I knew the anniversary was this month, but I didn't look until just now. The first post was July 9, 2006 - on Spittle Bugs. The second post was two days later - on using Turn Indicators. That was it - two posts for July.
August 6 was on going digital as I got my first digital camera and posted my first picture - a bull moose at Kincaid. There were only seven posts in August, but I think that regulars can already see in those original posts hints of what has come since.
It was a while before I discovered counters and installed sitemeter. I noted with a post when I had visitor 1500. I was reminded of that when I recently had a couple people get here googling "The number 1500." (Does anyone know why they were googling that?) I looked to see what they got. It was May 6, 2007. Ten months.
So I decided to have a contest to reward visitor number 10,000. That took until December 20, 2007 - seven more months. Things were speeding up. And now, probably around the time of the 3rd Anniversary ten days ago, we got to 100,000.
That's pretty modest compared to other blogs, but it's plenty for me. I was going to have another contest, but kept putting it off. I also decided that in the spirit of doing things a little differently, I would not pick a number that ends in lots of zeroes this time. But 99,999 passed before I noticed. Then I thought of 111,111, but that passed by too.
So let's go for 123,456. I'll come up with a prize for the identified visitor closest to that number. I'll post warnings to pay attention when we get closer. While sitemeter gives us lots of data on each visitor, it doesn't give names, or email addresses. (Though I did get a file name last week as the "Entry Page" and it included the person's name. I found three people with that name and emailed one to warn him he was sending his name out. But I suppose I would have assumed such an email was spam. Maybe I'll try again.) So visitors will have to claim their prize. I'll check their claim against the sitemeter profile for the closest claim to 123,456.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Skeletons on the Zahara
It's been taking me a long time to finish books lately, and I've got three or four started. But I got invited to a book club and I had three days to find and read Skeletons of the Zahara, by Dean King. It's one of those unexpected adventure tales - a US commercial ship wrecks off the coast of Africa and everyone gets captured and enslaved. The author had found the original account - a best seller in the early 1800s, mentioned as a favorite by Abraham Lincoln - while researching something else. He's taken that account and the account of a second survivor and tried to mesh the two tales together. The ship The Commerce set sail May 2, 1815 with 11 men and after stops in New Orleans and Gibralter (where a 12th hitched a ride) wrecked on the coast of North Africa on August 28. After a brief time on shore, they escaped capture by swimming back out to the grounded ship and continued in one of the ships longboats in hopes of being rescued by a passing ship. Instead they beached 200 miles south sometime between September 5 and 7. The men who survived with Captain Riley made it to safety of the Amerian Consul in Swearah on November 7, 1815. They'd been captives for two months. Four of the men left for Gibralter on January 4, 1816. Captain Riley followed sometime later and made it to New York City on March 19, 1816.
I thought maybe it was just me, but others in the group although thought the writing was pretty uninspired and it took everyone a while to get into the story. We know from the start that the captain, who wrote this, survives, since we have the book. But eventually you want to know how.
I don't think I ever considered that American sailors were taken as slaves by Arabic speakers in Africa. Their lives were pretty basic on the camel treks through the desert, but so were the lives of their new masters. I learned that you CAN survive on salt water if you mix it with fresh water; human urine is better than dying of thirst, and you can drink liquid stored inside a camel.
They placed the small intestines, with their contents still inside, in the kettle, along with the liver and lungs. One man slit open the camel's rumen - its first and largest stomach, where it partly digests its food before regurgitating it as cud - reached inside with a bowl, and scooped out some of the chunky green liquid. . .That they survived was a combination of sheer luck, wit, and determination. The captain strove hard to have as many of his men saved as possible and talked his master into taking all four of the crew still with him, rather than save his own life without them. It appears that this loyalty to his men, in fact, impressed the master who eventually arranged to get him to an American consul in exchange for a sizeable ransom.
Riley saw a teenage boy plunge his head into the camel's gaping rumen and drink. Hamet [the captor], seeing Riley's [the captured captain] interest, told him to remove the boy and take his place.
Riley scooped the nauseating cavity with a bowl and poured the ropy green fluid down his throat. What he swallowed could not have been more refreshing . . . [pp. 152-3]
And while this characterization is based on what the Captain himself wrote, there was confirmation in the other account, written by a survivor who was separated from the captain's group and stayed captive an extra year. Furthermore, the captain also gave accounts where his behavior was not laudable - as when he escaped the first encounter with Africans by leaving the older, Gibraltar hitchhiker on the beach in his place. He rationalized that the man was not as critical to the survival of the rest as he himself.
The captain also had an ability to see the world through the eyes of others which I think also helped in their survival. You can see it in this passage where they were taunted by a black African slave. The slave, Boireck, had worked all day and came back to find the emaciated Americans, who had rested the day, in a tent. He tried to chase them out, but the master said no.
That evening [Boirek] amused the family and some visitors by taunting the Christians. He pointed at their slack genitals and laughingly compared them with his own. His sneering references to the gaunt Riley as "el rais" [the captain] brought howls of laughter. He poked their wounds with a sharp stick and made fun of their skin, which died and turned foul beneath the very image of Allah, the sun. What further proof was needed that these miserable white heathens were worthy only of slavery and scorn?
Clark fumed. "It's bad enough to be stripped, skinned alive, and mangled," he whispered to Riley, "without being obliged to bear the scoffs of a damned negro slave."
"It's good to know you're still alive, Jim, " Riley responded with a nod. The [camel] milk and water they had consumed that day, the rest, the shade had boosted his spirits. He would not let Boireck's buffoonery beat him down just now. "You feel the need to revenge an insult, but let the poor negro laugh if he can take pleasure in it," he told Clark. "God knows there's little enough here to provide that. He's only trying to gain favor with his masters and mistresses. I'm willing he should have it, even at our expense."[p. 136]
While author King only has Riley's word for what happened, the fact that he could even think like this - even if he didn't really say it - says a lot for him.
Of the seven who made it back from Africa, two died within seven years of their return at ages 29 and 44. Another died in 1831 at age 36. Captain Riley made it to age 62 dying at sea in 1840. Another died in 1847 at age 63. The other sailor to write an account of the trip upon which the book is based, Robbins, died in 1860 at 69. The youngest crew member who was only 15 when The Commerce set sail, died in 1882 at age 82. So, while the near starvation and severe physical strain affected them all, a couple still managed to live to a reasonable old age.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Bikes versus Buses
Cut outs for buses at bus stops are good. It means the bus can stop and pick up/drop off passengers without blocking traffic. But at some points, like the southwest corner of Lake Otis and 36th, the cutout meant that the sidewalk/bikepath was cut down to about 3 feet wide. That may sound like a lot, but if someone was waiting for the bus there, a bike rider pretty much had to go out into the street, unless the bus waiters moved down to the wider part of the path. And there have been times when the bush - which is visually much nicer than just the chain link fence - wasn't trimmed back, that you had to push against the bush or go into the street.
