Alaska's New USA Fellow: A Guest Post by Perry Eaton

Diverging a bit from our focus on writers, we celebrate a huge honor bestowed last night on Alaskan mask-maker Perry Eaton, who draws from his Alutiiq heritage to carve tradition-based Sugpiaq Alutiiq masks. In a live-streamed ceremony last night, United States Artists (USA) honored Eaton as one of 50 USA Fellows in eight creative disciplines — spanning the visual, performing, and literary arts — with each receiving an unrestricted grant of $50,000.

Fewer than 150 original Alutiiq masks still exist. Once deemed heretical by Russian and American colonizers, these masks are now in collections all over the world. During the 1990s, Eaton and a few others began traveling to study the masks and revive this forgotten tradition. Besides making his own carvings, Eaton, who studied art at Gray Harbor Community College, is a dedicated teacher at youth camps and cultural organizations. He was the founding President of the Alaska Native Heritage Center and is still a member of the board.

To become a USA Fellow, one must be nominated. Each year nominations are made by a different anonymous group of arts leaders, critics, scholars, and artists chosen by USA. Nominators do not know one another; their identities remain confidential.
Nominators are asked to submit names of artists they believe show an extraordinary commitment to their craft. Artists at any stage of career development may be nominated. Artists must demonstrate expert artistic skills, artistic education or training (formal or informal), a history of deriving income from those skills, and a history of active engagement in creating artwork and presenting it to the public. Discipline-specific peer panels composed of leading artists and art experts meet to select the program finalists. The USA Board of Directors approves the final recommendations. Just back from Europe and in California for the USA Fellows award ceremony, Eaton graciously agreed to a timely guest post for 49 Writers.



Alutiiq masks have been the primary expression for my artist endeavors since 2000. In my travels in Russia in the late eighties I visited museums that housed masks from Kodiak. But it was only after Helen Simeonoff showed me pictures she had taken in the Chateau-Musee in Boulogne sur Mer, France, that I became artistically fixated on the art form. It wasn't as if I was going to renew the art form or start a movement or something like that - I just loved the masks. Artists like Jacob Simeonoff had already paved the way. He was doing beautiful work several years before I ever made my first mask.

Alutiiq culture has really undergone a resurgence in the last decade. It seems like everyone is contributing to the activity. Dance groups got all of us thinking and Koniag, the Kodiak area native association, the Alutiiq Museum, and all the tribal and village corporations as well as public institutions like the school district in Kodiak, have all contributed to the creation of a current awareness of Alutiiq culture.

I believe the Alutiiq experience is indicative of the renewal of Alaska Native culture in general. Actually it's not really a renewal at all, but a re-valuation of something that had not been held of value by the dominant society. Cultural diversity is now being discussed with more of an open mind than ever before in the American experience. Alaska Natives, in part due to the success of our corporations and a greater participation level in the non-native world, are being more accepted. We bring our culture with us to the table, and more people come to understand the beauty that is within our people.

Now before someone grabs the Polly-Anna stick to beat me a few good licks up the side of my head, let's just say we have come a terrifically long way in a very short amount of time. And celebrating our culture is one of the great ways we can take pride in our achievements and insure a future for our children. The entire Alaska Native community has been a lifelong inspiration for me. I can't imagine anything other than what I am doing now being more fulfilling in life.

As I learn more about the USA fellows program I hope to inspire others in Alaska to apply and be recognized. It's so new to me my head is still swimming!

Musings on Passion and Paying Attention: A Guest Post by Bill Sherwonit

I recently gave a craft talk of sorts at UAA, titled “Notes from a Literary Journalist: The Importance of Passion, Persistence, and Paying Attention.” I’d like to pull a few thoughts from that talk to give a sense of my own process in crafting stories and then sharing them with the world – or at least a tiny slice of the world. Of the many elements involved in writing, the “three Ps” have proved especially essential to me, or so it seems now that I’ve been doing this for a while. In this blog entry I’ll focus on passion and paying attention, leaving persistence for another time and entry since it, in my experience, becomes most important when the writer begins the quest of seeking a (publishing) home for his or her stories.

Perhaps because I bring a nature writer’s – and amateur naturalist’s – perspective to the craft and art of writing, for me the entire process begins with paying attention.

Especially when writing personal essays and now a book-length first-person narrative, much of what I’m sharing with the reader is my experience in and of the world. Such stories demand that I be alert to what’s happening both outside me and within. (Even when I’m in more of a journalist mode, I must pay careful attention to the event, person, experience, etc. that I’m reporting on.) Perhaps this seems obvious, but I think I had to learn – or re-learn – what it means to have a focused, deeper awareness while working my way along the writing path. I also think people naturally have that deep, fully present awareness when new to the world (as evidenced by the intense, wide-eyed gaze of an infant) but then most, if not all, of us gradually lose it as we become acculturated. That seems to be part of the human experience, especially in our modern, western, high-tech culture; as adolescents and adults, we spend so much of our time being distracted as we hurry about, make plans, worry, multi-task, go from one electronic device to another, etc., etc.

As briefly touched upon in my earlier posting, one of writing’s great gifts to me is that it helps me – or perhaps better put, requires me – to really pay attention, to be in the present moment. Even now, it’s something I generally do only in comparatively short bursts, most easily when immersed in wild nature. Inevitably my busy mind eventually “wanders” to past or future matters. (Paying attention in my human relationships remains much more challenging; more than one partner across the years has complained about my “selective” attention. But I’m gradually getting better with people, too.)

I reap the benefits not only in my writing, but, more importantly, in how I live. As much as I love writing and sharing stories with an audience, what’s most important is to experience life. Put another way, my most memorable moments are not those I spend in front of my computer, composing a story; rather they are the moments in which I experience wonder, delight, fear, anger, love, or any other powerful emotion (and associated thoughts), while in the company of people, animals, landscapes, or whatever.

And yet, paradoxically, the writing of a story – or the reading of journal notes while working on a story – allow me to vividly revisit and relive extraordinary times in my life. While working on Changing Paths, for example, I was transported back to the Central Brooks Range. In a quite visceral way, I relived my solo trek and encounters with wolf and grizzly and Mount Doonerak; I re-experienced my step-by-step trepidation while crossing large, braided rivers, my battles with mosquitoes, simple dinners of pasta and coffee and chocolate, pounding rainstorms, and conversations with Anaktuvuk Pass’s Nunamiut people. I’m sure many of those experiences wouldn’t have remained so vibrantly clear inside my psyche, my being, if I hadn’t so closely paid attention to my trials and revelations – and recorded them, in great detail, in my journal – because I knew I would later write about them.

I love the phrase that Stephen Trimble uses in his anthology, Words from the Land: Encounters with Natural History Writing, to describe the kind of paying attention that I’m discussing: “the naturalist’s trance.” (Elsewhere he attributes the phrase to acclaimed scientist/author E.O. Wilson.) I should mention here that I highly recommend Trimble’s book, even more for his introduction than the stories he’s compiled, written by a variety of top-notch writers. Trimble explores the elements of natural history writing – simply another term for nature writing – through the practices, techniques, and ideas of such accomplished writers as Barry Lopez, John McPhee, David Quammen, Gretel Ehrlich, John Hay, Ann Zwinger, Gary Nabhan, and Edward Abbey. It’s great stuff for anyone interested in such writing, or even writing generally.

As suggested above, the writer’s practice of paying attention should ideally be accompanied by the act of recording experiences, observations, streams of thought, etc. in a notebook or journal. All of this reminds me of the handout that I give to my nature-writing students and from which I’ll borrow here, with a few changes. I created the handout for a class that emphasized writing about place (“from your backyard to remote wilderness”), but much of it is applicable when writing about other relationships, whether with people, wildlife, plants, bugs, pets, you name it. I should also mention that these are “instructions” that I’ve learned to subconsciously give myself whenever something – or some being – has caught my attention and I’m pretty darn sure there’s a story waiting to be told.

No. 1: Get out there, wherever “there” is. Leave day-to-day routines behind. Do something different, even if it’s in your backyard. (Even the house can be a starting place, however, as I’ve learned from my middle-aged passion for birds and bird feeding.) And don’t be rushed. Take the time to settle into place.

Intention: Make a commitment to record your experience on paper. Perhaps because I came to writing as a journalist, I consider note taking essential. I won’t – I can’t – rely on memory. [I will add here that in recent years I have in fact come to depend on that trickster, memory, while exploring and writing about my boyhood years in Connecticut. Memory and memoir really are tricky things and worth a posting in themselves whether by me or some other writer down the line. But that’s writing about the past. In the present, I greatly depend on notes.]

Bring along the necessary gear: notebook and pencil [or pen], all your senses, an attention to detail and an open mind. It also helps immensely to allow yourself a sense of wonder and delight in the world. And humility. Be open to the unexpected; allow the possibility of surprise.

Often it helps to spend some time tuning into the surroundings. If possible, slow down. Allow yourself the experience. Stop thinking and start feeling. Open up to the world, using all your senses. Start paying attention.

At some point you might ask yourself: what’s going on around me? Inside me? What responses, feelings, thoughts are my experience/outside stimuli producing? Notice any memories, dreams, or other connections that are stirred. Of course once you’ve begun to do any such “inventory,” you’ve pulled yourself out of the experience. As Trimble puts it, “Each experience begins as raw sensation. But as soon as writers attend to it, sensation becomes perception and starts to move out of the present and into the past. The naturalists begin to ponder, analyze, and make choices.” So even in this stage, choices are being made, by the simple fact of where you put your attention.

In some circumstances, then, this curious, paradoxical thing begins to happen. There is, in a way, a moving in and out of experience. From experiencing to perceiving to choosing and back into experiencing. The experience, of course, is primary.

I can’t emphasize this last point enough. It can be a big mistake to pull yourself out of an experience too soon in order to begin recording or even “pondering” it, because you risk missing or diminishing the power of what’s happening. While hiking in the Chugach Mountains this past summer, I encountered a wolverine, an animal I’ve longed to meet for years. Though I had my journal with me, I wasn’t at all tempted to begin taking notes until after the wolverine had departed. Yet somewhere inside I instinctively instructed myself to pay close attention to the details of the animal and our interaction, knowing that I would write about the encounter. Immediately after the wolverine loped off, I rushed to my journal and begin writing furiously.

