the Dena’ina Athabascan people of Cook Inlet and the Kenai Peninsula.  Initially, I was captivated by the musical beauty of the names.  Esbaytnu, Tutsahtnu and Tutsilitnu stand out in my mind; these streams are known by Euro-Alaskans, respectively, as Bird Creek, Chickaloon River, and Resurrection Creek.  There is also Kahtnu, better known today as the Kenai River.  Kalifornsky’s book is particularly enjoyable because the traditional stories he tells—the Sukdu, in the Dena’ina language—take place in locales familiar to anyone who lives in Southcentral Alaska:  Clam Gulch, Kenai Lake, and Point Possession, among others.  Many of these Dena’ina names are wonderfully descriptive, such as Qalnigi Dnazdlut (Clam Gulch), meaning “Rocks are there.”  Or perhaps Tuzqunt (Point Possession), meaning “Still Water Place.” 

            The Sukdu are the creation stories and cultural instruction manual of the Dena’ina people, and these place names are part and parcel with both the content and the message.  Said another way, the Sukdu function much like the Songlines.  If you’re heading to Qalnigi Dnazdlut, you know to watch out for rocks that could tear the bottom out of your boat.  By the same token, if you’re heading to Tuzqunt, you’d know from the name and the stories that happened there that the down-current side of the point will offer shelter from the Inlet’s heinous tide rips.  Pretty useful information by any measure, but in the Dena’ina culture, this information is embedded into narratives that carry the same weight as the Koran or the New Testament. 

            This left me feeling a bit alienated, in the parlance of daytime talk shows, which is a fancy way of saying I felt like a clueless white boy.  Then I remembered a conversation I once had with some good friends in Kennecott who pointed out that many of the English place names in the Wrangell Mountains, and the rest of Alaska for that matter, are loaded with practical on-the-ground meaning—if you’re paying attention.  A stream called Sweetwater Creek is probably good to drink out of.  Conversely, Beaver Creek probably isn’t.  If it’s September and you’re looking to fill your freezer, Easy Moose Lake might be a good place to check out.  And if you’re travelling through a place called Bear Valley (not necessarily the one above Anchorage), it’s probably a good idea to have pepper spray or a revolver with you.  

            The take-home message here is that there is a story that is written, spoken, and sung upon Alaska’s landscape, and writers would do well to keep it close to heart.

           

            

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Tired of your characters getting trampled by moose? Dramatic tension got you down? Are you being swallowed by setting?  Looking for a different sort of literary challenge? Perhaps you're the next Executive Director of the 49 Writers…or if not you, perhaps you know someone who could be.  For a full job description and information on how to apply, go to http://www.49writingcenter.org and look for the downloadable .pdf document toward the bottom of the home page.  The first application period ends November 22.

Today, October 28, is a big day for young writers.  Our WYAK Kids These Days contest ends today, and our free WYAK Jumpstart Your Writing workshop starts today at 1 pm at Teen Underground.  Procrastinated?  Email us, quick, at 49writers@gmail.com, or show up at the library to see if there’s room.  

Wow! Thanks for a fabulous response to our membership drive.  If you haven’t yet joined or renewed, it’s not too late: the drive runs through Monday, October 31.  Anyone who joins or renews a membership this month receives a coupon for free bread from the Great Harvest Bread Company.  If you haven’t already, visit www.49writingcenter.org/get involved/join to support our work on behalf of Alaska’s writers and books. Full-time students take note: we now offer student memberships for only $20 per year.

Hard to believe, but our 49 Writers Fall 2011 Literary Season is all but over.  We’ll wrap it with a 49 Writers Open Mic on Thursday, November 10 from 7 to 9 pm at the 49 Writers’ Cafe at Out North Contemporary Art House at 3800 De Barr Road in Anchorage. Whether you’re a student or not, if you are interested in reading, email 49WritersOpenMic@gmail.com.  Include your name and the genre you plan to read (poetry, fiction, or nonfiction) plus a two to three sentence bio, including your achievements as a writer. During the Open Mic event, we’ll also take a few moments to recognize our fabulous 49 Writers volunteers.  Mark your calendars, too, for the 49 Writers Café open studio from 1 to 4 pm on Sunday, November 13.  Free Raven’s Brew coffee if you bring your 49 Writers membership card!

And yes, we’re already looking toward our Spring 2012 Literary Season.  If you’d like to propose a course, check out our instructor guidelines at www.49writingcenter.org /get involved /teach and fill out our easy online course proposal form by November 1.

Speaking of outstanding volunteers, Jeff Oliver and Lucian Childs have teamed up to present – tah dah – podcasts for your listening enjoyment, including Jeff’s recording of the “Fictional Truth” Crosscurrents event featuring Melinda Moustakis and Frank Soos.  Visit our home page at www.49writingcenter.org for the links.  While you’re there, admire the nice work Lucian has done on our website, with thanks also to webmaster Rich Gannon.

For a comprehensive calendar of literary events throughout Alaska, visit http://www.alaskalitevents.com/.

Today, Friday October 28, there are several opportunities to hear author David Vann. At 11.30 am, he will discuss Writing and Death at the UAA Campus Bookstore, 3211 Providence Drive, Anchorage. At 2.30pm, he will give a two-and-a-half-hour fiction-writing class at the 49 Writing Center, 645 W. 3rd Ave, Anchorage. And, courtesy of Alaska Quarterly Review, he will give a reading and craft talk based on his new non-fiction book, Last Day on Earth, at UAA Rasmuson Hall, 3211 Providence Drive, Anchorage.

The Ten Poets Group's new collection of poetry, Braided Streams, has just been published by Cirque. On Tuesday, November 1, 5pm, the poets will be reading from the collection at the UAA Campus Bookstore--all are welcome. 

On Wednesday, November 2, 5-7pm, the UAA Campus Bookstore presents a panel on "Alaska Native Writers: Looking Back, Looking Forward," with Dr. Maria Shaa Tlaa Williams, Dr Jeane Breinig, Jack Dalton, and others, in recognition of the tenth anniversary of Alaska Native Heritage Month celebrations. The panel will consider Alaska Native Writers past, present and future--how they have inspired, how to encourage those who need to be heard.

Next Friday, November 4, 12-2pm, Evan Cotton presents the 22nd Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall--revisiting history in our time at the UAA Campus Bookstore. All are welcome.

F Magazine is specially soliciting poetry submissions for their poetry section. Please attach them as MS Word docs., and send to Bruce Farnsworth.

F Magazine's Statewide youth (grades 7-12) art and writing competition is underway. For more information, see their special website. 