They are working on the sidewalk here. Although I live nearby, I don't recall any notices. It would be nice if they gave local folks a chance to give some input in case there are a good ideas about the improvement that could be incorporated for little or no extra cost.
But the good news is that, according to one of the workers I talked to, when they finish the path, the narrowest part will be 60 inches. That would be a significant improvement. I'm not sure how they will do that. We'll see it when it's finished. They've been at it for almost two weeks already.
They are working on the sidewalk here. Although I live nearby, I don't recall any notices. It would be nice if they gave local folks a chance to give some input in case there are a good ideas about the improvement that could be incorporated for little or no extra cost.
But the good news is that, according to one of the workers I talked to, when they finish the path, the narrowest part will be 60 inches. That would be a significant improvement. I'm not sure how they will do that. We'll see it when it's finished. They've been at it for almost two weeks already.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Wednesday Night's Readings - Rogow Gets Racy
Zack Rogow's book, The Number Before Infinity, recounts a love affair, through poetry. Along with the erotic poems to his lover (I used racy in the title because of the alliteration, but erotic seems more apt) the narrator also tells of the impact on his marriage. In the video, Rogow reads one very sexy poem to the lover and one about the daughter's displeasure with the father breaking up the family.
This is not a big book, but one that I think most couples would benefit from reading aloud to each other. It raises issues - passionate love, passionate love of someone outside the marriage, the impacts on the family - that couples shoud talk about, but I suspect don't, until it's too late. And since he's such a good poet, he captures in a few, well chosen words, what academics can't say in long volumes.
The UAA Readings go on tonight (Thursday) in the UAA Pub. David Grimes is doing a concert. There've been around 60 folks each night. A good chunk are people taking the workshops, but also strays like us. Dark Friday night, then back in Rasmuson Hall 101 at 8pm Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The detailed schedule with bios is here. For all the other posts on the Summer Reading Series.For an interesting Saturday night double header - go to the UAA Readings at 8pm and then to Out North for the final episode of Midnight Soapscum.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Dog Cabins For Sale
Passed this place on my run yesterday.
(for those of you outside of Anchorage, add area code 907.)
(for those of you outside of Anchorage, add area code 907.)
Linda McCarriston Amazes with Word Tricks
You have to work hard to hear the words - the sound on the video is not good. But such magnificent words describing the boys becoming men, growing, spreading, from green to ripe like tropical fruit on the trip to Iraq.
It was the third night of the Reading Series. Linda and I were once faculty members together at UAA and I know how brilliantly she illustrates ideas with words. But I was still surprised.
And I thought, perhaps poetry's time is once again here. Sure, I know there are poetry slams and there's been a revival of sorts. But that's still only the fringe. Given people's short attention spans, poetry is the perfect medium. Poets can now sell their poems one at a time on iTunes. Download a new poem each week onto your iPod. Each time it flows through the earbuds it tickles new brain cells.
Though good poetry doesn't come artificially sweetened in familiar flavors. It lays traps for your stereotypes and startles you with previously unseen glimpses of the heart. The common sparkles. Linda's "Green" does all that. Watch her on the video. Less than two minutes. But look her in the eye as she reads to you. It's magic.
Josip Novakovich read from one of his books, April Fool's Day I think. I really don't have the energy at this point to do him justice, so I just want to note that he was there and his reading was dark and funny. Finally he looked up to check on the time and saw he was just past 9:30pm and said, "It goes on, but it doesn't any get better."
Wednesday night Zack Rogow will read his work. I was impressed enough last year to buy one of his books and bought another one the other night. His poems tell difficult stories so easily. You can come hear him and others read.
8pm - Rasmuson Hall at UAA - Room 101. Free.
Click here for a complete schedule with bios.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Alaska Political Bloggers Credited
Phil at Progressive Alaska just alerted me about this post at Media Matters by Erik Boehlert Saradise Lost: How Alaska bloggers dethroned Sarah Palin (another case where the title goes well beyond what the article actually says.)
Even What Do I Know? is listed in the story (thanks to Phil's den mother-like devotion to his digital-campers.) While it's true I have written way more Palin posts than I think is good for my mental health, the real bulldogs in this story are (stand up and take a bow as your name is called):
Alaska Progressive
Mudflats
Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis
Just a Girl From Homer
Immoral Minority
along with
AndrewHalcro.com
who's written some critical posts - such as the stuff on Troopergate which began before the VP nomination. (There are lots of other Alaska bloggers who regularly touch on matters political, but the listed blogs were almost all-Palin, all-the-time.)
I take some pride in being, I'm sure, the first website to link to Progressive Alaska, even before it actually went public, having met Phil at the Kohring (or maybe it was the Kott) trial. From the beginning he had ideas of finding a way organize bloggers into a force to post the important stories that the local newspapers were missing. But, as others have mentioned, the pivotal event for Alaska political bloggers was McCain's announcement of his VP running mate.
While some of this pack of self-taught journalists have been more shrill and less polite than is my preference, I have no doubt that those qualities were critical to their success. We get the vacuous news the MSM gives us because that's what most people want. I used to dispute that, but I can see how many hits I get for different posts, and Palin sells, big!
And this isn't good. Other difficult stories aren't being adequately covered - like what's happening in the fishing wars of the North Pacific. We should be unraveling of the complex legal and financial web, including Uncle Ted's role, of what some say is the North Pacific's version of the destruction of the North Atlantic fisheries.
Alaskan bloggers, though, have had a special duty to cover Palin, not simply as a local politician, but because of her national aspirations.
But I would like to debunk some of the conspiracy theories that had Alaskan bloggers as agents with direct links to the White House. While there is a loose email connection among the larger group, and individual bloggers see each other more or less frequently, this is a pretty rag-tag group, united in their dedication to be Alaska's crap detectors.
To give you a sense of how 'loose' this group is, I remember first meeting Linda of Celtic Diva at the Alaska Democratic Convention last May. Then again at a hastily arranged dinner last September out at Phil's place to meet with journalists from Outside who were here to find out about Palin. . That's when I also briefly met Mudflats and Gryphen (from Immoral Minority). And there was a barbecue at Phil's place too. And that's the last time I think I've seen most of them. I'd met Shannyn Moore already at one of the political trials. I've bumped into some of them at events we were all covering - like the Alaska women against Palin demonstration - but other than that, I've had no contact. When I was taking the computer art class last fall, I sometimes ran into Phil while I was locking my bike and he'd come out from his office (music is in the same building as art) for a cigarette break. (He's quit since then.) And the odd email now and then. I realize some of the others have gotten together more often, but this is not a highly polished get-Sarah machine. It is individuals with computers at home who get too little sleep and drink too much coffee, so they can share what they find out about what is behind the facade.
And there were others who offered us encouragement and inspiration along the way, like Matt Browner Hamlin who was in Alaska working on the Begich campaign and had done political blogging in the East (Massachusetts if I recall right[It's Connecticut.]) He raised our sights about what bloggers could do.
Eric Boehlert has already tipped his hat to this group of bloggers in a chapter in his recent book The Bloggers on the Bus.