I could go on and on (and I do in my “Writing about Place” handout), but you get the idea.

* * *

Equally as important as paying attention is passion. In fact (despite what I wrote to begin this blog) I’m not entirely sure which comes first; each probably feeds the other. In any case, I have a working theory – or maybe it’s simply a belief – about passion that guides my own work. Simply put, I believe that the best writing – at least in the creative nonfiction genre – is done by people who are passionate about the ideas, relationships, issues, places, etc. that they explore in their stories. This makes intuitive sense to me. Could it be any other way? Yet many beginning writers – at least many of those people who have taken my classes and are new to creative writing – don’t seem to understand it.

Over the years, a surprising number of students have struggled for ideas, for stories to share. That amazes me, because I see stories everywhere. So what I tell them is write about the stuff that matters, the things in life that stir delight or rage or grief. I see the fruits of this approach most clearly in the “free writes” or stream-of-consciousness exercises that we do in class. I am consistently impressed with the quality of writing that results when writers, including those new to the process, focus on what’s important to them, whether family or critters or wildlands or cultural and political issues.

I think too about the writers who’ve touched me deeply, writers to whom I turn again and again for inspiration and insight and because their ideas resonate – or, conversely, because they have somehow encouraged me to rethink my own understandings and ways of seeing. It’s not something I can prove, but I feel the passion in their stories. And I’m sure that at some level, their passions have touched and fed my own, whether they are nature writers, theologians, philosophers, scientists, journalists, psychologists, historians, novelists, or poets. The forms, styles and subjects of these writers are remarkably varied, but all bring a kind of fervor to their work.

As a newspaper journalist, I sometimes had to write about events, people, or issues in which I had little or no personal interest. There was, I admit, considerable merit to that. If nothing else, it taught me discipline and sometimes opened me to possibilities I never would have encountered on my own. And since becoming a freelancer, I have certainly taken on writing/editing projects that didn’t particularly excite me, simply to help pay the bills. But passion has always fed my creative writing. Because so much of nature writing is deeply personal, it’s the perfect avenue for writing about the things that really matter.

49 Writers Weekly Round-Up

We're engaged in a flurry of year-end planning here at 49 Writers. We've enjoyed a great response to our call for featured authors for 2010; December 15 is the deadline for tossing your name in that hat. Watch for our new book advertising guidelines to be posted soon, along with news about possible workshops and manuscript critiques.

In the meantime, let's not forget the joys of the current season. Former Alaska Poet Laureate Tom Sexton's poem "Snow," published in the winter issue of The Hudson Review, will also be part of the Review's holiday greeting.

Eric Heyne brings to our attention a call for submissions for an upcoming conference, The Fictional North, to be held at The Pas Campus in The Pas, Manitoba, March 30-April 1, 2010.

From the invitation: "Iconic images of the North, the relationship of North to South, and ethnographic models of “Northernness” often promote political and cultural paradigms from elsewhere. At best they reveal little about the North or Northerners; at worst they may be downright misleading. Ironically, Western culture has enshrined North as that direction in relation to which all others are defined, yet its topography eludes definition. North is not one but a number of Netherlands; and like all frontiers, the North is in its essence imaginative, its being magicked out of ice and snow, muskeg and tundra. Storytelling is its generative principle, the activity through which the North, and Northerners, call themselves into being."

Well said! The Fifth Annual University College of the North (UCN) Conference invites abstracts, papers or stories on any aspect of the following topics: Tall Tales and the North; The Lure of Gold in the North; Northern Storytelling; Fictions about the Aboriginal North; Ice and Snow; Animals and the North; The Ethnographic North; Northern Histories; Northern Stereotypes / Northern Icons; (Hi)stories and Travelogues of Northern Exploration; Northern Myths and Legends; Hollywood’s North; Mysticism and the North; Northern Tragedies; The North and Comedy; The Supernatural North; Northern Documentaries.

It is anticipated that selected papers will be published as a compilation of conference proceedings. Proposals for both individual and panel presentations are welcome. Abstracts of 250 words (with accompanying biographical information of no more than one page) should be submitted by mail, fax or email by January 15, 2010 to:
Sandra Barber, University College of the North, fax: (204) 677-6736, sbarber@ucn.ca.

Fairbanks author David Marusek sends this link to a Publishers Weekly article introducing author Cory Doctorow's comprehensive and well-documented experiment in self-publishing as well as a link to Doctorow's December update on his project. I hope Santa can stuff half this guy's marketing energy in my stocking this year.

On the sad subject of the November 13 filing of bankruptcy by Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company, author Ann Chandonnet reports some difficulty finding the price to buy back rights to her manuscript. In consideration of others who may be in the same boat, here’s what she has learned:

The case number is 09-39457-TMB7, filed with Portland Bankruptcy Court: 503 326-1500.

The hearing is now scheduled for December 21.

The counsel for GACP is Jeannette Thomas of Portland. JThomas@perkinscoie.com, or 503 727-2075. That office will mail to authors documents needed to file a claim.

On a happier note, Ann also reports that www.imaginingheaven.com is looking for poems, and artist Rebecca Poulson of Sitka has released her 2010 Outer Coast Calendar, centered on the theme of art. The calendar includes poetry: the January poem is by Ann Chandonnet; February’s poem, “Village Boy,” is by Tlingit artist Robert Davis Hoffman (Hoffman’s poem was originally published in the Alaska Quarterly Review); November’s poem is “My Best Work” by John Straley from his collection The Rising and the Rain (University of Alaska Press). Calendars can be ordered from rebecca_poulton@hotmail.com.

For the third year in a row, Amazon and Penguin have teamed up for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, an international writing competition that offers new writers a chance at publication. Earlier this week, it was announced that there would be two prizes for this year’s competition, one of which will be for the best young adult novel. Also new this year: the competition is open to novels that have been previously self-published.

Up to 10,000 manuscripts will be accepted for the contest, which will then be narrowed down—in turn by Amazon editors/top reviewers, Publishers Weekly reviewers, and Penguin editors—before arriving at three finalists in each category. On the young adult side, the panel critiquing the finalists consists of authors Sarah Dessen and Nancy Werlin; Amy Berkower, president of Writers House; and Ben Schrank, president and publisher of Penguin’s Razorbill imprint. Amazon customers will then vote on a grand prize winner in each category, with winners receiving a $15,000 publishing contract with Penguin.

Our condolences to the family and friends of Fairbanks author Marjorie Kowalski Cole, who died of cancer last Friday morning at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital. As Dermot Cole notes in a tribute published in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, "Marjorie wrote two novels and her poems and essays appeared in many prestigious publications. For her novel, Correcting the Landscape, she received the $25,000 Bellwether Award in 2004 from Barbara Kingsolver. No other novel set in Fairbanks has ever received the critical acclaim that her book did."

Previously married to Terrence Cole, she is survived by her husband Pat Lambert and two sons, Henry and Desmond, as well as sisters Karen, Marie and Louise, and her brother Paul. Services were held Tuesday at St. Raphael’s Catholic Church in Fairbanks.

I'm usually wrong, thank goodness: Here's to Deb!

I was going to leave today blogpost-free, all the more to encourage you to read yesterday's post about whether we need a writing center. (Please read, please comment; please?)

But I've had this thought I just need to share this week about my co-blogger, Deb Vanasse. You may know that I'd never met Deb before we merged our blogs just about one year and over 100,000 web hits ago, and in that time, I have been astonished by all she accomplishes. She is an organized dynamo. She is also a basically happy and optimistic person, according to her post on Monday, which is a nice balance for my own self-critical, sometimes moody (especially in December) self.

Deb's inherent optimism might explain why she charges ahead where I tend to tread carefully. For example, about a year ago, she suggested we find featured monthly authors to blog for us. I thought we wouldn't get many sign-ups or consistent follow-through. She was right; I was wrong. A year later, I can say that having new guest-posters every month here at 49w has been one of the main things that has kept me going and allowed me to keep co-running the blog without burning out. I love meeting other Alaska writers through their posts here.

Last month, Deb told me it was time to find another dozen authors for 2010. I thought we'd already tapped out and/or tired our contributors. She was right; I was wrong. We have a fantastic list of writers who will be writing for us in 2010. I can't wait!

Deb has many more ideas for 49 writers in the year ahead, and I don't want to steal all her thunder by announcing news too soon. For now, I think it's enough to say that Deb is usually right. We plan to keep growing, keep improving, keep reaching out. If it works, I'll have a lot of people to thank: her, and all of you who read, write, comment, or pat us on the back in other ways. Full steam ahead!

Your Turn: Do We Need a Writing Center?

Several of us in the Alaska writing community have been having this conversation over the years, and tomorrow, I'll be meeting with a few folks to discuss it in greater depth (more on that soon). So I thought I'd ask you: Do we need a writing center in Anchorage? Have you had any experiences with writing centers in other cities -- for example, 826 Valencia in San Francisco *(founded in 2002 by Dave Eggers and Ninive Calegari) or Boston's Grub Street (founded in 1997 by Eve Bridburg)?


And what is a writing center, anyway? Here's how Grub Street explains what they do:

Grub Street is a non-profit creative writing center dedicated to nurturing writers and connecting readers with the wealth of writing talent in the Boston area.

Our mission is to support creative writers at all stages of their development so that they can achieve their goals of publication, social and professional networking, gainful employment in the field, and/or personal enrichment.

We accomplish this by providing university-level instruction via multi-week courses, seminars and conferences; bringing the transformative power of creative writing to underserved populations – specifically teens and seniors – via innovative programs and community events; financially supporting and offering unique professional development opportunities to creative writing instructors, seminar leaders and administrative staff; elevating the literary profile of the city of Boston to increase its relevance among major publishing houses and prominent authors in all genres; and maintaining a vibrant, inspiring and accessible space where writers can find professional resources and connect with each other in a spirit of mutual support.