F Magazine is now accepting photography submissions for the February Art of Fashion Issue. The deadline is December 1, 2011. More information on their website. They're also preparing to launch a new Audio F'ile sound card of Alaskan acoustic music. Submit mp3's to editor@fhideout.org--or mail a disc directly to F Magazine, 3800 DeBarr Rd, Anchorage, AK 99508. Deadline is January 1.

F Magazine's Second Annual Statewide Writing Competition will start taking submissions December 1, 2011.

Congratulations to Alaska Dispatch co-founders Amanda Coyne and Tony Hopfinger on the publication of their book, Crude Awakening: Money, Mavericks and Mayhem in Alaska. Any satellite 49 Writers readers in the DC area: there will be a dinner and discussion featuring the authors with Alice Rogoff and David Rubinstein on Friday November 4, 6.30-8.30pm at The Cosmos Club, 2121Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20008. RSVP by October 31 to tracey@arcticimperative.com For more information, http://www.nationbooks.org

Clean Enough: A Guest Post by Leslie Leyland Fields

“I’m tired of being around men all the time,” Naphtali complains. I feel the same, stuck on an island with five sons, her brothers. I go out with her on the next pick as a respite for us both. She takes her place automatically in the stern and I in the bow of our aluminum skiff, which makes me her crewman. I expect nothing else. At 22, she has run her own skiff for six years. Her face is deeply tanned from weeks out on the water; her cheeks are red, eyes a vivid green. I sit in front of her on the seat, partly protected by a chest-high plastic tote that holds our fish and ice. I feel small beneath her. She is taller and stronger than I am.

We begin the first net, which hangs heavy in the water, the leads weighted yet heavier by the rush of an ebbing tide. Above us the mountains of the Alaskan peninsula hover like clouds over the water. Every minute or so I look up from my hand-over-hand pull of the net and look around. We’re on the backside of our island, Harvester Island, a 400 acre teardrop that rises up to a single peak at 900 feet. The water is the Shelikof Strait, a fifty by three hundred length of water, fenced by mountain ranges on both sides, Kodiak Island on the one side, the Alaska Peninsula range on the other, as saw-toothed and lofty as any mountains I’ve seen in the world. They are one of the few fixtures in this world that remain in place. The water is always moving, carrying us the ten miles from one net to the other, one island to another, delivering the salmon we depend on to our nets. But the ocean currents are generous and indiscriminate, delivering more than fish.

After storms and especially high tides, the beaches bloom with mounds of ropy kelp, grasses, ribbons, saltwater succulents every shade of brown and green, all twisted into painful knotted bodies, a sudden garden of violence. Much of this makes its way into our nets, and is delivered to our hands. Our job then is simple---glean the kelp from the net. Every skiff length, we stop, our hands pulling at the grasses as if we’re milking cows or pulling weeds from a garden. Often, the skiff is filled with more kelp than fish. Today is one of those days. In just an hour, we are ankle deep in a harvest neither of us wants.
*
We have four nets still to go, but I am dreading the end of the pick, after we deliver our fish. One job will remain---bailing and cleaning the skiff. I know how it goes. Naphtali will throttle down and angle the rudder of the outboard at the sharp right, and we spin. Tight circles, all our momentum contained in spirals that cant the skiff, sending the wastewater to the low side of the floor. We squat on our haunches, begin scooping and bailing the slop of gurry, blood, scales, guts, kelp and jellyfish. It does not smell—but if left in the skiff even a few hours, it would begin the rank of the decomposing. All the skiffs do this, the eight skiffs under our banner, Fields Wild Salmon. My three other sons, my neice and nephew, the ten crewmen. But no one cleans with such intensity and thoroughness as my daughter. Like her father. But I cannot spin. I set my face to the bottom of the skiff, shutting my eyes against the twirling horizon, trying to fool my body into ignorance of this dizzying circus act. I’m too old to perform. Hail to Naphtali for keeping such a clean skiff, but my body can’t do it. Nor can my mind. In just a matter of hours, we will return to the skiff and begin hauling in all the same ocean detritus again, and just a few hours later, another futile spin, readying for another harvest of weeds, fish, and guts. Why must the skiff be this clean?

None of this is what I anticipated. Before children, if I had thought about being a mother someday and passing a heritage onto my daughter, I would not have envisioned this: the two of us out in a skiff, in orange raingear, slimed by fish guts, blood and kelp, the mountains and ocean rising up around us. I would not have imagined us killing fish instead of garnishing them; snatching salmon from watery jaws, shouting sea lions away from our nets, picking kelp until midnight. In a rosy glow, I place the two of us in the kitchen. There we are, within warm buttery walls, surrounded by appliances with dashboards and buttons just waiting to be controlled by the lift of our fingers. Engines that whir to life with a touch rather than a full-body yank on a six-foot pull cord. We are wearing matching aprons instead of matching raingear. Standing side by side while I demonstrate the roll of the pin, the fold of the dough instead of the slashing of kelp and the roll of jellyfish from the nets. Betty Crocker is there. We speak of literature, The Heart of Darkness, The God of Small Things as we braid a mound of challah. I teach her the science of yeasts and pie crusts, the brilliance of Indian curries. She learns to savor the artistry of food as I do, the unending beauty of colors and textures and flavors---this, the only domestic art that I love.

None of this has happened. But this day, at the end of the pick, Naphtali turns the skiff over to me to devise my own bailing performance. I throttle up to full bore, then angle the arm to the right, then the left, a zig and zag sufficient to lean the sides for the scoop and bail. Naphtali bails. Like this, I cut a jagged swath home from the nets to our island. The skiff is clean enough today.

Leslie Leyland Fields is the author of seven books. Her most recent release is "Hooked! True Stories of Obsession, Death and Love from Alaska's Commercial Fishermen and Women." She runs a professional writing service, The Northern Pen, and speaks around the country at conferences and universities. For 34 years she has been home-based on Kodiak Island, where she has worked in commercial salmon fishing with her husband and children.

Andromeda: Obituary for an ebook pioneer and free reading from the 1910s

The death of Steve Jobs was heavily covered in the press. The same week he was being remembered, while researching the subject of ebooks, I discovered that another digital pioneer had recently died – with substantially less fanfare.

Michael Stern Hart (1947 – September 6, 2011) was the founder of Project Gutenberg and is credited with inventing the ebook, in 1971. Perhaps one reason we know his name less well is that his goal was never to make money with snazzy brandname products, but rather to make literature as free and available as air.

As a student at the University of Illinois in the early 1970s, Hart was given access to a powerful mainframe computer, with computer time valued at $100 million. According to a New York Times obituary, Hart tried to think of a project worthy of that power and conceived of sharing information – a concept distinct from data processing.