So what has this group done?
Followed up on every rumor they heard. They didn't always post what they heard, but they looked through the evidence and
They've (I'm not sure what it means that I'm using 'they' instead of 'we' but I'll not worry about it and go on that way) posted lots of videos and pictures, of varying levels of good taste, that related to Palin, and had links to local and national stories on Palin.
They've also been sources of information for Outside journalists. Overall, while some of the group have been louder than necessary and sometimes a little fast with declarative sentences, most of the bloggers have qualified their claims based on how much they actually knew or how solid the evidence was.
One critical contribution was the group's early awareness of what Don Mitchell said last week, that Palin is a celebrity, not a serious politician. But unlike Paris Hilton, Sarah Palin held an elected political office, so she was accountable in a way that celebrities aren't. Now that she's almost out of office, she can take advantage of that celebrity without getting flak for not doing a competent job as governor. However, if she plans to continue trying to influence public policy and democratic elections, there will continue to be an open season on Sarah Palin.
[Update July 20, 2009: As I've had time to think more about this, I believe the biggest contribution the so-called progressive blogs was to give Alaska liberals a media presence, a sense of identity and of political efficacy. I've posted an addition to this post today explaining why.]
I'm not suggesting that homegrown bloggers alone were responsible for Palin's "no más" moment, but there's no question that the online activists played a key role. That with their shit-kicking brand of frontier citizen journalism, they drove Palin to distraction and changed the way voters nationwide thought about the governor. So if conservative bloggers get credit for driving Dan Rather out of the anchor chair in 2004 following their Memogate campaign-season tale, then the band of scrappy liberal bloggers in Alaska ought to be allowed to bask in a bit of glory, because they made their own history when Palin announced her exit.Now, Palin has already credited bloggers in her resignation speech. But I guess we saw that as being made scapegoats. Boehlert's comments feel different.
Even What Do I Know? is listed in the story (thanks to Phil's den mother-like devotion to his digital-campers.) While it's true I have written way more Palin posts than I think is good for my mental health, the real bulldogs in this story are (stand up and take a bow as your name is called):
Alaska Progressive
Mudflats
Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis
Just a Girl From Homer
Immoral Minority
along with
AndrewHalcro.com
who's written some critical posts - such as the stuff on Troopergate which began before the VP nomination. (There are lots of other Alaska bloggers who regularly touch on matters political, but the listed blogs were almost all-Palin, all-the-time.)
I take some pride in being, I'm sure, the first website to link to Progressive Alaska, even before it actually went public, having met Phil at the Kohring (or maybe it was the Kott) trial. From the beginning he had ideas of finding a way organize bloggers into a force to post the important stories that the local newspapers were missing. But, as others have mentioned, the pivotal event for Alaska political bloggers was McCain's announcement of his VP running mate.
While some of this pack of self-taught journalists have been more shrill and less polite than is my preference, I have no doubt that those qualities were critical to their success. We get the vacuous news the MSM gives us because that's what most people want. I used to dispute that, but I can see how many hits I get for different posts, and Palin sells, big!
And this isn't good. Other difficult stories aren't being adequately covered - like what's happening in the fishing wars of the North Pacific. We should be unraveling of the complex legal and financial web, including Uncle Ted's role, of what some say is the North Pacific's version of the destruction of the North Atlantic fisheries.
Alaskan bloggers, though, have had a special duty to cover Palin, not simply as a local politician, but because of her national aspirations.
But I would like to debunk some of the conspiracy theories that had Alaskan bloggers as agents with direct links to the White House. While there is a loose email connection among the larger group, and individual bloggers see each other more or less frequently, this is a pretty rag-tag group, united in their dedication to be Alaska's crap detectors.
To give you a sense of how 'loose' this group is, I remember first meeting Linda of Celtic Diva at the Alaska Democratic Convention last May. Then again at a hastily arranged dinner last September out at Phil's place to meet with journalists from Outside who were here to find out about Palin. . That's when I also briefly met Mudflats and Gryphen (from Immoral Minority). And there was a barbecue at Phil's place too. And that's the last time I think I've seen most of them. I'd met Shannyn Moore already at one of the political trials. I've bumped into some of them at events we were all covering - like the Alaska women against Palin demonstration - but other than that, I've had no contact. When I was taking the computer art class last fall, I sometimes ran into Phil while I was locking my bike and he'd come out from his office (music is in the same building as art) for a cigarette break. (He's quit since then.) And the odd email now and then. I realize some of the others have gotten together more often, but this is not a highly polished get-Sarah machine. It is individuals with computers at home who get too little sleep and drink too much coffee, so they can share what they find out about what is behind the facade.
And there were others who offered us encouragement and inspiration along the way, like Matt Browner Hamlin who was in Alaska working on the Begich campaign and had done political blogging in the East (
Eric Boehlert has already tipped his hat to this group of bloggers in a chapter in his recent book The Bloggers on the Bus.
So what has this group done?
Followed up on every rumor they heard. They didn't always post what they heard, but they looked through the evidence and
- after getting it from several sources, but without confirmation, reported it as a rumor
- got more information and confirmed or rejected it
- analyzed the data available and offered possible explanations and their reasoning
- sometimes taken too much glee in Palin missteps
- kept a constant vigil on everything Palin said, giving her no lattitude when she stretched the truth, and she kept them very busy
They've (I'm not sure what it means that I'm using 'they' instead of 'we' but I'll not worry about it and go on that way) posted lots of videos and pictures, of varying levels of good taste, that related to Palin, and had links to local and national stories on Palin.
They've also been sources of information for Outside journalists. Overall, while some of the group have been louder than necessary and sometimes a little fast with declarative sentences, most of the bloggers have qualified their claims based on how much they actually knew or how solid the evidence was.
One critical contribution was the group's early awareness of what Don Mitchell said last week, that Palin is a celebrity, not a serious politician. But unlike Paris Hilton, Sarah Palin held an elected political office, so she was accountable in a way that celebrities aren't. Now that she's almost out of office, she can take advantage of that celebrity without getting flak for not doing a competent job as governor. However, if she plans to continue trying to influence public policy and democratic elections, there will continue to be an open season on Sarah Palin.
[Update July 20, 2009: As I've had time to think more about this, I believe the biggest contribution the so-called progressive blogs was to give Alaska liberals a media presence, a sense of identity and of political efficacy. I've posted an addition to this post today explaining why.]
Bangkok Closing Schools in Fight Against H1N1
ThaiVisa has this quote from the Bangkok Post up:
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration has ordered closed all of its 435 schools, 200 nurseries and 13 occupational training centres for five days from July 15 to 19 to prevent the spread of the A/H1N1 flu.
M.R. Sukhumbhand Paribatra, the BMA governor, said after a meeting of the city administrators on Tuesday that the BMA will concentrate on campaigning for the people to wear a protective mask, especially at a crowded place.
The BMA will distribute 2 million masks to the people at various crowded locations such as at the BTS electric train stations and Hua Lampong railway station. Bangkok MPs and city councillors will be asked to distribute 10,000 masks each to the people in their constituencies, he said.