Grub Street builds on Boston's proud literary tradition by making the city more welcoming for writers, and more inspiring and culturally alive for all of us.

What could this mean for Anchorage? I think it could mean: a regular place for workshops that don't cost the university rate of $400-600. A place where top visiting writers could come and visit with us, now that we don't have the Writing Rendezvous. A drop-in center with fun writing classes for underserved young people; or a place from which to organize programs that we send out to prisons and other places that might benefit from the occasional workshop.

We already have some great organizations and programs, from Alaska Sisters in Crime, to the Writers Guild, to 49 writers -- and there are many more, with no shortage of talent and energy out there. But do we need a nonprofit that ties some of these services and populations together (hopefully, in a physical building)?

Share your ideas, connections, doubts, and opinions here, friends.


*P.S. The other cities that have 826 Valencia chapters are: Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Brooklyn, Ann Arbor, Boston, and most recently, DC.

Taking the Long and Winding Path to a Writing Life: A Guest Post by Bill Sherwonit

When talking about the writing life, I like to tell a story from my geology days, about a boss who absolutely loved the work we did. As I recount in Changing Paths, “Inwardly I cringed when a crew leader named Joe talked about our work. ‘You know,’ he said with gusto, ‘geology isn’t just a job to me. It’s my hobby, too.’ For me it was more chore than challenge. I think of Will Rogers’ joke about golf: a nice walk ruined. That’s pretty much how I felt about stream sediment sampling and pounding on rocks while hiking through one of North America’s wildest landscapes (the Central Brooks Range).”

Nowadays I smile when recalling Joe’s words and my wincing response to them, because I better understand his perspective. He and my other geology buddies would eventually become role models of a sort. Only four years after earning an MS at the University of Arizona, I decided to seek a new career, one that I could love as much as they loved geology. (Passion for the work – or rather my lack of it – was only one of several factors that prompted the change, but it was a crucial one.)

Here I’ll again borrow from Changing Paths, which in part chronicles my evolution from geologist to journalist and eventually nature writer and wilderness advocate:

“What that (career) would be, I had no idea. Many friends and family members thought I must be nuts, to throw away all the years of hard work, the MS in geology, and the opportunity to work in a profession where I’d already had some notable success. But the void beckoned. I had to make the leap into the unknown, because the real craziness lay in doing work I’d found to be either boring or destructive to what I loved. . . .

“A serious amateur photographer for several years, I decided to return to school and see how photojournalism suited me. Without much savings, I focused on local junior colleges, which seemed ideal for experiments like mine. As a California resident (where I’d settled in the late seventies) I could take a full load of courses for under $20. Among the schools that taught photojournalism, one immediately caught me eye (for reasons I explain in the book): Pierce College.

“I wouldn’t learn until later that Pierce’s journalism department was nationally acclaimed. Nor could I know that its staff would quickly recognize some raw talent in this serious new student – in writing and reporting, more than photography – and shepherd me toward a new and then unimaginable life. My three-semester apprenticeship at Pierce led to a real newspaper job at the tiny Simi Valley Enterprise and my entry into the life of a professional journalist. But more than that, it led me to something that soon became a passion: writing. All that remained was one final link to a lifelong love, wild nature.

“Much like the circumstances leading from grad school to Alaska, this turn of events initially seemed to be a string of coincidences or lucky breaks. But with a quarter-century of hindsight, I now hear the words of Joseph Campbell, who in talking with Bill Moyers during The Power of Myth series referred to the ideas of nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: ‘When you reach a certain age and look back over your life, it seems to have had an order; it seems to have been composed by someone. And those events, that when they occurred seemed merely accidental and occasional and just something that happened, turn out to be the main elements in a consistent plot. . . . ‘ ”

Ah, life as a plot. Now there’s something that should resonate with creative writers. I won’t continue with Schopenhauer’s ideas here, but the notion that accidents or coincidences or lucky (or unlucky) breaks might in fact be more than they seem resonates with me. So does Campbell’s famous counsel to “follow your bliss.” I don’t have his exact words at hand, but essentially he says that to follow one’s true passion, a person must heed “the call” – and act upon it. To do so often requires a leap of faith. Such a leap may appear intimidating, even dangerous. But the potential rewards are great.

In taking the leap, a person may discover a path that has been there all along, though unrecognized. And once on that path, all sorts of miraculous things seem to happen, as doors open and new possibilities emerge. It sometimes also seems that “invisible hands” are there to guide a person along the way.

It’s hard to write or talk about such a thing without seeming a little “woo woo,” a bit weird in a new-agey sort of way. Indeed, it seems a strange thing to me. And yet it somehow makes sense. Or at least I see it in my own life. It’s as if a path were always there, waiting for me. Maybe I actually walked (or crawled) upon it in my earliest days, but then got sidetracked by other forces, other influences. But in “leaping” from geology to journalism/writing, I found – or rediscovered – a path I was meant to take. (Though I’m not sure it’s the only path I might have followed and still found my passion.)

The ideas of being called and finding one’s own path are linked to the notion that our lives have meaning, a purpose. Whether or not that’s true, I think that most of us humans believe in the notion of purpose and we look for meaning in our lives. Or we at least want to live in a meaningful way. We want to leave a positive legacy of some kind.

It makes sense to me that my life’s purpose somehow would be closely tied to the larger, wilder world of nature. It’s always been a refuge, a home, a place of solace, inspiration, wonder and hope. (It is also sometimes intimidating and frightening.) The writing part is harder to explain. I don’t remember being a voracious reader or passionate writer when young. As a member of a deeply religious Lutheran family, mostly what I read – or had read to me – were the Bible and “Bible stories.” I sometimes feel envious when people talk about their favorite early books. None come to mind for me. Could I have blanked them out?

In grade school my favorite class was spelling. And I was pretty good at penmanship (when older I’d be praised for my handwriting). I suppose those might have been early hints of the importance that words and writing would later have for me. But in high school and college, I was a “math and science guy.” I didn’t particularly like English or history or more generally “the arts.” I remember reading classic novels in high school, for instance The Scarlet Letter, Ivanhoe, and A Tale of Two Cities. But they didn’t particularly inspire or excite me, though I do vaguely remember enjoying Ivanhoe. I was more into books about baseball, stories about fishing.

Sometime in college I became interested in Ernest Hemingway and eventually read several of his novels, but I’m not sure I can call him an important influence. I also began keeping a journal, off and on. In those journals I recorded my thoughts and experiences, reflected upon puzzling aspects of my life, tried to better understand my life. But they were very private, nothing to share.

Even after writing became my livelihood, I paid little attention to literature for years, either as writer or reader. My earliest creative efforts were the newspaper columns I wrote about sports and “the outdoors,” which sometimes took the essay form. But I didn’t begin to more seriously explore essay writing or longer narrative nonfiction until I’d embraced the life of a freelance writer, after The Anchorage Times lost its newspaper war with the Daily News. Becoming a freelancer, too, was something of a leap of faith, and something I’ve never regretted, despite the inevitable ebbs and flows – and rejections by all manner of publications.

What still amazes me is that I had no awareness that there was a literary genre called “nature writing” until I’d reached my late thirties, maybe even early forties. Though I’d read – and loved – Barry Lopez’s Of Wolves and Men and Arctic Dreams, I knew little or nothing about Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, John Burroughs, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Ed Abbey, Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, John Haines, Richard Nelson, Terry Tempest Williams, Robert Michael Pyle, Scott Russell Sanders – the list goes on and on. Many, if not most, of the above would hesitate to call themselves nature writers, but they have contributed greatly to the body of work that is called “nature writing.” And all have joined my personal library, inspired and fed my own writing efforts, since they made their way into my life.

As I’ve reflected in an essay, “Anchorage’s Wild Coastal Fringes,”

“There are strong links between my middle-aged ‘discoveries’ of songbirds and Anchorage’s coastal refuge and several other things that have become important to me – and to my understanding of the world – over the past decade or so (now closer to 15 years). Two examples are nature writing and a yearly Alaskan event called the Sitka Symposium (which recently ended after a run of 25 years) . . .

“Looking back, it seems I had a dim awareness of all those things – songbirds, coastal refuge, nature writing, symposium, and more – for years, as they moved in and out of my life. Yet I didn’t, or perhaps couldn’t, sense their power, their ability to expand, deepen, enrich, even transform a life, until some triggering event opened my eyes, my capacity to understand. The trigger itself might be perfectly ordinary. . . . But each somehow lifted a veil, opened a door, revealed a previously hidden path. And suddenly my world opened up. I learned a new way of experiencing the world that I had never before imagined. Of course such opening up isn’t limited to middle age; it can and does happen throughout our lives, if we’re lucky. Or paying attention.

“I think about all these things in my own life, because I want to know more about the ways we humans broaden our perspectives, the circumstances through which we willingly change or reshape our core beliefs and behaviors, the triggers that open us to new possibilities.”

Among writing’s greatest gifts to me is that it helps me pay greater attention to what’s happening around and within me. It is also one of the primary ways that I explore life’s mysteries, reflect upon my place in the world, and better understand wild nature, human nature, my nature. Yes, I’ve been fortunate enough to earn a living as a writer. But like Joe’s relationship with geology, writing has long been more than a job or career to me and something closer to a way of life, a way of being in the world. Writing is also a reminder to remain open to possibilities – and the way that a life can blossom when a person pays attention to his intuition, his heart.

Sad to say, I'm happy

Here it is, one of the coldest and darkest Mondays of the year, statistically speaking, and sad to say, I'm happy. Happy is bad, at least where writing is concerned, according to research by University of New South Wales Psychology Professor Joe Forgas, as reported by Mark Peters in Wordtastic.

Forgas assigned his research subjects to watch either a comedy or a film on cancer. Then they were asked to write persuasively. As Peters reports, "In all cases, the sad folks produced arguments that were more concrete and therefore more persuasive than the happy campers."

According to Forgas, mildly negative moods inspire us to pay more attention to detail. "A negative mood is like an alarm signal," Forgas tells Peters, "indicating that the situation is problematic, and requires more attentive, careful and vigilant processing — hence the greater attention to concrete information.”