According to the New York Times: “After attending a July 4 fireworks display, (Hart) stopped in at a grocery store and received, with his purchase, a copy of the Declaration of Independence printed on parchment. He typed the text, intending to send it as an e-mail to the users of Arpanet, the government-sponsored precursor to today’s Internet, but was dissuaded by a colleague who warned that the message would crash the system. Instead, he posted a notice that the text could be downloaded, and Project Gutenberg was born.”

(A single mass-distributed text document crashing an entire system – I love that concept!)

Over the next decade, Hart typed the Constitution, the King James Bible, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland into the database. To consider how far we’ve come in this digital age – and how much we take for granted – consider that it took until 1997 for Hart to create the first 313 ebooks for Project Gutenberg. Today, 36,000 books are available free at the site, not counting the thousands of books available for free at partner sites. Hart was a visionary, and it took the rest of the world a few decades to catch up with his vision.

My own take on this subject – as a person who straddles the line between Luddite and pragmatist – is that I’ve gotten accustomed to reading from a Kindle only in the last six months. My children each received Kindle e-readers as a gift last year, from an uncle. They still haven't taken to the devices, but I tried one with limited interest. Then, about two months ago, I started on a new reading project I call “Reading the Century.” I’ve started reading one American novel per publication year, in more or less chronological order, from 1911 forward, with an emphasis on books that shaped or reflected the culture of the time, whether or not they have proved longlasting (and it’s fascinating to see which books have indeed lasted, and why).

The books I’ve read so far are: Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (1911); Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912); O, Pioneers! by Willa Cather (1913); The Eyes of the World by Harold Bell Wright (1914—a megabestseller of the time now entirely forgotten, for very good reason); Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915); Chicago, poems by Carl Sandburg (1916, not a novel but an exception I made for a very lackluster publishing year); The Job by Sinclair Lewis (1917—a much better mostly-forgotten book, about a working girl in New York City) and The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1918, delightful).

Two things hit home from the very start of this idiosyncratic project: One, there weren’t very many novels published in the 1910s compared to now. Especially when one limits readings to American authors, the pickings are slim until about the 1930s, when American literature exploded. In some years, I was forced to choose between mostly forgotten books – and in so doing, found my way into reading amazing, previously overlooked gems, like Herland, an overtly political, feminist utopian novel from 1915, in which three male adventurers discover a hidden Amazonian society in which women have asexually reproduced for two millennia and managed to create a fertile and happy world, completely without men. The contrast between that book and the awkwardly written, chest-thumping Princess of Mars (to be released as a major movie under the title John Carter this summer, by the way) was extraordinary and revealing.

The second thing I realized picking my way through the 1910s was that many books were tricky to find-- unless one settled on reading them in ebook form, in which case they were instantly delivered and absolutely free. “Now” and “free” are hard to ignore. So far, I’ve read five of my eight “Century of Reading” books in digital form.

It’s one thing to weigh the prospects of reading a recently published physical book (which I prefer) or its ebook counterpart. It’s another thing to dig into our American past and realize some books from a century ago could have been lost entirely if not for belated reprinting (Herland, which first appeared in serial magazine format, didn’t appear in book form until the 1970s) or translation into digital format by volunteers.

For the first time in my reading life, I feel truly grateful for ebooks. With that thought in mind, a belated cheers to Michael Hart, a largely unsung visionary, who realized that computers and literature might one day go hand-in-hand.

Alaska Research – The Digital Divide: A Guest Post by Michael Catoggio

So you’re working on that book.  You need some colorful background information on your setting.  Say you’ve set a novel in Nome or Fairbanks or Homer in 1954.  What did those towns look like?  What movies (if there WERE movie theaters) were playing in July of that year?  You’d like to look at some news stories from that period.  How much was a hamburger backs then?

And YOU, dear writer, are sitting in your warm cabin in Talkeetna or Homer or Haines thinking, heck, everything is online these days.  A quickie Google search and up comes the digital Nome Nugget – yes?

No!

Here’s the continental divide regarding Alaskan resources – some things you can find in digital form and some you can only find in print form.  And the digital material can be further divided as follows – that which is freely available digitally and that which is available for a price.

So much for the concept that “everything is on the internet.”

So, since I’m (finally) retired, I thought I’d cast some light onto this murky terrain.  To exemplify this divide, let’s take two types of research materials – newspapers and books. 

Newspapers – some of the larger newspapers – Anchorage, Juneau, Fairbanks – have been digitized, roughly back to the mid-1980s.  EVERYTHING else – The Anchorage Times from July 1954, all of the other Alaska newspapers, aren’t.  You can get access to the digital papers through your local public library.  If you have a library card, say in Fairbanks, whether you know it or not, you have access to tons of digitized info via their library’s databases.

So, why can’t you access the Iditarod News or tons of older Alaskan papers online?  Well, mega-corporations are generally the folks buying up and digitizing content.  They create digital database then sell them to interested buyers.  Is there a market for the digitized Tok newspaper?  Probably not – not one that will make Thompson Reuters big bucks.  Ergo, the Tok newspaper and other Alaska papers sit on microfilm in select state libraries.

Books – Isn’t everything freely available on Google?  That’s what crackpot mayors will contend as they slash library budgets.  Well, if a book is in copyright, that is, if it has been published after 1923, it won’t be freely available on the internet.

You’ve heard of the Google Book Project.  Our friends at Google wish to digitize every book in the world.  As of this writing, this little project is on hold while the courts noodle about the implications for authors and publishers.

But when the scanning ceased, Google had dumped quite a load of content on their website. (Go to Google, click  on “more”, then onto “Google Books”).  So, anything published before 1923, say Bancroft’s History of Alaska published in the 1880s, can be found, full-text on Google Books.  Free.

Have you visited Alaska Digital Archives? (http://vilda.alaska.edu/)  This is a cooperative project involving our university libraries.  There is a growing collection of historical photographs and documents on the site.  But the photo collection herein represents only a fraction of photos available in Alaska libraries – e.g., the library at the Anchorage Museum only has about 10% of their photo collection on the Archives.

You’re getting the picture, yes?  Lots of stuff can be found on your home computer at 3am, but enormous quantities of resources are still in local libraries – just like in 1960.

Librarians are your best friends.  Go seek their help.  Too, you can hire fee-based researchers to help save you time.  Who can I recommend?  Oh…I’ve just started a research service for writers!  https://sites.google.com/site/catoggio/ 

  

Greater Expectations: A Guest Post by Featured Author Kris Farmen

            Not long ago I found myself in conversation with a young friend who had expressed her desire to major in English in college, with the ultimate aim of becoming an editor and publisher.  The recent upheavals in the publishing business are nothing new to writers, but this young friend of mine—let’s call her Emma—had not yet caught on, and I found myself in the somewhat unsettling position of giving out publishing advice.  This was made somewhat easier because Emma professed no desire to write.  Her motives were entirely editorial.