Billboards to campaign for the peple to wear a mask and wash their hands will be put up at various corners of the city starting Tuesday. All community radios will also be asked to join the campaign.
The BMA also plans to close all of its school on Aug 10-11 to allow officials concerned to conduct a major clean up of the schools five days from August 8 to 12. However, this can be changed if the cabinet makes a resolution for schools to close for a clean up before this period.
Eva Salutis Reads a Beautiful Piece
It was the second night of the Reading Series at UAA. There are writing workshops/classes going on this week, which is why all these writers are here. In the evenings the students share their teachers with the rest of us.
The evening began with Derick Burleson who teaches at UAF. (I posted all the bios in the previous post.) I'm afraid I didn't connect with him tonight - we were in different places.
But Eva Saulitis' piece worked for me in various ways. (And they even brought in a lamp tonight which really improved the lighting.)
First and foremost was how she wrote this. She took 13 stabs at starting her story about her trip to her ancestral home in Latvia. While she used a professional conference as the impetus for the trip, it was really to visit long lost family. Each time she started over, she covered a bit of the ground she'd hit in the previous takes, but from a slightly different angle. Blogging has highlighted the futility of telling any story and I appreciated her multi-story approach. There's so much to tell sometimes, so many layers of the same topic, each requiring its own telling. There isn't just one story. And through Saulutis' 13 little stories, she painted 13 layers, each revealing nuances that the others hadn't. And the stories, particularly the disparity between when her father signed up to fight for the Germans in WW II (1941) and when his brother was drafted (1944) was rich and poignant. And like much of her visit, many things were left unsaid.
The video has parts 12 and 13. (I was a little unsure of posting any of the video, but since they announced tonight that they are recording the whole series for podcasting later I figured it would be ok.)
Monday, July 13, 2009
John Keeble Starts UAA Summer Reading Series
UAA has over a week of readings by the authors every night (except Friday) starting last night and going through Tuesday, July 21. They're at 8pm which gives you time to eat and settled.Last night we heard John Keeble - no we'd never heard of him before, but that is part of the fun, discovering new (for us) writers - reading from his new book Nocturnal America. We got excerpts from a longish (80 pages) short story, I think it was called Freeing the Fish. There's no one way to convey the story, you should have been there, as they say, but there were negotiations with Pakistani rebels, an uncomfortable scene where his wife is packing up the marriage, crosses on the lawn, and a budding relationship with the new neighbor.
When Keeble was done, there was a long pause as the audience waited to see if there was more. Then applause. Then it looked like Keeble and the audience waited in vain for someone to come up and say the normal thank you's and allow for questions from the audience. (To be fair, we were late because I didn't look carefully and we first went to the Art building where this event was last year, so I'm not sure what was all said in the introduction. We got there as Keeble came to the podium.)
I really don't understand why so many stages in Anchorage - Rasmuson Hall 101 and 110, the Arts Building rooms at UAA, Loussac's Marston Auditorium, the Museum's auditorium - all have such bad lighting for speakers/performers. The picture at the top is what it was like. I messed with the brightness on this second picture.Then Keeble walked down from the stage and sat down. Only then did the faculty member stand up and wave the red program for the Series and invite people to come to the other sessions. And to buy books in the lobby.
People who complain about the cost of entertainment or the lack of entertainment in Anchorage,(neither of which is a valid complaint in most cases) well, here's over a week of live authors reading from their works, FREE!! It's at Rasmuson Hall at UAA
(the 3 story green building connected to the sports center on the west end of campus) and after 7pm parking should be free. Better yet bike over in these great summer days we're having.The website has a link to a pdf file with info on each night and all the speakers. That's way too much work for people, so I've just posted it all below. Most are people I don't know, but Willie Hensley will be presenting on Saturday night. Also, the website says through July 22, but the pdf file says July 21 is the last night.
Anyway, take advantage of having a university in town that does stuff like this.
From the UAA website on this:
Northern Renaissance Arts & Science Series
Summer 2009 MFA Evening Author Readings
All readings are FREE and open to the public and are organized and sponsored by UAA’s Creative Writing & Literary Arts Department, Low-Residency MFA Program.
NEW Location: UAA, Rasmuson Hall 101.
Time: 8:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
The UAA Campus Bookstore will showcase and sell books authored by MFA faculty, special guest writers, and suggested coursebooks during each of the (9) evening writer programs.
For more information, contact Kathleen Tarr, MFA Program Coordinator at 907-786-4394, or at afkt1@uaa.alaska.edu.
Summer 2009 MFA Evening Author Readings
All readings are FREE and open to the public and are organized and sponsored by UAA’s Creative Writing & Literary Arts Department, Low-Residency MFA Program.
NEW Location: UAA, Rasmuson Hall 101.
Time: 8:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
The UAA Campus Bookstore will showcase and sell books authored by MFA faculty, special guest writers, and suggested coursebooks during each of the (9) evening writer programs.
For more information, contact Kathleen Tarr, MFA Program Coordinator at 907-786-4394, or at afkt1@uaa.alaska.edu.
Monday, July 13 Derick Burleson
Derick Burleson is the author of two books of poems: Never Night (Marick Press, 2007) and Ejo: Poems, Rwanda 1991-94 (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000). His poems
have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, and Poetry, among other journals. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, Burleson teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Alaska—Fairbanks and lives in Two Rivers. He’s also an associate faculty member in the Low-Residency MFA Program at UAA.
Eva Saulitis
Eva Saulitis has taught English and creative writing at the Kachemak Bay branch of Kenai Peninsula College, in Homer, Alaska, since 1999 and is also on the faculty of the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. Trained initially as a marine biologist, she received her M.S. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1993. Since 1986, she has studied the killer whales of Prince William Sound, Kenai Fjords and the Aleutian Islands and is the author and co-author of numerous scientific publications. Dissatisfied with the objective language and rigid methodology of science, she turned to creative writing – poetry and the essay – to develop another language with which to address the natural world, receiving her MFA from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1996.
Her essay collection, Leaving Resurrection, was a finalist for the Tupelo Press Non-Fiction Prize, and was published by Boreal Books/Red Hen Press in 2008. Her essays and poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Northwest Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, Carnet de Route, Seattle Review, Ice-Floe, Connotations and Kalliope. They have also appeared in several anthologies, including Homeground: Language for an American Landscape, edited by Barry Lopez; she has read essays she contributed to that volume on the PBS radio series Living on Earth. She’s been a recipient of fellowships from the Island Institute, the Alaska State Council on the Arts (Connie Boochever Fellowship) and the Rasumuson Foundation. In 2007, with the help of grants from Rasmuson Foundation and Ventspils House, an international center for writers and translators, she spent a month in Latvia, her parents’ birthplace, where she began a new book of lyric essays and completed a poetry collection entitled Many Ways to Say It.