I've troubled myself over this phenonmenon before, reading research summaries of the disproportionate number of successful writers who are clinically depressed. Sadly, I don't trend toward depression. I have my share of ups and downs, and I've had my gut-wrenching, soul-searching days, but overall I suffer from an infernal tendency to look on the bright side. Even in December. In Alaska.

Should I try to dial back my happy meter and wallow in all that's wrong with my life? Forgas says it's not that easy, contending that if it were, we'd be all happy, all the time. Except, of course, for writers. We have an excuse. Especially happy writers like me, who have little hope of achieving the mood we need to be good.

There. I'm feeling sadder already.

49 Writers Weekly Round-Up

We've had a great response to our 49 Writers call for featured authors for 2010, and there's still time to toss your name in the mix. It's a fine way to connect with other writers and get the word out about what you've been doing. Email me on or before December 15 at debv@gci.net to express your interest and indicate your preference of months, if any. We'll put together our featured authors list shortly after and will let everyone know who's slotted for when. And remember we encourage guests posts at any time; just email (debv@gci.net) and let us know what you have in mind.

Also in the works for 2010: the opportunity to advertise your books in the 49 Writers sidebar for the ridiculously low starting rate of $10 per month. That's right - for $10 per month, we'll run a sidebar image of your book linked to the URL of your choice - a great way to reach a targeted group of dedicated readers. And don't despair, readers - our plan is to run a limited number of ads per month, all for either books or bookstores, all in keeping with our format and style. No flashing whirlygigs, no annoying pop-ups. Watch for details in a week or two.

Yes, writers need money like everyone else. If you don't believe me, check out these results, just in from the Artists and the Economic Recession Survey, commissioned by Leveraging Investments in Creativity, in collaboration with Helicon Collaborative and Princeton Survey Research Associates International.

According to the survey, two-thirds of artists hold at least one job in addition to making art. Artists’ incomes are relatively low (two-thirds made less than $40,000 in 2008), and half (51%) reported a decrease in their art-related income from 2008 to 2009. Forty percent of artists do not have adequate health insurance and more than 50% are worried about losing what they do have.

Despite the challenges, artists are optimistic about the future—89% think artists have a special role in helping strengthen communities in these times, and 75% believe this is an inspiring time to be an artist. Some opportunities have emerged as a result of the recession—40% report they have been able to spend more time on their artwork, and one-third have seized the opportunity to experiment and collaborate more.

While surveyed artists indicated direct financial support would be most helpful to them (amen to that), technical assistance, networking opportunities (think 49 Writers), and supplies are also high on the list.

If you're looking to epublishing as one way to blast through the economic quagmire, Publishers Weekly reports some good news: Amazon's CreateSpace has announced that self-published authors who sign up for the CreateSpace Pro Plan will get access to Lightning and Ingram’s distribution channels, ending a dispute between Amazon and Ingram that prompted a lawsuit by a BookLocker, another print-on-demand company that challenged the legality of Amazon’s decision.

For those sticking with the traditional route to their readers, author Teresa Walsh at Writer Unboxed shares notes from the BackSpace Writers Seminar on whether authors should query during the holidays or wait for a less-harried opportunity. The most comprehensive advice on timing submissions comes from agent Jennie Dunham. She suggests submitting whenever there’s a sense of restart, like right after the New Year, in late April through May, and in September. Maybe timing isn't everything, but all other things being equal, it shouldn't hurt.

Palmer author Barbara Hunt's new book Alaska's Heavylight is out this week. Also recently released: Barry Zellen's On Thin Ice: The Inuit, the State, and the Challenge of Arctic Sovereignty, the sequel to Breaking the Ice: From Land Claims to Tribal Sovereignty in the Arctic, the third volume in the Arctic Security Project book series. On Thin Ice explores the relationship between the Inuit and the modern state in the vast but lightly populated North American Arctic. It chronicles the aspiration of the Inuit to participate in the formation and implementation of diplomatic and national security policies across the Arctic region and to contribute toward the post-Cold War re-conceptualization of Arctic security.

Alaskan author Mike Kincaid sends this link to an article mentioning both him and fellow Alaskan author Nancy Owen: http://www.cdapress.com/cdamagazine/ (Click on "Best Sellers.")

The Alaska Sisters in Crime will celebrate with a holiday party on Wednesday, December 16 from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. at the Elim Café. The cost is $10 for sandwiches, salad, & dessert. Bring a fun mystery gift to exchange with others and join the fun. RSVP with Rhonda via email at rsleighter@gci.net. Fans of Alaskan Sisters in Crime can now check out the second chapter of Dana Stabenow's forthcoming Kate Shugak novel, A Night Too Dark; the entire novel comes out in February.

Another fun diversion for our long winter night: Author Susan Taylor Brown has put together a list of over 200 movies about writers, poets, and screenwriters.

The details matter: Postcard from Dachau, Germany

A third and final postcard to 49w friends from my recent research trip to Italy and Germany.

I planned my recent Europe trip as a one-way journey from Rome to Munich, with plans to visit the concentration camp at Dachau just before flying home to Alaska. To be honest, I dreaded ending the trip on such a gloomy note. But what I ended up seeing at Dachau on an appropriately cold and rainy October day convinced me again of the importance of doing in-person research, of seeing with one’s own eyes rather than relying on books, movies, or the web, helpful as those resources are.

This blogpost is not the place to do justice to such a weighty subject as the Holocaust, but I want to speak simply here, as a writer to other writers and readers, about that moment when new insights begin to flicker, and we realize how easily we might have gotten things wrong.

There is so much to say, but I’ll focus away from the ovens and gas showers (yes, we saw those, too), toward something simpler: the bunkhouses.

At Dachau, many of the original buildings have been demolished, but visitors can tour some re-created areas that show how prisoner bunkhouses looked at various stages in the camp’s history. Dachau, Germany’s first concentration camp, an SS training center, and the model for many camps that followed, opened in 1933. The first prisoners weren’t Jews; the “Final Solution” was still many years away. The first enemy of the Nazis was the enemy within – including non-Jewish Germans who threatened the regime's increasing power. Nazis silenced critical voices early, and locals knew where criticism might lead. Long before the war, long before Kristallnacht, the people of Munich were aware of the efficient, well-scrubbed camp about 10 miles outside of town, where political trouble-makers and other misfits were sent.

In 1933, the camp held just under 5,000 inmates. By 1945, it had expanded to hold 55,000. The earliest bunkhouses – as shown in the three-part reconstructed barracks area – were roomy. In a later phase, the bunks have become narrower. By the end, there are simply undivided platforms, stacked one on top of the other all the way to the ceiling, better suited to cramming vast numbers of bodies.

When we see Nazi concentration camps in movies, we’re usually seeing images from late in the war: skeletally thin prisoners in striped uniforms or worse, piles of bodies; scenes of dirt and mayhem and starvation. The extreme awfulness, counterintuitively, can almost sap our deepest sympathy – the images are so alien and awful, it’s nearly impossible to imaginatively participate in them, to imagine the life of an inmate, or for that matter, a guard.

But a concentration camp, pre-war, looked different: orderly, well-run, apparently normal or even humanitarian. (Keep in mind that international visitors regularly toured – and praised – Dachau. The famous sign displayed at Dachau and several other camps, “Arbeit Macht Frei/Work Shall Make You Free” – a false promise or mystical/metaphorical flourish from day one – may have left those visitors feeling optimistic about the inmates’ chance for redemption).

The lessons for me are both literary and political. If you set a story in a concentration camp, in the 1930s, and try to describe it through the lens either of a Hollywood movie or from photos taken from 1943 or 1945, you risk getting the facts very, very wrong. And by getting it wrong, you may miss the most important part of the story. Which leads me to the political lesson.

Horror doesn’t always look like horror from day one. Sometimes it looks like a floor so well-polished you can see your face in it; or a roomy public inmates’ bathroom with a large circular sink, “nicer than the one you probably have at home!” Sometimes it looks like something you can – almost – imagine accepting, in the way we Americans have accepted the creation of certain other international detainment facilities, or even the old-fashioned prisons in our own communities. Horror doesn’t always appear full-blown, it evolves. (In the case of Dachau, it began to evolve just two months after the camp opened – when a public prosecutor in Munich tried to charge the camp commandant and SS officials with murdering an inmate, and Hitler responded by terminating the legal proceedings and removing concentration camps from all judicial oversight.)

How extensively did the evil – for lack of any better word -- evolve over 12 long years? This is just one of many more things I didn’t realize until I visited Dachau and saw a map of not only the ‘death camps’ (only six camps qualify as death camps, where systematic murder was the main aim) and the more numerous ‘generic’ concentration or labor camps (where murder was common but not as systematized), but also the numerous tiny subcamps where inmates were involved in all kinds of forced labor. Just outside the city of Munich alone, there were between 30 and 200 subcamps operating. Across all of Germany and its conquered territories, there was not just a network, but an incredibly, suffocatingly fine web of facilities – and guilt – so extensive and entrenched, it boggles the mind.

But let me end not there, but with a different parting image from our visit: most of the groups touring Dachau alongside us were German high school students, learning the details of this dark chapter in local history --- some for the first time.

A peek inside the Alaskana Vault with Michael Catoggio

Old cans of squid and tuna, labeled in Russian. Con artist Soapy Smith's pocket watch, engraved with an elk. A catalog of Gold Rush-era ads, providing clues to what life in that fabled era was really like.

These were just some of the eclectic treasures seen by visitors who attended librarian Michael Catoggio's insider's tour of the Loussac Library Alaska Collection two weeks ago.

I had a scheduling conflict, but my family (husband Brian, kids Aryeh and Tziporah -- thanks guys!) attended in my stead, and learned quite a bit, including the alarming fact that the Alaska collection staff, numbering 4 people a decade ago, is down to a single 2/3-time position. The library is facing cuts, but it's still a place of wonders and insider knowledge.

Here are more items we didn't know the Alaska Collection contained: CDs of traditional village tales, yearbooks that go back decades, city council minutes from the very first years of Anchorage's history (items covered -- teen curfews, cattle rules, laws about public curtains ???). But as important as the material is the availability of a living person -- librarian Michael Catoggio -- willing to answer your questions about Alaska research.