            I told her something I learned early on, back when I first started getting paid for my magazine and newspaper stories:  Writing is an art, and publishing is a business.  Writers should have that statement tattooed on the inside of their eyelids, but I think it would also serve well as a publisher’s prime directive.  Would-be publishers are likely attracted to the game because of a desire to work with writers to create wonderful books, and this is by no means laughable.  Publishers need a passion for books just as much as writers.  But the bottom line is that if the editor/publisher is not turning a profit on the books they produce, they’re going to be subbing for high school English classes before they know what hit them.

            As I said, it’s no big secret that the old model of publishing has been in a slow process of implosion, a process lately speeded up by the advent of e-books.  It seems that writers and publishers these days are left to sift through the debris and try to cobble together a workable business model.  This has largely been taken as bad news by the world’s established writers, but as a new writer (a baby writer, as John Birmingham used to call himself) I have to say I’m quite happy to be starting out in the current state of flux.  I’d much rather be where I am now than be a writer who was established in the old publishing system, only to have the rug jerked out from under me.  This is at base the old notion that when you’re starting out at rock bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up. 

            I’ve recently found a publisher for my second novel.  They’re a newly-formed, Alaska-based house, but their aspirations are large:  To publish New York-quality literary fiction and non-fiction about Alaska.  They’re experienced editors and book designers, and are aiming for the tourist market, with the plan of having their books on the shelf at gift shops around the state.  Their long-range plan is to have nationwide distribution.  At face value this might seem like the road to hackdom, but we’re entering an age when having one’s book on the shelf at Barnes & Noble is no longer necessarily the barometer of success for a writer.  My publishers have found a good, workable business model, and truth be told, I’m stoked about it.

            I confess I was a bit dubious about this new outfit—after all, this second novel was meant to be my ticket to the New York literary big-time.  But that dream rings more and more hollow as the old model of publishing continues to crumble into the sea.  Like many writers I know, I’ve had to adjust my expectations about my career.  Is my objective to be the talk of the town among the New York literati?  To be interviewed for The Paris Review and on NPR’s Fresh Air?  Perhaps to be declared America’s Sexiest Writer by People magazine?  Or is my objective to write quality books, get them into the hands of readers, and make a decent living from my pen?  The intersection of art and business can be an unpleasant space to inhabit, but even the most high-minded writer of literary fiction needs to pay his or her phone bill.  And aspiring editors like my friend Emma—as well as up-and-coming writers—should keep their eyes open for the new opportunities that will inevitably rise up from the ashes of Old Publishing.

            

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Nine to five got you down?

Have friends grown tired of your constant frown?

Tired of your boss or working all-nighters?

Why not lead the 49 Writers?!

We are searching for a new leader,

a writer, a marketer, and a savvy reader.

Someone with character, smarts, and vision,

someone to help us fulfill our cool mission.

If the Executive Director title appeals to you,

click the link, and then you know what to do!

That’s right – our Board of Directors has launched a search for an Executive Director for this fine, fun-filled organization.  Don’t worry: co-founders Andromeda Romano-Lax and Deb Vanasse will still be around, and they’ll still be involved (but not meddling!).  

For a full job description and information on how to apply, go to http://www.49writingcenter.org and look for the downloadable .pdf document toward the bottom of the home page.  The first application period ends Nov. 22.

The identity of our in-house poet?  Well, let’s just say he still has time to register for Susanna Mishler’s Poetry Toolbox course that begins tomorrow (Saturday, October 22).  Our last two fall term courses also launch next week:  Perspectives and Viewpoints with Andromeda Romano-Lax (begins October 25) and Fiction with David Vann (October 28).  Register today! 

Young writers, how are you spending your next school holiday (Oct. 28)?  Sign up now for the free WYAK Jumpstart Your Writing workshop for at Teen Underground on October 28 and 29.  It’s a great way to get primed for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November.  

Want to add “radio broadcast” to your list of accomplishments?  We’ve teamed with KSKA’s Kids These Days to offer a new contest for young writers.  Aspiring writers ages 10-20 from anywhere in Alaska are invited to write about what it means to be a kid these days.  Two winners (one from each age group) will get to read their work aloud on the air.  But hurry!  The deadline is today: October 21.  Details are at www.wyakcontests.com.  

Only 10 days remain in our membership drive; it ends October 31.  Anyone who joins or renews a membership this month receives a coupon for free bread from the Great Harvest Bread Company.  If you haven’t already, please join in supporting our work on behalf of Alaska’s writers and books. Fulltime students take note:  we now offer student memberships for only $20 per year.

It’s already time to start thinking about our 49 Writers spring course schedule.  Course proposals are due November 1, with classes to begin in February.  If you’ve got a course to propose, we’d love to hear from you.  Of special interest would be a nonfiction apprenticeship, and any proposals for a “Publish and Promote” series.

The first 49 Writers Open Mic will be on Thursday, November 10 from 7 PM to 9 PM at the 49 Writers’ Cafe at Out North Contemporary Art House at 3800 De Barr Road in Anchorage. Twelve writers will each read a three to five minute selection from their work. The open mic event is open to anyone who would like to read, not just former 49 Writers students.  If you are interested in reading, please send a note to 49WritersOpenMic@gmail.com.  Include your name and the genre you plan to read (poetry, fiction, or nonfiction).  Also please send a two to three sentence bio, including your achievements as a writer. Have you been published?  Have you received an award or a degree?  Had any major life changes, adventures, decisions, or achievements that have contributed to your writing?  If more than twelve readers respond, we’ll start a list for the next open mic.  During the Open Mic event, we’ll also take a few moments to recognize our fabulous 49 Writers volunteers. 

Come to the UAA Campus Bookstore this afternoon, Friday October 21, 3-4.30pm, for tea and conversation with Melanie Mitchell, "A Woman with Complexity." Her book, Complexity: A Guided Tour, won the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award and was named by Amazon.com as one of the ten best science books of 2009. No science background required: just bring your imagination.

Tonight, Friday October 21, 6-9pm, Katie Mangelsdorf will introduce her new book, Champion of Alaskan Huskies: Joe Redington, Sr., Father of the Iditarod. Barnes and Noble, 200 E. Northern Lights, Anchorage.

Tonight, Friday October 21, 7pm, the Fairbanks Arts Association is holding a special Literary Reading. The English Graduate Organization (EGO) will feature three Readers--Josh Fish, Aaron Bauer and Nick Moser. Bear Gallery, Pioneer Park Alaska Centennial Center for the Arts, 2300 Airport Way, Fairbanks. Admission is free.