Tuesday, July 14 Linda McCarriston
Linda McCarriston is the senior core faculty member and Professor of Poetry in UAA's Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program. Linda McCarriston has received two literature fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as two from the Vermont State Council on the arts. A winner of the Grolier Prize and the Consuelo Ford Prize from Poetry, she was awarded the poetry fellowship at the Bunting Institute (now the Radcliffe Institute) at Harvard for 1992-1993, after which she was named Jenny McKean Moore Visiting Writer in Washington at the George Washington University.
Her poetry books include: Little River New & Selected Poems; Eva-Mary; and Talking Soft Dutch. Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, The Ohio Review, the Georgia Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner ( where she has work forthcoming), New England Review (which also solicited her oft-reprinted essay "The Grace of Form: Class Un consciousness and an American Writer" for a special issue on Class and American Writers), ICE-FLOE: An International Journal of Poetry of the Far North, Calyx, Kalliope, Sojourner, Sojouners, TriQuarterly, Poetry Ireland, and many others. She has read at Berkeley, Poets' House in NYC, The Library of Congress, and countless other sites around the country, is a featured poet in Bill Moyers' latest PBS Poetry Series, The Language of Life (her tape, with Sandra McPherson: "The Field of Time"), and has been twice interviewed by Terry Gross for Public Radio's Fresh Air. In addition to poetry readings "on the circuit," she's read and spoken in prisons, public schools, family shelters, women's centers, and such gatherings as the Alaska Governor's Summit on the Neglect and Abuse of Children, as well as been invited to represent the United States and the English Language at the 2004 Festival de las Lenguas, in Mexico City. One of fourteen poets from the Americas, she was honored for her expression of solidarity and compassion for Native American women in the poem "Indian Girls," which caused great controversy in Alaska. Other poems, including "Le Coursier de Jeanne D'Arc" and "God the Synecdoche in His Holy Land," have also generated political controversy. McCarriston has been invited to contribute to panels and speaking series on subjects including women's history, American education, censorship and self-censorship, and her poems and prose are anthologized across a wide range of subject areas.
She lives in Rockport, Massachusetts.
Josip Novokovich
Josip Novakovich moved from Croatia to the U.S. at the age of twenty. He wrote the Fiction Writers Workshop, and has published a novel, April Fool's Day (translated into ten languages), three story collections (Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust, Yolk, and Salvation and Other Disasters) and two collections of narrative essays. His work was anthologized in Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize collection, and O. Henry Prize Stories. He has received the Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the Ingram Merrill Award, and an American Book Award, and he has been a writing fellow of the New York Public Library. He has taught at the University of Cincinnati, Bard, Penn State, and now Concordia University in Montreal. He lives in Warriors Mark, Pennsylvania.
Wednesday, July 15 Anne Caston
Anne Caston's first book, Flying Out With The Wounded, won the 1996 New York University Press Prize in Poetry. Her second collection, Judah's Lion, is now available in a second edition from Toad Hall Press (2009). Anne is currently at work on a third collection of poems, The Empress Of Longing, and a memoir, Deep Dixie: A Southern Woman's Take on Life, Love, Friendship, Romance, Faith, and Coming-of-Age Among Southern Baptists. Anne is core faculty in poetry in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage and divides her time between Alaska And Central Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband and two miscreant cats in Central Pennsylvania.
Rich Chiappone
Richard Chiappone received a BA in English at the university of Alaska Anchorage in 1991, and an MFA in creative writing there in 1994. He has published dozens of stories and essays in both commercial and literary magazines including Playboy, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Alaska Magazine, Missouri Review, Crescent Review, Sou’wester, New Virginia Review, ZYZZYVA and others. His collection of short stories “Water of an Undetermined Depth” was published in 2003. One of the stories in the collection, “Raccoon” was made into an award winning short film featured at international film festivals including Aspen, Montreal, Palm Springs and others. Chiappone lives in Anchor Point, Alaska, where he writes a newspaper column, teaches creative writing, and serves on the faculty of the annual Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. He has won writing awards including an Alaska Press Club award, and the John W. Voelker Award for short fiction. Chiappone is also an associate faculty member in the Low-Residency MFA Program at UAA.
Zack Rogow
Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of eighteen books or plays. His sixth book of poems, The Number before Infinity, was published by Scarlet Tanager Books in 2008. His poems have appeared in a variety of magazines, from American Poetry Review to Zyzzyva. He is the editor of an anthology of U.S. poetry, The Face of Poetry, published by University of California Press in 2005. Currently he teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at the California College of the Arts and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at the University of Alaska, Anchorage.
Thursday, July 16 (FREE PUBLIC CONCERT!) David Lynn Grimes An evening with Alaskan singer/songwriter, David Grimes
David Lynn Grimes is a bardic trickster, songteller and wandering fool who has howled with wolves, run from bears and cavorted with killer whales. In the wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, David has been one of the primary citizen artists and activists working to protect and praise wild habitat for critters and human communities in Alaska's Prince William Sound and Copper River ecosystems. David's adoptive Eyak name—given by Chief Marie Smith Jones, last speaker of the Eyak language—is YaxadiliSayaxinh, which means "The Thinker" or more literally, "He who causes his mind to involuntarily roam in an indeterminate direction."
Friday, July 17
NO READINGS.
Saturday, July 18 Nancy Lord
Nancy Lord, Alaska’s current Writer Laureate, holds a liberal arts degree from Hampshire College and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Vermont College. In addition to being an independent writer based in Homer, she fished commercially for many years and has, more recently, worked as a naturalist and historian on adventure cruise ships.
She is the author of three short fiction collections (most recently The Man Who Swam with Beavers, Coffee House Press, 2001) and three books of literary nonfiction (most recently Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whale’s Truths, Counterpoint Press, 2004.) A collection of essays/memoir, Rock, Water, Wild: An Alaskan Life, will be released by the University of Nebraska Press in September. She teaches part-time at the Kachemak Bay Branch of Kenai Peninsula College and in the low-residency graduate writing program at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her awards include fellowships from the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the Rasmuson Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, and residencies at a number of artist communities. See www.nancylord.alaskawriters.com.
Willie Hensley
Willie Hensley’s memoir, Fifty Years from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in December, 2008. In March of 2010, a Korean language version will be published in Korea.
In 1966, he spearheaded the formation of the Northwest Alaska Native Association which filed a claim to 40 million acres in that part of Alaska. He was instrumental in fighting for passage of the historic Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act of 1971, signed by President Richard Nixon. The act provided for payment of close to $1 billion to Alaska Natives and 44 million acres conveyed to corporations owned and controlled by Alaska Natives. He also spent eight years in the Alaska State Legislature, and has been in many top leadership positions in AFN. Though now retired, for 10 years, he represented the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company in Washington, D.C.
Willie Hensley received an honorary doctorate of law from University of Alaska in 1980. Hensley presently serves as Chairman of the First Alaskans Institute, providing leadership development, research and analysis to improve the Native community. He also serves as Chairman of the Alaska Manufacturing Extension Partnership; and sits on the Board of Trustees of Charter College. He and his wife Abbe have raised four children.