By the way, Catoggio explained that 272,000 books were published last year, of which Loussac can buy only 5,000. Part of his job is to find out about newly published Alaska books that might slip by unnoticed. 49 writers is one of the places he looks.

Thanks for the plug, Michael, and even more, thanks for helping Alaska preserve its literary heritage and its treasures, from which many more stories may yet spring.

49 Writers Interview: Bill Sherwonit, Changing Paths

Next week, we'll feature the first of four posts from Bill Sherwonit, 49 Writers Featured Author for December. Here, an interview with Bill on his most recent book, Changing Paths: Travels and Meditations in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness.

How is Changing Paths different from your previous books, especially Living with Wildness, also from the University of Alaska Press?

The biggest difference between my two most recent books is that Living with Wildness is a collection of essays while Changing Paths is narrative nonfiction, a start-to-finish story if you will (but with lots of necessary digressions along the way). The new book differs from my earlier work in that it is creative or literary nonfiction. Or at least it’s the closest I’ll probably ever get to that genre.

In some ways, Changing Paths builds on Living with Wildness; I’ve gone deeper into some of the ideas and experiences I wrote about in the latter. It’s also by far the most personal book I’ve done and is, in a way, a memoir (thus requiring me to more fully engage with that trickster, memory). Through my own life’s story I’ve tried to touch on larger, more universal themes. One example would be the lasting impact of early influences, in my case fundamentalist Christianity and wild nature. Another would be the role – and in my opinion, the necessity – of wilderness in modern American culture. Or how a place can influence or even dramatically change a life (thus the title). In Changing Paths the primary place I explore is one of deep wildness, the Central Brooks Range. But I also reflect upon the influence of the Connecticut woods and my neighborhood swamp.

I appreciated your honesty about having to pay Raymond Paneak for an interview. What factors did you consider in deciding whether to include that in the book?

It seemed perfectly natural to include details of my “exchange” with Raymond (a Nunamiut elder who lives at Anaktuvuk Pass, deep in the Brooks Range). I did so partly because it was a curious and illuminating part of my personal journey. But I also wanted to show readers that the Nunamiut – and from what I’ve been told, Native residents in some other remote communities – feel that outsiders have for too long “stolen” their stories (and other cultural treasures) and gotten rich at the expense of the locals. While I think that’s rarely the case with “collected” stories, I do believe that people like me have profited in one way or another from indigenous tales, if only by including them in our own published work. I think it’s one of many cultural tensions that exist in Alaska and found it both fascinating and a bit disturbing. So how could I not share that? Again, it was a way to touch on larger issues and realities through my own experiences.

You’ve skillfully woven your experiences in the Brooks Range with Bob Marshall’s accounts. To what extent was this part of the initial vision for your book?

Early on, I expected the story to interweave my Brooks Range story much more intimately with Marshall’s arctic explorations (recounted in his book Alaska Wilderness). One early idea, maybe the initial “vision,” was to make the book a following-in-the-footsteps-of-Bob-Marshall kind of story. More than anything else, one particular conversation with the celebrated essayist and author Scott Russell Sanders changed my vision for the book. After reading an excerpt and tossing some questions my way, Scott said something like, “I think the book you really need to write is less about Bob Marshall and more about Bill Sherwonit.” We then talked some about possible ways of doing that, which led to the three-part structure and the more personal, memoir approach. Marshall remains an important figure because of his huge influence, both on me and the wilderness-preservation movement. But for better or worse, the book became more about my life experiences than his.

How tough was it to arrive at the three section structure, which works quite nicely?

I think Scott first suggested the three-part approach, at least partly because it was something that he’d been experimenting with, in one of his books. We brainstormed a bit and a picture began forming in my mind. Besides the central narrative of my solo trek through Gates of the Arctic National Park, I began thinking about times or episodes in my life that put me on the track or path that I am following today. Right away, two ideas came to mind: my geology days, which brought me to the Brooks Range and forced me to look hard at my values and what really mattered to me, in a way I hadn’t done before; and the two huge influences of my boyhood, religion and wild nature. Once I had those, it became easy enough to figure out the third part, my shift from geologist to journalist and then nature writer and wilderness advocate, and also my permanent settling in Alaska. Once I imagined the possibilities, I fully embraced – and enjoyed – the movement through time and space, all the while keeping the reader grounded in the Brooks Range. At least that’s what I hope.

Your first book, To the Top of Denali, came out nearly twenty years ago. In what ways have you changed as an author over the past twenty years?

I hope I’ve become a better storyteller, that I’m more creative and engaging – and at least occasionally, provocative – in my writing. I’m devoting more of my creative energy to writing about things that are greatly important to me, for instance our species’ relationship with the larger, wilder world we inhabit. And I’ve certainly become more ambitious, while weaving my journalism skills with more creative approaches to writing. So I guess I’ve become more of a risk taker. That shift has proved challenging not only on the writing end of things, but also on the business end. And like it or not, as someone who makes his living as a freelance writer, I have to deal with the business of getting published. Although I’m pretty darn sure that I’ve become a more skilled writer, “selling” my more creative and often personal stories has proved much more challenging, whether essays or books. At times that’s been frustrating, even deeply disheartening. Thank goodness for the University of Alaska Press, which has embraced my work and given my more creative books a home! I’ve also become much more involved in the marketing of the books, doing whatever I can to help spread the word. The Internet – and intersecting circles of friends and colleagues – has helped in that regard.

Finally, I’m now more engaged with the larger community of authors/writers, particularly here in Alaska. I was still working at The Anchorage Times when I wrote To the Top of Denali (amazingly, Alaska Northwest Books actually approached me to do a mountaineering book) and my sense of “writing community” was narrow, essentially limited to the newsroom. Now it’s much more expansive and I’ve benefited in many ways through my participation in a writing group, my teaching, and attendance at all sorts of “literary events,” from readings to workshops and conferences. I’m much less isolated now, though sometimes I still feel that way. Which is another whole story . . .

Your Turn: Great Alaskan Gifting

Cyber shopping is tough. Last night I spent two hours spinning from website to website, pouring through reviews, weighing options and prices, adding and deleting items from carts at various vendor sites. Result: I've bought nothing yet. But today is Cyber Monday, the web's response to Black Friday, and I've got almost sixteen hours left.

Books make great gifts. What Alaskan titles are you giving, or thinking of giving, this year?

49 Writers Weekly Round-Up

Back in business after a 48-hour internet/cable outage, with a reminder that we're now opening slots for our 2010 featured authors. We'd like one featured author each month, responsible for four posts per month. You can write about anything that would be of interest to our readers. We also run an author photo plus a book photo in our sidebar for the month, plus we keep a list of featured authors with links to their posts for the year. If you'd like t be considered for one of our 2010 featured author slots, email debv@gci.net by December 15, 2009.

Alaska All-Star librarian Charlotte Glover from Ketchikan reports that they attracted a nice crowd of 54 or so for Brad Matsen's discussion of his new book Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King. Matsen now plans to ride the ferry south with Ray Troll, who is heading to Seattle to set up a six month long exhibit at the Burke Museum called "Cruisin' The Fossil Freeway," a nationally-touring exhibit that will take visitors on a "road trip" through the American West to learn about the Northwest region’s intriguing fossils and the stories they tell about the past, based on the book by the celebrated duo Ray Troll and Kirk Johnson.

Glover also notes that they are getting lots of positive comments about romance writer Stef Ann Holm's new book All That You Are which is set in Ketchikan and, according to Glover, "reads like a love letter to our town . . . How can you not like a book in which many scenes take place at Burger Queen, our local fav?" Holm made two trips to Ketchikan, one on a cruise ship and another four days on her own, to get the "local color" just right. Here's what Publisher's Weekly had to say:

"Fans who have followed the escapades of the older Moretti brothers in All The Right Angles and All That Matters will enjoy meeting wild-child Mark, age 40 and facing a midlife crisis. While spending the summer in Ketchikan, Alaska, he's thrown out of the Blue Note bar and into love with its beautiful proprietor, Danalee Jackson, a part-black, part-Chinese 28-year-old with a murky history, a young son and a policy against dating customers. When the Blue Note is cited for building violations, financially strapped Dana accepts Mark's offer of help, and their relationship unfolds through verbal jabs that turn gradually into conversations. Tin-ear dialect and Mark's alpha-male aggression will turn some readers off, but Holm's affection for her characters and the beautiful setting lend a hint of savor to this sweet soufflé." (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glover also notes that Alaskan writer Debby Dahl Edwardson has hit the ball out of the park with her new YA title Blessing's Bead:

“Concrete and symbolic references to the transforming power of language, names, and stories link the two narratives, but it’s the Nutaaqs’ rhythmic, indelible voices—both as steady and elemental as the beat of a drum or a heart—that will move readers most. A unique, powerful debut.” —Starred, Booklist

"Nutaaq stands on the northwestern shore of Alaska, watching her sister sail away to a new life in Siberia with her husband. The pain of separation, the importance of family, and the power of a name are all mirrored 70 years later in Nutaaq's great-granddaughter Blessing, whose Eskimo name is also Nutaaq. Author Debby Dahl Edwardson weaves two powerful, parallel stories that vividly portray life in the North Slope village of Barrow, Alaska, America's northernmost settlement. Drawing on the historical events that have shaped the Inupiaq, the real people, Edwardson deftly fills the void in contemporary, realistic fiction about the Native people of Alaska. This story is one of hope, faithfulness, and love. Life in the village is a special, unique, precious thing, and reading Blessing's Bead made me feel immensely, fiercely proud of these people and the hardships they have faced, rising again and again to protect the things that are most sacred to them: family, culture, and a life well lived on the land." – Sara Saxton, Tuzzy Library

“Edwardson treads an elegant line in her perspective: Blessing is both an insider—Iñupiaq—and an outsider still learning exactly what that means. It’s a perspective that allows any reader in, and they’ll learn much about the power of stories and names and how to use them both.” —Kirkus Reviews

Alaskan author Basil Sands is holding a contest to name his new web radio talk show, which airs beginning the first week of December. Sands has been doing fill-in work for local radio talk for a while and says this show will be a branching out into a regular gig with an international audience. He says to expect a current events/politics/comedy show (think Dennis Miller & Jon Stewart get blended on a DNA level and sent to Alaska) and with a regular book segment where he will highlight an author/audiobook performer/publisher. He'll be looking for authors or other book related professionals to submit to a fifteen minute interview (live or pre-recorded). In addition to literary types, he's looking for quirky and entertaining Alaskans in general for segments of the show. He says it's a pretty light-hearted, fast-moving show, so boring folks need not apply.