On Saturday, October 22, 7pm, the UAF English Department presents the 21st Annual Dead Writers Reading as part of the 2011-2012 Midnight Sun Visiting Writer Series. The Blue Loon, 2999 Parks Highway, Fairbanks.

On Tuesday, October 25, 7pm, the Anchor Park Reading Group will discuss The Big Short: Inside the Money Machine by Michael Lewis. Barnes and Noble, 200 E. Northern Lights, Anchorage.

Next Friday, October 28, 11.30am-1.30pm, author David Vann will discuss Writing and Death at the UAA Campus Bookstore. The event is sponsored with the Alaska Library Association, 49 Writers, and the UAA Campus Bookstore. David Vann will also give a talk at 7.30pm, Rasmuson Hall, 3211 Providence Drive, Anchorage; sponsored by AQR.

Sensations Magazine, a rare three-consecutive-year winner in the national American Literary Magazine Awards (1994-1996) is celebrating its 25th consecutive year of publishing by trying to complete the process of publishing poetry by at least one poet residing in every state.  Its"Missing States" contest invites writers from the nine remaining states in their list (Alaska is one of these) to submit 3 one-page poems (50 lines or less) on any theme for a $10 entry fee.  Those selected for publication will receive a copy of the poetry portion of Issue 49 containing the published work; those not accepted will receive the Spring 2011 "American Presidents" poetry supplement as a consolation prize.  Poets interested in entering should send one copy of each poem, along with a brief bio, make a $10 check payable to "The Six Centuries Club," and mail their entries to P.O. Box 132, Lafayette, NJ 07848.  Include a SASE for reply; poems will not be returned.  No email submissions.  Postmark deadline is Tuesday, November 1.

Virginia Kristiansen writes to tell us that her neighbor, Garner Buchanan, has published a book, And the Raven Smiled. It is a historical novel, a look into Sitka culture on the verge of changing, and dropping old prejudices

For a comprehensive calendar of literary events throughout Alaska, visit http://www.alaskalitevents.com/.

Andromeda/Your Turn: What are you reading (online) now?

I get a little stuck in my habits, and though I spend (and waste) plenty of time online, I forget to find new reading and writing blogs to keep me connected with what's going on in the literary world. (Here at 49 writers, we can only do so much!) Some of my old favorites died off or went away, and I haven't found many substitutes.

So I'd like to ask you: help us freshen up. What blogs have you discovered? Are you using online sites and social media in a different way lately? Talk to us about the AK perspective on this, or just share your thoughts. Innovators, mavens, and Luddites all welcome.

To warm up the dialogue: Earlier this week I discovered "The Quivering Pen," David Abrams's blog, which includes book reviews, book giveaways, literary reflections, and a weekly feature called My First Time, "in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands." Abrams, who lives in Montana and calls himself a "book evangelist" (gotta like that), is a reader of this blog and a graduate of the UAA [correction: UAF!]MFA program. He has a forthcoming novel about the Iraq war, called Fobbit (Grove/Atlantic). Abrams also writes for January Magazine.
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There was lots of talk at the recently-concluded Frankfurt Book Fair about the digitalization of the book and increasing potentials for interactivity. All over the world this month, people seem to be talking about the idea that the most important relationship will not be between the writer and the publisher, but between the writer and the reader. People are buying more books online and doing more impulse-purchasing of books (especially easy with ebooks), and Amazon continues to rattle its mighty chains as a force for swifter and more direct delivery of content to consumers. As the NYT reported four days ago, Amazon has stepped up as a publisher and will bring out 122 titles this fall in both physical and ebook form. They're even paying out some big advances -- $800,000 to actress/director Penny Marshall, for starters.

Amazon isn't the only one flexing its muscles. Readers seem to be doing the same, championing their own roles as taste-makers and critics by posting their own reviews at Amazon and Goodreads, for example. (Old news, yes, but not old news when it's starting to change who gets published, and where, and for how much money.) Readers can track down their favorite authors on Facebook (I know I've "friended" several of mine) and Twitter, and will expect more and more direct access to enriched content, to authors, to opportunities not just to read, but to somehow engage with the reading process in more social ways.

And finally, starting today, the writer will get a kind of power previously limited to publishers: fast access to sales information. As the LA Times reported, Amazon announced it will give authors access to previously expensive and essentially inaccessible Neilsen Book Scan data, which tallies about 75% of overall sales. Now, an author can sweat over their book sales in closer-to-real-time terror! More significantly, seeing where copies are being sold and when can help authors tailor their own marketing efforts, both physical and virtual, and monitor if certain experiments (an online book tour or virtual book discussion, for example?) had any real effect. What will authors do with that information? As one author who has felt left in the dark on many an occasion, I'm fascinated to watch.

My question for you: Are any of you actually seeing any of this happening? If you're an author with a book coming out soon, what are you doing to fit into this changing social media world? If you're a reader, are you starting to demand more? What aspects of this Brave New Literary World do you love, and which do you loathe?

Andromeda: POV -- Why it matters for writers

Andromeda Romano-Lax will be teaching a three-week class called “Perspectives and Viewpoints” for the 49 Writing Center, starting next Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. Advance registration required; a few spots remain. Last week, she wrote about why POV matters for readers. This week, she writes about POV breakthroughs, from the writer’s perspective.

Some writers have point-of-view, or POV, figured out from the first moment they conceptualize a story. Many more have to actively, consciously work out the POV problem, deciding who should be telling the story, and how: a complex decision that involves not only “person” (first, third, or rarely, second), but also complex issues involving multiple choices along a continuum: omniscience versus serial first or limited third person narrators versus close, limited third, single-character subjectivity. And that doesn’t even take into account the possibility of using an unreliable narrator.

Unlike so many other elements of writing, which can be massaged or patched over at many points in the revision process, POV demands attention early. It shapes everything: characterization, story, voice. POV rules are made to be broken, but a wobbly, uncertain POV is the first sign that a story isn’t working. When a writer figures out exactly how she wants POV to operate in her story – and especially when she figures out how to do something she’s never done before – the ground shifts. It can be a breakthrough for the work in question. It can be a breakthrough for the author’s entire oeuvre.

Antonya Nelson, author of Bound: A Novel, tries to figure it out before she starts writing. But that doesn’t always work. She told interviewer Susan McInnis, “I have written fifteen or twenty pages only to realize, This is not this guy’s story. I have to stop and tell it from the wife’s point of view.”