Sunday, July 19 Jo-Ann Mapson
Jo-Ann Mapson grew up in Southern California, attended Johnston College at the University of Redlands, and received her B.A. in English/Creative Writing at California State University Long Beach. In 1992, she received her MFA in Writing at Vermont College in Montpelier where she completed thesis projects in both poetry and fiction. Her students include writers Joyce Weatherford (Heart of the Beast), Judith Ryan Hendricks (Bread Alone) and bestselling mystery and mainstream author Earlene Fowler (The Saddlemaker's Wife). Her awards include The California Short Story Award sponsored by Squaw Valley Community of Writers and she was a semi-finalist for the Barnes & Noble inaugural Discover Great New Writers Award. Two of her novels have been national bestsellers (The Wilder Sisters and Bad Girl Creek), and one was made into a movie for television (Blue Rodeo). Her stories, personal essays and poetry have been widely published and anthologized, most recently in Wild Moments: Adventures with Animals of the North. Several of her novels have been BookSense 76 picks. Her literary papers are being collected in Boston University's Twentieth Century Writers "The Jo-Ann Mapson Collection."
She is Assistant Professor on the core faculty of UAA’s Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing. She currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she is completing a new novel.
Sunday, July 19 Ernestine Hayes
Ernestine Hayes is a member of the Wolf House of the Kaagwaantaan Clan of the Lingit [sic]. Her book, Blonde Indian, an Alaska Native Memoir, won a 2007 American book Award, was a HAIL (Honoring Alaska Indigenous Literature) recipient, and was a finalist for the 2007 Kiriyama Prize and the 2007 PEN Creative Non-Fiction Award. She is the author of other published work in fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction.
Ernestine's recent presentations include "Tlingit Literature" at the 2009 Tlingit Clan Conference, "The Negotiation of Identity in Alaska Native Transitional Generations" at the San Francisco American Anthropological Association Annual Conference, and "What Shall We Do with Our Histories?" at the International Polar Year in Nome. She was the 2009 featured writer for University of Alaska Southeast's journal, Tidal Echoes, where her poetry, nonfiction, and fiction appeared. She has recently had a short short published in BellaOnline Literary Review, and her creative essay "Winter in Lingit Aani Brings Magpies and Ravens" is scheduled for publication in Studies in American Literature in Fall 2009.
Grandmother of four, she is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Alaska Southeast Juneau campus, and teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program at UAA as an associate faculty member.
Monday, July 20 Judith Barrington
Judith Barrington is a memoirist and a poet. Her Lifesaving:A Memoir won the Lambda Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. Her best-selling Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art is enormously popular with writing groups, university programs, and individual memoirists. Her most recent poetry collection, Horses and the Human Soul was recently selected by the Oregon State Library for "150 Books for the Sesquicentennial" (from among books by Oregon writers, 1836 – 2009).
Her awards include the Andrés Berger Award for Creative Nonfiction, the Dulwich Festival International Poetry Contest, and the Stewart H. Holbrook Award for outstanding contributions to Oregon's literary life. Judith grew up in England and moved to the United States in 1976. She has lived in Portland, Oregon since then, returning to Europe to give readings and workshops in England and Spain every year.
David Stevenson
David Stevenson is the director of the Creative Writing and Literary Arts Department and the Low-Residency MFA Program at UAA. He has been teaching creative writing for over twenty years at the University of Utah, University of California Davis, and at Western Illinois University where he was full professor and director of the Graduate Program in English. He first came to Alaska in 1977 on a ski mountaineering expedition to Mt. Kennedy, a remote peak near the Alaska-Yukon border in the St. Elias Range.
He was educated in the west at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington (BA ’78) and the University of Utah (Ph.D. ’94). He writes often about the mountaineering experience both in fiction and nonfiction prose and has published widely in journals such as Ascent, Alpinist, Isotope, and Weber Studies, as well as in The American Alpine Journal where he has been book review editor since 1996. In the late 1990s he spent several summers working for the US Forest Service in the Inyo National Forest (California). There, he was editor and lead writer for the “Eastern Sierra Scenic Byway,” a project that placed 23 interpretive kiosks along Highway 395; he also designed and wrote much of the “Restoration Ecology in the Mono Basin” exhibit for the Mono Lake Scenic Area Visitor Center. His short story, “Native,” won the Boulevard Award for Emerging Writers in 1999.
Recently he contributed to Contact: Mountain Climbing and Environmental Thinking, edited by Jeff McCarthy (University of Nevada Press 2008), edited a book length collection of student writing Practice: Twelve Stories and a Novella, and privately published a short folio of photographs of climbing in the Dolomites (Italy). His novel-in-progress, Forty Crows, is set in Mexico City in the early 1970s.
Sherry Simpson
Sherry Simpson is the author of two collections of essays, The Way Winter Comes, and The Accidental Explorer: Wayfinding in Alaska. Her essays and articles have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including Creative Nonfiction journal, Orion, Great Writers on the Great Outdoors, and In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction. She is the winner of the inaugural Chinook Prize and the Andres Berger award for nonfiction, and she was a Bakeless Scholar at Breadloaf Writers' Conference.
She is working on a book about people and bears for the University Press of Kansas. Simpson is the core faculty member in literary nonfiction in UAA's Low-Residency MFA Program. She also teaches for the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University
Tuesday, July 21 (final summer 2009 reading and art presentation) Margot Klass Frank Soos
Among Margo Klass’s influences are medieval altarpieces, and the work of constructionist Kurt Schwitters and architect Tadeo Ando. Her work has been exhibited by various galleries and museums in Maine and Alaska. In addition to work in private collections, she has work in the collections of the University of Alaska Museum of the North, the Anchorage Museum of Art and History, and Davistown Museum in Liberty, Maine. She is a 2008 recipient of a Rasmuson Foundation Artist Award.
Frank Soos has published two works of fiction: Early Yet, and Unified Field Theory, the 1997 winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and one book of essays, Bamboo Fly Rod Suite. His short essay responses to Margo Klass’s work represent a new and unexpected direction in his work.
Margo Klass and Frank Soos began their collaboration in 2002 and make their home in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Derick Burleson is the author of two books of poems: Never Night (Marick Press, 2007) and Ejo: Poems, Rwanda 1991-94 (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000). His poems
have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, and Poetry, among other journals. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, Burleson teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Alaska—Fairbanks and lives in Two Rivers. He’s also an associate faculty member in the Low-Residency MFA Program at UAA.
Eva Saulitis
Eva Saulitis has taught English and creative writing at the Kachemak Bay branch of Kenai Peninsula College, in Homer, Alaska, since 1999 and is also on the faculty of the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. Trained initially as a marine biologist, she received her M.S. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1993. Since 1986, she has studied the killer whales of Prince William Sound, Kenai Fjords and the Aleutian Islands and is the author and co-author of numerous scientific publications. Dissatisfied with the objective language and rigid methodology of science, she turned to creative writing – poetry and the essay – to develop another language with which to address the natural world, receiving her MFA from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1996.