Submit title suggestions at www.basilsands.com; the winner gets $25 US via paypal.

Author Bill Sherwonit (also our December featured author at 49 Writers) will be the featured speaker at the Dec. 3 luncheon/meeting of the Alaska Professional Communicators. His talk: “Exploring and Celebrating Wild Nature, from Alaska’s Urban Center to its Remote Backcountry Wilderness.” The luncheon will begin at 11:30 a.m. in the AHFC building at the corner of Tudor and Boniface. For more information or to make reservations, email akpc@gci.net or call 274-4723.

Postcard from Italy: About all that food...

Dear 49W Friends,
I've been back from Italy for well over a month, so this second postcard is pretty late in arriving. But I thought it might have a Thanksgiving feel. Hopefully these photos will add to your appetite over the next two days.

One of my aims in conducting in-country research for my novel-in-progress, The Discus Thrower, was to guide myself away from cliches. I didn't want to write, out of ignorance, about a country where people say things like "Mamma Mia" and eat pasta and drink wine all the time.

Well, funny thing about that. I did keep hearing people say things like Mamma Mia, even before we landed in Rome. And we did see -- and eat, and even learn to make (see photo above) -- homemade pasta (and gnocchi, and risotto) everywhere we we went. So maybe the cliches are true.


The main focus of my research was art, especially classical art. But each day we spent many hours obtaining, cooking, and eating great food. Of course, food can LOOK like art. That photo above, utilizing figs and a fig leaf picked from just outside our Tuscany apartment door, reminds me of a Caravaggio still-life.

Sometimes, it felt like the whole day was structured around the morning trip to the market (whether in Rome, or down a steep hill from our apartment in Tuscany, or in the Piedmont city of Asti). To get supplies for a day or two, we'd hit about six or seven different vendors, and be forced to practice our minimal Italian. In Rome, my 11-year-old daughter wanted to be set free in the Campo Fiori market square to fend for herself. She came back proud and mentally tired, having used just enough Italian to procure just a few too many strawberries at a fairly steep price. Good enough. (Now she could sympathize with the pains Brian and I took to plea for a small wedge of cheese or string of sausages. Everything cost so much that we didn't want to make any mistakes!)

Then we'd come home, which usually meant a long walk wherever we were based, usually some kind of apartment we'd rented (often for less than a hotel) via the internet. We'd cook lunch, recuperate, and just a little while later we'd be planning dinner. Restaurant meals were a rare splurge, but to be honest, it was our home meals, built from a foundation of great ingredients (the cheeses! the fresh herbs!) that really set the tone for our trip.

Italy is the land of tiny, cute cars, and the little produce trucks are cutest of all. Just don't get in the way of one.


If Italy taught us anything, it was to slow down and savor the small differences -- in just-picked rosemary, or garlic that has a bit more bite than we're used to, or olive oil and eggplants that seem more flavorful than what we get on this side of the world. Wow, that reads like a cliche. But Italian cliches are sometimes true.

Happy Thanksgiving!

In Defense of Self-Promotion, Part 4: A guest post by Ken Waldman

Anyone who knows me—-and I assume there are a few of you in that category reading 49 Writers—-also knows that for most of the past decade I've been an absentee Alaska resident.

When I started freelancing out of Juneau in 1995, I rarely worked in town, which meant that for virtually every job I'd board a plane to Anchorage and beyond (Nome, Bethel, and Fairbanks were the usual destinations then), or Seattle and south—-though, to be fair, I did pick up a few ferry-friendly gigs in Hoonah, Petersburg, and Haines. Striving to work more in-state, I moved to Anchorage in 1998, specifically to be more centrally located. It helped, but not enough. More opportunities kept appearing down south, and it made sense to extend my trips to take advantage. At the same time, though I received support from some individuals and organizations in state, that support just wasn't enough. As I look back, maybe I could have broadened my job searches (after all, who was I kidding, calling myself Alaska's Fiddling Poet)—-though, I recall I did broaden my searches. At some point or other I've contacted virtually every arts organization, university campus, school district, and library in the state--some of them many, many times. The path that opened was not the one I'd have suspected, but many of us have lives like that. What's unusual, it seems, is that my path has led me to publishers in out-of-the-way places, and allowed me to travel widely as a writer (who doubles as a fiddler).

In 2001, I realized I couldn't afford to continue touring out of Anchorage. Every trip out of state meant a plane ride and rental car. Because of the nature of these tours—-in addition to the higher-paying jobs, I'd also necessarily book low-paying, but high-prestige, showcase club dates as well as non-paying bookstore visits—-in order to continue this work, I had to adapt. So, in June of that year, I put in storage most of what I couldn't get rid of, loaded my car, and aimed for gigs I'd arranged in Colorado and Indiana. I gave myself two years to become more established, or quit.

More than eight years later, I'm still at it. Though I now have the books, the CDs, the reviews, and the clips, I'm reminded time and again that I'm not truly “established.” Otherwise, I'm convinced, this would be easier.

Just like I'm in that gray area—-Alaska resident who's rarely in state—-I'm an artist that many people don't know how to classify. Hence, the need to self-promote, or, to use a friendlier term, “educate.” Really, I'm not so much self-promoting as educating people about what I actually do. That's one of my dilemmas: while people may have heard about me, it's likely they've never actually read any of my books (or a single one of my poems), listened to any of my CDs, or attended any of my events. And even if they have, it's unlikely they've kept up: the past four years, since late 2005, I've had six new books and six new CDs. Somewhere in these four posts I've mentioned needing to persist. That's what artists have to do.

So, a few final observations:

Andromeda put out a call about “the eternal MFA question.” I'm a graduate of the program in Fairbanks, and while it's one of the older programs in the country, its size has varied over the years. I attended from 1985 to 1988, in the midst of one of the “small” periods. As a result, workshops combined poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers. Though I arrived, and graduated, as a fiction writer, I also started writing poems there. And while my experiences in the program were, how to say it, “uneven,” Fairbanks remains my absolute favorite spot in Alaska, virtually my favorite spot on the planet. Classmates included poet Jerah Chadwick, who went on to become writer laureate of Alaska; Natalie Kusz, who was writing Road Song during the program; and Alys Culhane, the fine nonfiction writer currently living in Palmer. In 1986, an undergraduate, Seth Kantner, was in a writing workshop. The next year, Lisa Chavez, currently a professor at the University of New Mexico, now a poet with two collections, was in a workshop.

My first year, we had three exceptional visiting assistant professors: Peggy Shumaker (who taught the single best class that to this day I've ever taken anywhere and who three years later returned to teach), Chris Balk (who led a wonderfully thoughtful class in Creative Nonfiction), and Wendy Bishop (who offered the best piece of advice I've ever received about workshops, which I'll paraphrase here: while you could safely ignore most responses, occasionally someone said something that rang true, which immediately led to edits you'd have likely made six weeks, or six months, down the way, if you were still working on the piece; and it's that feedback, which speeds the revision process, which is the greatest value of the workshop).

My second year, John Morgan returned from sabbatical, and Frank Soos arrived on campus: both served on my thesis committee and helped me make the most of my MFA experience. I also surely appreciated the opportunity to teach developmental and freshman composition classes throughout my time in the program, which I supplemented by teaching workshops and additional developmental writing classes at Fairbanks Correctional Center. My classmates and I also became part of the community of writers around town, many of whom, like Cindy Hardy and Pete Pinney, had graduated from the MFA program themselves. While the visiting writer series hadn't evolved to where it would be, I took advantage of the summer conference, and got to hear such writers as William Stafford, Lynn Sharon Schwartz, and Philip Levine.

Now I occasionally visit MFA programs as a guest, and in my travels also visit a number of other universities and colleges, including two-year schools. My take? Ultimately, it's the luck of the draw who's there when you're there, no matter what the setting—-and there are first-rate writers and teachers in all sorts of out-of-the-way places. Anyone pursuing an MFA will undoubtedly meet wonderful and established writers who are dedicated and effective teachers. And anyone in an MFA program will likely learn as much from their fellow students as from faculty. I'm all for anyone pursuing an MFA if they have the time and money (and while low-res programs allow more freedom with the time, the residential programs are more apt to offer fellowships and other aid packages to help with the money). But, like anything, there's no guarantee.

One bit of advice I didn't see yet on the thread would be for anyone interested in pursuing an MFA to attend the coming AWP conference this April in Denver (February 2011 it will be in Washington D.C). Two years ago in New York City there were 7,500 attendees. Last year in Chicago, there were over 8,000. With a little work, you could track down a few of the professors at schools that interest you; lots of programs even host receptions, where in addition to the professors, you can likely meet some graduates and current students. And if you find that some of the people involved are too busy to meet you, even if you've contacted them in advance, that might indicate what's ahead if you attend that institution. One more piece of advice for those thinking of going for the first time: bring a pal if possible; otherwise, the conference is so big as to be overwhelming.

I also wanted to write about the challenges of getting work distributed throughout the state.

I recall a trip in 2004, when I drove north out of Seattle, crossed the border without incident despite my minivan full of undeclared books and CDs, as well as the other paraphernalia of touring. I aimed first for Dawson Creek BC, where I was to work two days in schools. After that job, I meandered northwest, stopping en route at virtually every souvenir shop on the Alcan to peddle my three CDs and two books. I had good luck throughout, culminating in a big order in Whitehorse, from a distributor whose territory encompassed all I'd just driven and more. He felt confident my books and CDs would sell and promised my materials would be restocked. He even entertained the notion of having my Nome Poems translated into German.