Twenty pages doesn’t sound so bad considering the months – even years – that some writers spend tinkering. Just over a decade ago, author Zoe Heller had the idea to write a novel about a love affair between a woman teacher and her teenaged pupil, based on a scandalous real-life case then in the news. That idea would turn into a clever and intelligent novel, Notes on a Scandal (also known as What Was She Thinking?) and a movie starring Cate Blanchett and Dame Judi Dench. It was Heller’s second novel–and it would become her “breakout” book–but like most writers, she didn’t find the perfect approach right off the bat.

In an interview with the UK Guardian, Heller explains:

I made a number of false starts with the book–writing it from the teacher's point of view, from an omniscient, third-person perspective and so on–until, a couple of months in, it occurred to me to tell the story in the voice of Barbara, an older colleague and friend of the badly behaved teacher. Philip Roth once described novel-writing as a process of "problem-solving," and for me, the discovery of Barbara offered a solution to several problems all at once. It was a great "aha!" moment. I felt straight away that I knew Barbara inside out, that I "had" her voice. It was one of those rare instances in my writing life when I was positively eager to get to the computer and start work every day

Ann Patchett had written several respected books before she authored the one that finally jetted her into the literary limelight, where she has remained. The key to that novel, Bel Canto, was mastering a new element of POV: using omniscience, or the “god-like” ability to see into every character’s heart and mind (and into the future as well). Omniscience was more commonly preferred in 19^th century novels—a natural match for an apparently more stable world in which God, State, and The Author all spoke loudly. But its profile dropped in the modern novel, which favored intimate portraits of the individual mind and a less clear authorial (or authoritarian) presence. Even so, some of our most literary contemporary authors have rediscovered the power of omniscience, which can create a broader scope and more liberating fluidity in narrative.

In a 2002 Writer’s Chronicle interview, Sarah Anne Johnson asked Ann Patchett whether Bel Canto, her first omnisciently written novel, felt like a huge leap, in terms of craft. She answered:

Huge. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. It is exactly the thing I haven’t been able to pull off in my last three books. … I didn’t know how to do third person (in her first two novels), and I didn’t know how to do omniscient … (Bel Canto) was like a piece of knitting. I’d work on it fiercely for two weeks, and then I’d put it in a drawer for three months. Every time I finished a chapter, I felt like it was over­­-- I didn’t know where to go next. … It was just sheer will. So it took me a lot longer."

Bel Canto has a cast of sixty characters and a plot that revolves around terrorism and music. It is an emotionally expansive book, an operatic book. Being able to move in and out of many characters’ minds was essential to telling such a sweeping story. But balancing all those POV shifts isn’t easy. Patchett said, “There has to be an easy flow between point of view. You also don’t want to create a situation where the reader is more interested in one character than another."

What I take away from these three talented writers is not—as the POV-astute Henry James might have wanted to tell us—that one POV is more powerful or correct than any other. What I learn from Nelson, Heller, and Patchett is that mastering and employing POV requires a willingness to experiment, to be uncomfortable, to match form and technique to content, to start all over. POV requires learning the rules and then bending them; it requires learning everything you can about craft, only to realize you don’t know quite what you need for your next story. And that’s okay. Writing always demands just a little more than we’re able to provide at any moment. That’s how we keep moving forward.

Andromeda Romano-Lax is the author of The Detour (Soho Press, Feb. 2012), a novel set in Italy 1938, told in the first-person by a German narrator, reflecting back on the road trip that changed his life. Her current work-in-progress employs an unreliable, third-person narrator with occasional first-person vignettes written by a peripheral character. Regardless of how many novels she writes, Andromeda expects that she will never finish learning about POV.

The Pen’s Power: A Guest Post by Marybeth Holleman

We’re writing another chapter in the most well-known and long-standing environmental battle in Alaska: the fight over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is a part of the world that looms large in my imagination, but not through personal, on-the-ground experience. I know the Arctic Refuge only through literature, most of it nonfiction.

When talk turns to the Arctic Refuge, I remember a scene from Glendon Brunk’s YearningWild: a young man in an observation tower looks west at the slope and its “surreal and sinister” tumble of industrial development, then looks east toward the refuge, to unbroken tundra and the call of a yellow-billed loon—and then heeds that call, leaves that tower and walks east. Then what rises to mind is BeingCaribou, about a couple’s five-month, thousand-mile walk to follow the Porcupine caribou herd throughout their migration. And I recall the first scene in Karen Jettmar’s essay “Finding Refuge,” where she crawls out of her tent one morning to see a wolf on the other side of the Kongakut River.

There are many other stories; the Refuge is probably the most written-about place in all of Alaska. From Two in the Far North to Seasons of Life andLand: The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge  to ArcticRefuge: A Circle of Testimony, this place has inspired an entire canon of literature.

And this is the power of literature: that it can transport us to another time or place, that we feel as if we’re right there, too, walking beside that caribou herd. Good literature allows us to know, and care deeply about, places, characters, and events that may only ever exist in our imagination. It can drive straight to the heart.

I’ve written here before about art and activism, and the ways in which we can (and, I believe, always do, whether consciously or not) weave them together. But let me say it again: we as writers cannot overestimate the power of that pen in our hands, that keyboard under our fingers.

I’m reminded of AldoLeopold’s work and the insight that, for environmentalists, fights are never over until they’re lost. Say there’s a field you love, whether it’s because of an endangered butterfly or because you just love it as it is. Say there’s a developer wants to pave it, or build on it. Think of that Joni Mitchell song: they paved paradise, put up a parking lot. As long as it’s the field you love, there’s always the threat of someone wanting to make it into something else.

Then along comes The Wilderness Act—the most permanent protection we as a nation have. With the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s draft Comprehensive Conservation Plan, three remaining areas of the Arctic Refuge could now become wilderness, including the coastal plain, where all those caribou calve, where there’s more polar bear denning than anywhere else in Alaska, the place that’s called the refuge’s biological heart. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, here on the 50^thanniversary of the Arctic Refuge designation.

So I’m asking all you writers, with the power of that keyboard under your fingers, to answer this call. Alternatives C and E recommend wilderness designation for the coastal plain; Alternative E is more comprehensive. Go to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife website, or to an easy-to-read summary. Written comments will be taken until 15 November.

And sometimes the call is closer to home, for places we actually do know by the soles of our feet. For those of us in southcentral Alaska: a new draft Chugach State Parkmanagement plan is out for public comments until 31 October. There’s lots of pressures for development; they even want to build a road into the park, starting at the Glen Alps parking lot. If you don’t want to wade through the whole document (and it doesn’t read like a good book) then contact a local group like the Alaska QuietRights Coalition.