Her essay collection, Leaving Resurrection, was a finalist for the Tupelo Press Non-Fiction Prize, and was published by Boreal Books/Red Hen Press in 2008. Her essays and poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Northwest Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, Carnet de Route, Seattle Review, Ice-Floe, Connotations and Kalliope. They have also appeared in several anthologies, including Homeground: Language for an American Landscape, edited by Barry Lopez; she has read essays she contributed to that volume on the PBS radio series Living on Earth. She’s been a recipient of fellowships from the Island Institute, the Alaska State Council on the Arts (Connie Boochever Fellowship) and the Rasumuson Foundation. In 2007, with the help of grants from Rasmuson Foundation and Ventspils House, an international center for writers and translators, she spent a month in Latvia, her parents’ birthplace, where she began a new book of lyric essays and completed a poetry collection entitled Many Ways to Say It.
Tuesday, July 14 Linda McCarriston
Linda McCarriston is the senior core faculty member and Professor of Poetry in UAA's Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program. Linda McCarriston has received two literature fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as two from the Vermont State Council on the arts. A winner of the Grolier Prize and the Consuelo Ford Prize from Poetry, she was awarded the poetry fellowship at the Bunting Institute (now the Radcliffe Institute) at Harvard for 1992-1993, after which she was named Jenny McKean Moore Visiting Writer in Washington at the George Washington University.
Her poetry books include: Little River New & Selected Poems; Eva-Mary; and Talking Soft Dutch. Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, The Ohio Review, the Georgia Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner ( where she has work forthcoming), New England Review (which also solicited her oft-reprinted essay "The Grace of Form: Class Un consciousness and an American Writer" for a special issue on Class and American Writers), ICE-FLOE: An International Journal of Poetry of the Far North, Calyx, Kalliope, Sojourner, Sojouners, TriQuarterly, Poetry Ireland, and many others. She has read at Berkeley, Poets' House in NYC, The Library of Congress, and countless other sites around the country, is a featured poet in Bill Moyers' latest PBS Poetry Series, The Language of Life (her tape, with Sandra McPherson: "The Field of Time"), and has been twice interviewed by Terry Gross for Public Radio's Fresh Air. In addition to poetry readings "on the circuit," she's read and spoken in prisons, public schools, family shelters, women's centers, and such gatherings as the Alaska Governor's Summit on the Neglect and Abuse of Children, as well as been invited to represent the United States and the English Language at the 2004 Festival de las Lenguas, in Mexico City. One of fourteen poets from the Americas, she was honored for her expression of solidarity and compassion for Native American women in the poem "Indian Girls," which caused great controversy in Alaska. Other poems, including "Le Coursier de Jeanne D'Arc" and "God the Synecdoche in His Holy Land," have also generated political controversy. McCarriston has been invited to contribute to panels and speaking series on subjects including women's history, American education, censorship and self-censorship, and her poems and prose are anthologized across a wide range of subject areas.
She lives in Rockport, Massachusetts.
Josip Novokovich
Josip Novakovich moved from Croatia to the U.S. at the age of twenty. He wrote the Fiction Writers Workshop, and has published a novel, April Fool's Day (translated into ten languages), three story collections (Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust, Yolk, and Salvation and Other Disasters) and two collections of narrative essays. His work was anthologized in Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize collection, and O. Henry Prize Stories. He has received the Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the Ingram Merrill Award, and an American Book Award, and he has been a writing fellow of the New York Public Library. He has taught at the University of Cincinnati, Bard, Penn State, and now Concordia University in Montreal. He lives in Warriors Mark, Pennsylvania.
Wednesday, July 15 Anne Caston
Anne Caston's first book, Flying Out With The Wounded, won the 1996 New York University Press Prize in Poetry. Her second collection, Judah's Lion, is now available in a second edition from Toad Hall Press (2009). Anne is currently at work on a third collection of poems, The Empress Of Longing, and a memoir, Deep Dixie: A Southern Woman's Take on Life, Love, Friendship, Romance, Faith, and Coming-of-Age Among Southern Baptists. Anne is core faculty in poetry in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage and divides her time between Alaska And Central Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband and two miscreant cats in Central Pennsylvania.
Rich Chiappone
Richard Chiappone received a BA in English at the university of Alaska Anchorage in 1991, and an MFA in creative writing there in 1994. He has published dozens of stories and essays in both commercial and literary magazines including Playboy, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Alaska Magazine, Missouri Review, Crescent Review, Sou’wester, New Virginia Review, ZYZZYVA and others. His collection of short stories “Water of an Undetermined Depth” was published in 2003. One of the stories in the collection, “Raccoon” was made into an award winning short film featured at international film festivals including Aspen, Montreal, Palm Springs and others. Chiappone lives in Anchor Point, Alaska, where he writes a newspaper column, teaches creative writing, and serves on the faculty of the annual Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. He has won writing awards including an Alaska Press Club award, and the John W. Voelker Award for short fiction. Chiappone is also an associate faculty member in the Low-Residency MFA Program at UAA.
Zack Rogow
Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of eighteen books or plays. His sixth book of poems, The Number before Infinity, was published by Scarlet Tanager Books in 2008. His poems have appeared in a variety of magazines, from American Poetry Review to Zyzzyva. He is the editor of an anthology of U.S. poetry, The Face of Poetry, published by University of California Press in 2005. Currently he teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at the California College of the Arts and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at the University of Alaska, Anchorage.
Thursday, July 16 (FREE PUBLIC CONCERT!) David Lynn Grimes An evening with Alaskan singer/songwriter, David Grimes
David Lynn Grimes is a bardic trickster, songteller and wandering fool who has howled with wolves, run from bears and cavorted with killer whales. In the wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, David has been one of the primary citizen artists and activists working to protect and praise wild habitat for critters and human communities in Alaska's Prince William Sound and Copper River ecosystems. David's adoptive Eyak name—given by Chief Marie Smith Jones, last speaker of the Eyak language—is YaxadiliSayaxinh, which means "The Thinker" or more literally, "He who causes his mind to involuntarily roam in an indeterminate direction."
Friday, July 17
NO READINGS.
Saturday, July 18 Nancy Lord
Nancy Lord, Alaska’s current Writer Laureate, holds a liberal arts degree from Hampshire College and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Vermont College. In addition to being an independent writer based in Homer, she fished commercially for many years and has, more recently, worked as a naturalist and historian on adventure cruise ships.
She is the author of three short fiction collections (most recently The Man Who Swam with Beavers, Coffee House Press, 2001) and three books of literary nonfiction (most recently Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whale’s Truths, Counterpoint Press, 2004.) A collection of essays/memoir, Rock, Water, Wild: An Alaskan Life, will be released by the University of Nebraska Press in September. She teaches part-time at the Kachemak Bay Branch of Kenai Peninsula College and in the low-residency graduate writing program at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her awards include fellowships from the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the Rasmuson Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, and residencies at a number of artist communities. See www.nancylord.alaskawriters.com.
Willie Hensley
Willie Hensley’s memoir, Fifty Years from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in December, 2008. In March of 2010, a Korean language version will be published in Korea.