Ultimately, my books and CDs sold steadily, albeit slowly, in Canada (for almost three years I received occasional checks from a Dawson Creek art gallery, which took 15 each of my books and CDs, the only consignment order of the whole trip). Alas, the distributor never did reorder, or pursue a German translation; perhaps I didn't push hard enough. Because of the difficulties shipping across borders, I never could interest him in my 2006 Alaskan children's CD, or my 2006 double CD, or any of my newer books. But having sold close to $2000 of books and CDs outright wholesale on that 2004 drive north alone, I've wondered why it's often been so much harder to place my books and CDs in Alaska.

As a rule, I've had better luck representing my own work. In 2000, a shop in Denali picked up my Week in Eek CD, and to our surprise the disk sold and sold. After a few reorders, they asked for a hundred. And then there was my good fortune with the Nome Poems book at Waterstone's in the airport, a story I recounted last week. Elsewhere, over the years, I've found regular support in Anchorage from Cook Inlet Books (when they existed downtown) and Title Wave, and from the Alaskana section at the Loussac Library, where Bruce Merrell—-and now Michael Catoggio—-have always cheerfully greeted me. I'd also like to especially thank David Cheezum at Fireside Books in Palmer (David is my favorite bookseller in the state), Gulliver's Books and the Museum of the North in Fairbanks, and both the Skagway Museum and Skagway Public Library: they've all not only bought my books and CDs, but they've effectively sold them and/or displayed them. Other shops have been hit-and-miss: some seasons I've interested the buyers; other seasons not. Hardest to understand is that it doesn't seem to be the quality of the work or the sales potential that is the driving force behind the stores' buying decisions.

Years ago, I learned that not only did most of the bookstores and gift shops throughout the state have books and CDs supplied by Todd Communications, out of Anchorage, but that many of them would only buy their inventory from Todd. So, back in 2000, once I interested the manager at Waterstone's in Nome Poems, I'd only started the process: though, in theory, she could order from the book's distributor, University of New Mexico Press, her boss preferred she work through Todd. So I had to do the legwork, making sure University of New Mexico Press, through West End Press, supplied Todd with the books, which they did. What I couldn't do, though, was duplicate the process that worked at Waterstone's with every buyer—-I'm just one person, and just like there's a stigma with self-publishing, there's a similar stigma with artists, or authors, who represent themselves. Even if I did manage to stop at a store and find buyers in, they were more apt to look at me funny, ask if Todd carried it, and then quickly dismiss me. The University of New Mexico regional rep, who also worked in behalf of other presses, and had hundreds of books on his list, certainly wasn't going to travel to Alaska. There wasn't enough business.

And Todd Communications? I'm still not sure what to make of the company. Back in 2000, no one there was advocating for the books; they were just filling orders from Waterstone's. Though I passed along sample copies, it was apparent that the actual work of representing the books, that is selling new books to buyers who weren't already inclined to buy, wasn't their strength. Later that summer, when Waterstone's expressed interest in carrying my Week in Eek CD, Todd Communications was quick to contact me. Because I self-produced the CDs, the music-business equivalent of self-publishing, Todd attached a number of conditions which gave me pause. Of course, Todd would be taking a healthy percentage of my cut, which was understandable. But there were also various fees to enter the system, and to keep inventory stored. I would also no longer be permitted to sell directly to anyone in the state except to stores I listed ahead of time, where I had an ongoing relationship—-and I understood that Todd much preferred that I give up those customers and let them handle it.

After doing the math, and contacting another musician who'd attempted to have his CDs distributed by Todd, I declined the offer, and have never second-guessed the decision. Of course, I understand the need for distribution, realize the challenges inherent in the work, and laud Todd for undertaking that challenge. Still, there has to be other options.

In 2008, I recommended my publisher, Catalyst Book Press, work with Todd so Are You Famous? could be available throughout the state. After jobs on the East Coast, I'd arranged to fly to Anchorage, where I had an interview scheduled on Alaska News Nightly, events in Homer, Anchorage, and Fairbanks. But this was my publisher's first book, so she was still learning about some of the paperwork involved in publishing; also, she'd been in Africa incommunicado, so it seemed, for a crucial week when some details with Todd needed confirmation. As a result, Todd had no books to distribute, and I arrived lugging the only copies to be found in state. So, while I had good state-wide publicity for both my new book and new double-CD, the best I could do was show the book as I could, and inform people that Todd would indeed be carrying it once they received the shipment and entered the book in their system. Before I flew out, I dropped off the remainder of my own stock at Todd's warehouse to facilitate the process.

I don't blame Todd, or my publisher, for the problems—-though we should have had plenty of time since I had books arrive six weeks earlier, in July, for jobs in Juneau, Haines, Skagway, Whitehorse, and Atlin. Ultimately, what's bothersome is that once I left the state, any momentum disappeared with me. In theory, Are You Famous? could have been a relatively easy sell from the beginning, and I did what I could to alert store managers. But obviously that wasn't enough. At some point, my publisher and I had to rely on the representatives from Todd Communications to help in some way. And maybe they did try, though anything they did was utterly ineffective. The book didn't sell in my absence. But how could it: it didn't get on the shelves. This past April, in Southeast, I showed the book to bookstores who'd never seen it previously. In June and July, I returned to Southeast, then performed from Kenai to Fairbanks, and, again, one of my tasks was to stop by bookstores and major gift shops, where I showed both Are You Famous? and the brand-new children's book, D is for Dog Team. Though I met with success and was glad for the enthusiasm, I kept wondering if there was another solution out there. How was it that unless I was doing this for myself, no one was aware of my books and CDs? Is it my job, ultimately, to represent myself in behalf of Todd Communications? I'm still figuring that one out.

Even stranger has been my experience with ANHA, now Alaska Geographic, which manages gift shops in national parks, state parks, and major visitor centers throughout the state. I had no luck at all there until 2003, when a new hire came on who knew my books and CDs from a stint at the Museum of History and Art in Anchorage. There, my first two CDs had sold well. Through her, I managed to get an order placed, where I heard my materials sold reasonably at several sites. But my contact left in 2005, and I've been unable to get any books or CDs reordered and have yet to ever have either my 2006 children's CD or 2006 double CD stocked, even though they're both very Alaskan and have both received good national reviews. I've phoned, emailed, stopped in the offices, left materials, attempted to make appointments. Supervisors have come and gone. The central office invariably refers me to the individual sites, who refer me back to the central office.

What frustrates me now is that this spring I received a phone call from a film producer asking permission to use an original fiddle tune from one of my CDs as part of a soundtrack for a film that's part of an exhibit at a new cultural center in state. I granted permission, and only asked that since the music from the CD was being used, I expected the gift shop to stock that CD. The filmmaker put me in touch with the cultural center staff and store manager and, in July, while on tour, I spoke with the manager in person, and left an additional copy of the CD used in the film, as well as other samples. The manager was going to fast-track the request, since the film was to debut in August. It's mid-November now, four months after my meeting, and just the other week I heard this is still on hold. I'm trying not to raise my hopes too high for summer 2010.

Is it me, the system, or a combination of the two? Or is the problem something else entirely? And if I'm having these problems, I wonder if in some way these issues contributed to the demise of Alaska Northwest Books (though sorry to hear the news, I appreciated hearing about it in one of last week's posts). I do expect to have better luck with the children's book and CD that University of Alaska Press is distributing. That's the next step in my exploration of how this work goes.

The past weeks I've sure enjoyed having this forum to write about some of my experiences, which has been a break from other tasks. Recently my work has taken a new turn, and I've been applying for a wide variety of university teaching positions. Some applications have asked for a one-page philosophy of teaching, which I've supplied, ending the piece like this:

As I go over this statement, I see I've forgotten the most important
thing: we all better have fun. As serious as the writing process and teaching process are—-and I treat them both with the utmost seriousness—-there better be room for fun. At the end of every semester, I always host a party.

Ending this here, I may not be throwing a party, but I'll share one of my poems. And while it's ostensibly about the writing of poems, it could just as well be about teaching:


Bill Stafford

I saw him read one summer in Fairbanks,
the patter between poems itself a poem,
because he was like that, fully at home
with words. That lit June night he offered thanks
for some gladness or other, and laid planks
of language that formed a lucky bridge from
one thought to the next. What might seem to some
a plainness too simple for poetry—drank
of poetry when he spoke. I reflected
for years on his writing, could hear him chime,
sly and instructive, as I connected
with my work. The voice said to make time
each morning, to begin early on task,
to learn from failures, to ask and to ask.

49 Writers Interview: Emily Wall

Poet Emily Wall lives in Juneau, where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Alaska Southeast. She will join the faculty at the 2010 Kachemak Bay Writers Conference.

Salmon Poetry, an Irish publisher, has produced Freshly Rooted, an artful collection of your poems. I understand they’re publishing another poet with Alaskan ties next year. How did your book find a home with Salmon, and how would you characterize your experience publishing with them?

I found Salmon and Jessie Lendennie, the publisher, through the poet Tom Sexton. He came to Juneau for a reading and I really liked his work. While browsing his book I noted who had published it. Once I started looking around, I realized Salmon had published a number of Alaskan poets. The press seems to have an affinity for lyric, Alaskan writers. So this felt like a good opening for me.

I feel grateful to have found Jessie and Salmon. It's not easy to find publishers who will look at unsolicited manuscripts outside of contests. Salmon has a real commitment to new poets. It's been a good experience getting to know the other Salmon poets, and learning the workings of a small press. Two years ago Jessie set up a reading for a number of Salmon poets at the Bowery Club in New York City; that has been a real highlight for me.

Salmon has also published my poems in an anthology of Salmon work (Salmon: A Journey in Poetry) and an essay I wrote in a book about writing and publishing(Poetry: Reading It, Writing It, Publishing It). I hope to get to Ireland one of these days; Jessie has promised me a little reading tour if I come over. I'd love to visit the press and meet more of the Salmon poets, many of whom live in or near Galway.