Marybeth Holleman is author of Heart of the Sound and co-editor of Crosscurrents North: Alaskans on the Environment. Her essays, articles, and poems have been published in a wide range of journals, magazines, and anthologies. She has taught creative writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and has led intensive writing workshops across the state. 

A Little of that Human Touch: A Guest Post by Featured Author Kris Farmen

            I have a couple buddies who are always introducing me as “Kris Farmen, the famous Alaskan writer.”  I don’t mind this so much because they often do it while introducing me to attractive women.  Still, it can be a little embarrassing.  I’m an Alaskan, and I am a writer, but my fame is, shall we say, somewhat dubious.

            I mention this because of something the Australian songwriter Paul Kelly once said in an interview.  The exact quote escapes me, but it was words to this effect:  I don’t write songs about Australia, I write songs about people.  And many of those people happen to live in Australia.

            Kelly, who is a household name Down Under (sort of Australia’s Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen rolled into one), is one of my favorite writers, the fact that he works in the medium of song notwithstanding.  I’ve thought about his words quite a lot in the years since I heard them, particularly now that I’m writing novels set in Alaska.

            The label of “Alaskan writer” can be useful both as a marketing ploy and for meeting potential bedmates at parties, but as an artist, I’m far less interested in writing stories about Alaska than I am in writing stories about people. 

            This is at least in part a reaction against the dominant paradigm in Alaska’s literary canon, namely, the Coming to Alaska narrative.  You know the story.  Someone chucks their old life Outside and moves to Alaska, maybe builds a log cabin in the bush, or lives on a fishing boat, or starts working as a bush pilot.  Along the way they undergo a spiritual transformation through the experience of adopting Alaska as their home.  Closely linked to this concept is what we might call the “Wow, ALASKA!” factor, something which more or less speaks for itself.  These concepts dominate any number of stories that can be found on bookshelves throughout the state.  I won’t name any names, but it’s often non-fiction, memoir type stuff.  A few prominent novels come to mind as well.  Whatever the characters happen to be doing in the story seems to be far less important than the fact that they’re doing it in ALASKA! 

            I can hardly be bothered to yawn any more when I see these titles.  It’s not that building a cabin, living on a boat, or flying a super-cub—or even undergoing a spiritual transformation through adopting Alaska as one’s home—is somehow uninteresting or silly.  It’s neither of those things.  The problem is that this paradigm rests on how different Alaska is from the rest of the world, rather than recognizing the fact that human beings are all basically the same regardless of where they live, be it Alaska, New York, Somalia, or wherever. 

            The key here is that ALASKA! (uppercase) needs to start taking a backseat to the human drama that occurs here.  I’m not a big fan of the notion that Alaska (lowercase) needs to be just as much a character in the story as the protagonists.  The underlying assumption here, an assumption rooted in our forebears’ delusions of Manifest Destiny, is that day to day life in Alaska is a pivotal struggle of man against his primeval environment. 

            I spent this past April hiking into my surf shack on the lower Kenai Peninsula, pounding nails on the roof all day, then walking back out to my truck because the road was too soft and muddy to drive, but that’s hardly what I’d call an epic battle.  It’s just me living my life, or to put it more plainly, it’s a pain in the ass.  The idea that a human struggling against his or her ecosystem is inherently the stuff of great drama seems pretty silly to me given the destruction our species continues to wreak upon the Earth.  So it’s cold and the snow is deep and you’re way out in the woods.  Big deal.  The Eskimos and Indians were dealing with that kind of thing for millennia, so what makes you so damn special?  And for that matter, during the ten years I lived in Fairbanks, I can’t recall ever thinking that coaxing my pickup to crank over on a forty-below morning rated as high adventure.

            Instead, I want to know about the guy you’re crazy in love with but doesn’t like you back.  I want to know about the basketball coach you think is a first-rate asshole.  I want to know why your stepmother always thought you were a useless dope-smoking punk, or what that priest whispered into your ear when you were alone with him in his room, and was it the smell of onions on his breath that made your skin crawl? 

            And if you happen to be cutting notches in a cabin log, or picking silvers from a gillnet, or taxiing your super-cub down a gravel bar when these things come to mind, then so much the better.

            

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

A huge Alaska-sized thanks to all who’ve made this first-ever Alaska Book Week a huge success.  Special kudos go to Barrow author Debby Dahl Edwardson who honored us with an Alaska Book Week post the day before the announcement that her new YA novel My Name is Not Easy has been chosen as a National Book Award finalist.  Wow!  We’ve also been giving away Alaska books all week through our Alaska Book Week website and our Facebook page.  Remember to email us with a short write-up of how you celebrated, and we’ll archive all the activity at www.alaskabookweek.com .

We’re wrapping up the week with tonight’s Crosscurrents onstage conversation “Fictional Truth: The Relevance of Story” featuring Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction winners Melinda Moustakis (Bear Down Bear North) and Frank Soos (Unified Field Theory; Early Yet) at 7 pm in the Rasmuson Auditorium of the Anchorage Museum. A question and answer session and book-signing will follow.  Copies of the Alaska Quarterly Review featuring a story by Moustakis will also be available.  There is no charge for 49 Writers and museum members; a $5 donation is suggested for non-members. 

Tomorrow (October 15) Moustakis, who was just named one of the National Book Award’s “five under thirty-five” to watch, will teach a three-hour course “Writing and the Creative Spark” at the 49 Alaska Writing Center.  On October 22, Susanna’s Mishler’s “Poetry Toolbox: Lines and Tropes” begins, followed by “Perspectives and Viewpoints” with Andromeda Romano-Lax beginning October 25 and Fiction with David Vann on October 28.  Registration today at www.49writingcenter.org. 

It’s already time to start thinking about our 49 Writers spring course schedule.  Course proposals are due November 1, with classes to begin in February.  If you’ve got a course to propose, we’d love to hear from you.  Of special interest would be a six-hour Elements course on story structure and plot, a submission workshop, a nonfiction apprenticeship, and any proposals for a “Publish and Promote” series.

Several working writers turned out for our first Writers Café open studio session last Sunday.  Thanks to volunteer Anna Breuninger for hosting.  Mark your calendars for the next open studio session on Sunday, November 13 from 1-4 pm at the 49 Writers Café at Out North Art House.  

We’ve been busy mailing membership cards and coupons for free bread from the Great Harvest Bread Company to all who’ve joined and renewed memberships this month.  If you haven’t already, please join in supporting our work on behalf of Alaska’s writers and books. Fulltime students take note:  we now offer student memberships for only $20 per year.