In 1966, he spearheaded the formation of the Northwest Alaska Native Association which filed a claim to 40 million acres in that part of Alaska. He was instrumental in fighting for passage of the historic Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act of 1971, signed by President Richard Nixon. The act provided for payment of close to $1 billion to Alaska Natives and 44 million acres conveyed to corporations owned and controlled by Alaska Natives. He also spent eight years in the Alaska State Legislature, and has been in many top leadership positions in AFN. Though now retired, for 10 years, he represented the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company in Washington, D.C.
Willie Hensley received an honorary doctorate of law from University of Alaska in 1980. Hensley presently serves as Chairman of the First Alaskans Institute, providing leadership development, research and analysis to improve the Native community. He also serves as Chairman of the Alaska Manufacturing Extension Partnership; and sits on the Board of Trustees of Charter College. He and his wife Abbe have raised four children.
Sunday, July 19 Jo-Ann Mapson
Jo-Ann Mapson grew up in Southern California, attended Johnston College at the University of Redlands, and received her B.A. in English/Creative Writing at California State University Long Beach. In 1992, she received her MFA in Writing at Vermont College in Montpelier where she completed thesis projects in both poetry and fiction. Her students include writers Joyce Weatherford (Heart of the Beast), Judith Ryan Hendricks (Bread Alone) and bestselling mystery and mainstream author Earlene Fowler (The Saddlemaker's Wife). Her awards include The California Short Story Award sponsored by Squaw Valley Community of Writers and she was a semi-finalist for the Barnes & Noble inaugural Discover Great New Writers Award. Two of her novels have been national bestsellers (The Wilder Sisters and Bad Girl Creek), and one was made into a movie for television (Blue Rodeo). Her stories, personal essays and poetry have been widely published and anthologized, most recently in Wild Moments: Adventures with Animals of the North. Several of her novels have been BookSense 76 picks. Her literary papers are being collected in Boston University's Twentieth Century Writers "The Jo-Ann Mapson Collection."
She is Assistant Professor on the core faculty of UAA’s Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing. She currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she is completing a new novel.
Sunday, July 19 Ernestine Hayes
Ernestine Hayes is a member of the Wolf House of the Kaagwaantaan Clan of the Lingit [sic]. Her book, Blonde Indian, an Alaska Native Memoir, won a 2007 American book Award, was a HAIL (Honoring Alaska Indigenous Literature) recipient, and was a finalist for the 2007 Kiriyama Prize and the 2007 PEN Creative Non-Fiction Award. She is the author of other published work in fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction.
Ernestine's recent presentations include "Tlingit Literature" at the 2009 Tlingit Clan Conference, "The Negotiation of Identity in Alaska Native Transitional Generations" at the San Francisco American Anthropological Association Annual Conference, and "What Shall We Do with Our Histories?" at the International Polar Year in Nome. She was the 2009 featured writer for University of Alaska Southeast's journal, Tidal Echoes, where her poetry, nonfiction, and fiction appeared. She has recently had a short short published in BellaOnline Literary Review, and her creative essay "Winter in Lingit Aani Brings Magpies and Ravens" is scheduled for publication in Studies in American Literature in Fall 2009.
Grandmother of four, she is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Alaska Southeast Juneau campus, and teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program at UAA as an associate faculty member.
Monday, July 20 Judith Barrington
Judith Barrington is a memoirist and a poet. Her Lifesaving:A Memoir won the Lambda Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. Her best-selling Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art is enormously popular with writing groups, university programs, and individual memoirists. Her most recent poetry collection, Horses and the Human Soul was recently selected by the Oregon State Library for "150 Books for the Sesquicentennial" (from among books by Oregon writers, 1836 – 2009).
Her awards include the Andrés Berger Award for Creative Nonfiction, the Dulwich Festival International Poetry Contest, and the Stewart H. Holbrook Award for outstanding contributions to Oregon's literary life. Judith grew up in England and moved to the United States in 1976. She has lived in Portland, Oregon since then, returning to Europe to give readings and workshops in England and Spain every year.
David Stevenson
David Stevenson is the director of the Creative Writing and Literary Arts Department and the Low-Residency MFA Program at UAA. He has been teaching creative writing for over twenty years at the University of Utah, University of California Davis, and at Western Illinois University where he was full professor and director of the Graduate Program in English. He first came to Alaska in 1977 on a ski mountaineering expedition to Mt. Kennedy, a remote peak near the Alaska-Yukon border in the St. Elias Range.
He was educated in the west at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington (BA ’78) and the University of Utah (Ph.D. ’94). He writes often about the mountaineering experience both in fiction and nonfiction prose and has published widely in journals such as Ascent, Alpinist, Isotope, and Weber Studies, as well as in The American Alpine Journal where he has been book review editor since 1996. In the late 1990s he spent several summers working for the US Forest Service in the Inyo National Forest (California). There, he was editor and lead writer for the “Eastern Sierra Scenic Byway,” a project that placed 23 interpretive kiosks along Highway 395; he also designed and wrote much of the “Restoration Ecology in the Mono Basin” exhibit for the Mono Lake Scenic Area Visitor Center. His short story, “Native,” won the Boulevard Award for Emerging Writers in 1999.
Recently he contributed to Contact: Mountain Climbing and Environmental Thinking, edited by Jeff McCarthy (University of Nevada Press 2008), edited a book length collection of student writing Practice: Twelve Stories and a Novella, and privately published a short folio of photographs of climbing in the Dolomites (Italy). His novel-in-progress, Forty Crows, is set in Mexico City in the early 1970s.
Sherry Simpson
Sherry Simpson is the author of two collections of essays, The Way Winter Comes, and The Accidental Explorer: Wayfinding in Alaska. Her essays and articles have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including Creative Nonfiction journal, Orion, Great Writers on the Great Outdoors, and In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction. She is the winner of the inaugural Chinook Prize and the Andres Berger award for nonfiction, and she was a Bakeless Scholar at Breadloaf Writers' Conference.
She is working on a book about people and bears for the University Press of Kansas. Simpson is the core faculty member in literary nonfiction in UAA's Low-Residency MFA Program. She also teaches for the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University
Tuesday, July 21 (final summer 2009 reading and art presentation) Margot Klass Frank Soos
Among Margo Klass’s influences are medieval altarpieces, and the work of constructionist Kurt Schwitters and architect Tadeo Ando. Her work has been exhibited by various galleries and museums in Maine and Alaska. In addition to work in private collections, she has work in the collections of the University of Alaska Museum of the North, the Anchorage Museum of Art and History, and Davistown Museum in Liberty, Maine. She is a 2008 recipient of a Rasmuson Foundation Artist Award.
Frank Soos has published two works of fiction: Early Yet, and Unified Field Theory, the 1997 winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and one book of essays, Bamboo Fly Rod Suite. His short essay responses to Margo Klass’s work represent a new and unexpected direction in his work.
Margo Klass and Frank Soos began their collaboration in 2002 and make their home in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)