Speaking of students, we had a great response to our first WYAK writers group, which met at Teen Underground last Monday.  Young writers looking for a great way to spend your upcoming Friday holiday, look no farther than the free WYAK Jumpstart Your Writing workshop at Teen Underground on October 28 and 29.  Want to add “radio broadcast” to your list of accomplishments?  We’ve teamed with KSKA’s Kids These Days to offer a new contest for young writers.  Aspiring writers ages 10-20 from anywhere in Alaska are invited to write about what it means to be a kid these days.  Two winners (one from each age group) will get to read their work aloud on the air.  The entry deadline is Oct. 21.  Details are at www.wyakcontests.com.  

Today, Friday, October 14, 4-5pm, Connie Mariano will talk and visit over her book, The Whitehouse Doctor, at the UAA Campus Bookstore. She will then give a more formal talk 6-8pm at UAA ARTS 150. Book signings will be held at both events.

Today, Friday, October 14, if you're in Homer, come to the Kenai Peninsula College Campus Commons at 7pm for a Panel and Public Discussion on "The Books that Shaped  Us," featuring local authors Rich Chiappone, Erin Hollowell, Tom Kizzia, Nancy Lord, and Miranda Weiss. In celebration of Alaska Book Week.

Today, Friday, October 14, author Ana Maria Spagna will be reading and leading a discussion on her latest book, Potluck: Community on the Edge of Wilderness. 7pm, Juneau Public Library.

On Sunday, October 16, 3-5pm, National Book Award Finalist Debby Dahl Edwardson will be signing books at the Anchorage Museum.  Check out Kirkus Review's writeup of My Name is Not Easy, which will also be featured by the Junior Library Guild in February.

On Monday, October 17, 5-7 pm, Alaska historian Steve C. Levi presents Clara Nevada at the UAA Campus Bookstore. Free and open to all.

On Wednesday, October 19, 6.30-8pm, the Friends of the Library annual meeting will take place in the Ann Stevens Room, Loussac Public Library, Anchorage. A brief business meeting and awards ceremony will be followed by a talk with Mike Travis, author of Melozzi, a memoir of a young man's introduction to remote Alaska.

On Thursday, October 20, fourteen local authors will share their work in (belated) celebration of Alaska Book Week. 6pm, Homer Public Library.

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center is now accepting applications for the 2012 National Playwrights Conference and is particularly seeking representatives from Alaska. The deadline for Open Submissions is Friday, October 21. They are hosting two open Q&A's about the conference on their Facebook page, and encourage those interested to contact them directly. Learn more at their website. 

Andromeda: Why POV matters to readers

Part I of II

One of the first books that ever rattled my very inner core was a simple chapter book about a boy being bullied. I’ve tried for years to remember the title and author, but can’t. I was in fifth grade or so when I read it, and don’t trust my memory about the details, only about the delayed impact. The impact came after I read the second book in the series (if it was a series, rather than one book with two distinct parts): the same story told from the bully’s perspective.

Until this point, I’d just fallen into fiction, happy to surrender to the enchantment of an imagined world, unable to stand outside and see them as “made” things, shaped by a living author. But reading this second book, it somehow became clear. The writer decided to tell the same story from the former antagonist’s point of view! What can I say? It hit me like a freight train. I read the book and understood why the bully was the way he was. The facts hadn’t changed; the perspective had. This seemed like an essential key to life. We call it empathy of course; I didn’t know that word at the time. I just knew that a book (or a series of books) was a fantastic way to achieve this effect, because it allowed you to step completely into the mind and life of another person–even the person you thought was the “bad guy.”

As adult readers and writers, we’d say, “Well, of course.” But there was no “of course” for me. It seemed like a miracle that changed books, and changed the way I perceived the real world outside of books. I actually encountered some brief bullying around this time, from a big, sullen girl from another class who liked to push around kids, and who caught me one day standing in the center of a jungle gym. She rallied all her gigantic (okay, probably four-and-a-half-feet) thugs around the metal contraption and they taunted and pulled at my hair. The principal found out and “Barbie” and I both got in trouble–go figure–though at least we managed to avoid the infamous principal’s discipline paddle. (A bit of a sadist, that one.)

The next time I saw her on the playground, I walked up to Barbie and said hi. We started talking. And strange but true: I left school that day with Barbie’s phone number scrawled in barely legible numbers (she wasn’t the brightest kid, I realized) on a damp little slip of paper. I never called, but she never bothered me again, either. I remember thinking that if I just tried to imagine what she was really like from the inside of her own skin then I didn’t need to be afraid of her. If the fear didn’t show on my face, I could walk up to her, and if I walked up to her and started talking, it was different from being hunted down, and something would change. And it did.

Bullying stories rarely turn out that easy. But as a reader and a writer-to-be, that little episode meant a lot to me. Through my reading, I could get to understand a lot of Barbies –and many other people as well, including people who lived in different places or even in different historical periods. (A year later, I’d start reading books by Jane Auel, about prehistoric people living in caves who were–and weren’t–like people I knew. Mind-blowing!)

Growing up, my mother often cautioned me not to “be a mind reader” or expect her to be one, either. But in truth, we’re all mind readers. In her book Why We Read Fiction, Lisa Zunshine merges cognitive science and literary theory to suggest that reading minds–practicing it, dealing with successively greater challenges of understanding–was important in our evolutionary history and one reason we still get such pleasure today in reading novels. Fiction helps us see inside others’ minds, often many of them in a single book, tracking people’s thoughts (and quite often, errors), and even what imagined people are thinking about other imagined people, on up through many layers of mind-reading and source-tracking complexity.

Regardless of what point-of-view a work uses, that viewpoint stretches our abilities to imagine, empathize, and practice those mind-reading skills that happen to be one of our brain’s favorite activities. It’s amazing to know what a bully is thinking–or a murderer, or a cavewoman, or a man from Mars. It’s instructive and entertaining to read a multi-generational saga told in alternating viewpoints (or recounted by an omniscient narrator), in which we get such contrasting views from siblings, parents and children, men and women. It’s inherently satisfying to view the world through even one intelligent but otherwise ordinary mind that is different from our own.

Next week I’ll talk more about how playing with POV has created breakthrough moments for some of my favorite authors.

Andromeda Romano-Lax is teaching a 49 Alaska Writing class about POV called “Perspectives and Viewpoints” on Tuesday nights from October 25–November 8. Registration required.

Breaking News: Alaska has a National Book Award finalist!

My Name is Not Easy, by Debby Dahl Edwardson of Barrow (who posted here yesterday) was just named as a finalist for the National Book Award! Not sure if we have ever had an Alaskan prose finalist...

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/national-book-award-finalists-2_b39892

Should be on the NBA site soon.


Congratulations, Debby - and thanks for placing us on the literary map, during Alaska Book Week, no less!