The poems in Freshly Rooted construct around a narrative frame of letting go and beginning again: your new marriage, your move to Alaska, your shifting relationship with parents. At what point did you begin to envision the themes and sequencing of the collection?

That's a really good question. I always try to write with no themes or sense of book in mind — I believe the best lyric poems come from our disorganized, internal selves, so I try not to orchestrate a book while writing new poems.

I worked on these poems for about five years. During those years I sent a number of them out, and many were published in journals. Once I realized I had enough poems for a book, and a number of them had been published, it started to feel like a book.

I remember distinctly the process I went through to organize the poems and shape them into a book. I printed them all out, then sat down one winter day in a chair by the window in my writing studio and began the process of forming them into a book. I started finding themes, and topics, and then started finding the narrative arc. This was surprising, as I hadn't realized I was writing a story until I saw all the poems together. The book is really a poem-memoir, but I didn't set out to write one. Once I had the narrative arc and I found a series of themes, it became easier to decide what to keep in the book, and what to let go of. The narrative suggested a natural order for most of the poems.

So that's how the first draft of the book came together. Since it took a while to publish, I ended up going through this process several more times before the final was published.

Your poetry emerges in a pleasing variety of forms, from haiku to prose poems. How do you discover the form that informs your images and thoughts in a particular piece?

Form and syntax are both intuitive for me. I sometimes will change a poem's form (especially a sestina), but usually the form I start with stays. The shape of a poem on the page has an organic relationship with the way the poem develops, so form is integral to meaning. For example, I'm working on a poem this week that ended up with a strange 3-line indented stanza form. After drafting it I wondered how I had gotten there until I realized it's the form we see most often in the Psalms. The poem I'm working on talks about an Old Testament story, so somehow that form came to me, out of some distant memory of seeing forms on the page in the bible. I think prose and haiku happen the same way — the particular poem needs a certain shape to come into existence and I simply trust my intuition.

Your poems read as if you’re fresh to this place, yet you arrived in Alaska thirteen years ago. How important is it for poets – and for all writers – to cultivate the patience to take a long and sometimes distant view of their work?

I can tell these questions are written by a writer! You've hit on one of the things I've found most difficult about publishing and working with this book. On the one hand, distance is very helpful to revision—some of those poems took me months to complete. I need distance to see how and where to revise. But once a poem is finished, that distance becomes a barrier for me — I don’t really want to work with the poem anymore.

I've really struggled at readings of this book — what I really want to do is get out a sheaf of brand-new poems to read, because that's where my mind is now — those are more exciting to me.

I remember once having N.Scott Momaday visit a class of mine. We were reading House Made of Dawn (of course) and wanted to discuss it. I could tell he really didn't want to — he kept turning the talk to his new work and the students kept steering him back. At the time I remember being annoyed at him, but now I completely understand.

To answer the last part of your question—how important is it to cultivate patience? It's necessary. Some poets can write books very quickly, and if a book is published through a contest it can come out very quickly — say a one to two year process. But I don't think my experience is unusual — it can take five or more years to get a book out with a small, independent press. I recently talked to Ken Waldman about his experience with West End Press and he told me it took his publisher about five years to publish his book too. So although it can be frustrating, it's a reality for many poets.

What prompted you to start your own blog, and how have you found the experience?

I have a blog and website and I've found both experiences interesting. I started the blog because a poet friend of mine and I had been having really interesting poetry conversations via email, and we agreed this conversation would benefit from being in a larger context and joining with other voices.

I also teach creative writing, and I think (I hope) it's interesting or useful to my students to see my own drafts, writing process, worries, triumphs, failures, etc. as a writer. In the classroom we have a certain kind of relationship to students —regardless of how informal we are as people. Even classrooms are set up to underscore that relationship — writer at the front, students in front or around her or him. But in the online world I can be more of a mentor and help students understand that there is no "there there" with writing—it's all a process and even published writers have black days.

The toughest part of blogging is not knowing the audience — who am I writing to? I know some of my students read my blog, but beyond that I don't know who might be reading it. Even writing a book was easier than this, as I could imagine my audience with the book, but with the blog, it's impossible. At times this make it hard to find a focus, and a voice. So I'm still experimenting, trying new things, seeing what might catch and hold interest.

49 Writers Weekly Round-Up

Tired of all the press on Sarah's new book? We got some nice press of our own this week at 49 Writers. This month's Alaska Magazine has a nice large write-up on our Ode to a Dead Salmon contest, including a big ugly picture and a quote from the winning entry, with a link to the finalists on their website. Way to go, 49 Writers. Okay, it's not Oprah, but we're happy.

How much of ex-Gov Sarah Palin's multi-million dollar advance will actually hit her bank account? Not as much as you think. For the low-down on what a writer actually makes on a book, check out urban fantasy author Carrie Vaughn's tell-all, The Reality of a Times Bestseller. Of course, Palin does get that bus painted with the cover of her book, which should help her numbers over the average Jane Author's.

As Bill Sherwonit mentioned in yesterday's guest post, Publisher's Weekly reports that Graphic Arts North and Alaska Northwest Books are liquidating under Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Ingram continues to distribute the company's titles, and the court will appoint a trustee to oversee the liquidation process, including the sale of some 350 active backlist titles. Now don't I feel small for fussing over my scrawny check from Carus Publishing, which I did finally receive, by the way, ten months after publication.

From the happily solvent University of Alaska Press comes Linda Johnson's Kandik Map, exploring how Athabaskan Indian Paul Kandik and French Canadian explorer Francois Mercier surveyed the upper reaches of the Yukon River and its tributaries, creating the earliest known map of the region. The map, which lacks the international border, is a reminder that the inhabitants of the region were one people before being separated by an artificial boundary. Linda Johnson was director of library, archives, and records management at Yukon College, Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada.

Another new U of A release: James Wickersham's 1938 memoir, Old Yukon, based in large part on his diaries, newly edited by historian Terrence Cole. The publisher notes, "In this humorous and upbeat memoir, James Wickersham describes his career as a pioneer judge in the undeveloped Alaska territory and later as Alaska's sole congressional representative. It is considered by many to be one of the best descriptions of the gold rush period."

The U of A Press also reports The Alaska Journal of Anthropology (vol. 7, no.1 - 2009) has posted laudatory reviews of An Aleutian Ethnography and Wildflowers of Unalaska Island. An Aleutian Ethnography by Lucien M. Turner, edited by Raymond L. Hudson, was praised for the ethnographer's investigation of life on the Aleutian Islands in the late nineteenth century that uniquely lets the voices of the Aleut people shine through and for the editor's contribution. The reviewer of Wildflowers of Unalaska Island by Suzi Golodoff reports that the book will appeal to a wide range of readers, including those interested in Alaska Native ethnobotany.

As a follow-up to last week's thought-tickling MFA discussion (many thanks to all who took the time to weigh in), Barrow author Debby Dahl Edwardson notes that she also shared her MFA experience in an interview at Cynsations, a well-read blog on young adult books.

Author Bradford Matsen will be speaking about his new book Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King on Thursday, December 3 at 7 p.m. at Elliott Bay Books, First Avenue and South Main Street, Seattle.

Alaskan author Dana Stabenow guest blogged on Lipstick Chronicles about the not-so-dreaded rise of the eReader, declaring 'You don't scare me, Kindle.' On November 30th she'll be guest blogging on Murder by 4 about the genesis of the Kate Shugak television series.

A couple of on-topic but personal asides: in the mash-up of Sarah Press this week, I hope you caught my brother's live blog of the Oprah interview for The Awl. I admit to some bias, but there are some great one-liners. And in another item on which I'll devote a full post or two down the road, the illustrator for my 2011 (University of Alaska Press) picture book Lucy's Dance is posting weekly blogs of her sketches, with students and others from Stebbins weighing in with their comments and thoughts. Inspired by my visit to Stebbins last spring, Lucy's Dance is the story of how one child inspires a revival of an cultural tradition. Stop by and have a look.

Alaska Northwest Books R.I.P. : Guest post by Bill Sherwonit

Bill Sherwonit will be joining us as featured author next month, but in the meanwhile, he's keeping the news coming -- and this item is timely and important. Thanks to Bill for allowing us to crosspost this, which originally appeared on Bill's Anchorage Daily News community blog.

I was sitting in a favorite café this week when an old friend and colleague in the book-publishing world came over to say hello and share news of an unexpected and untimely death. Sara Juday, longtime regional manager for Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company, put it bluntly: “I have some bad news. Graphic Arts has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.”

Initially I didn’t get it. I was thinking Chapter 11, the kind that results in a company’s re-organization. Graphic Arts had been down that road once before and I knew the company has again been hurting financially. More than a year has passed since the company paid me any royalties. But Chapter 7? Liquidation? The company was going out of business? Wow, bad news indeed, not only for its employees, but also for its many authors and Alaska’s book lovers.

GACPC is the parent company of Alaska Northwest Books, which has been around in one form or another for decades – since 1959, in fact. (It became a Graphic Arts imprint in 1992.) Over the past half-century, Alaska Northwest Books has published hundreds of titles by dozens of Alaskan authors. For many years the company rightly touted itself as “the premier publisher of books about Alaska,” specializing in “history, natural history, biography, travel adventure, Native heritage, factbooks, cooking, guidebooks, and children’s books by Alaskans and about Alaska.” Though the imprint and its parent company have struggled in recent years, it has a laudable legacy.

I have a special fondness for both Alaska Northwest Books and Sara Juday, because the company – and especially Sara – got me into the book publishing business. Until Sara contacted me in 1989 and asked if I’d be interested in writing an Alaska mountaineering book, I never imagined I might become an author. The company published my first book in 1990: To the Top of Denali: Climbing Adventures on North America’s Highest Peak. It published five more of mine after that, the most recent in 2002, a guide to the Denali region. We stopped working together when I became interested in creative nonfiction; the company’s marketing people didn’t see much potential in such books. I largely lost touch with Sara and other Alaska Northwest Books staff after that, but I’ll always have a great appreciation for her role in my writing life, her enthusiastic support for Alaskan authors and books, and her friendship over many years.

She’s been out of a job for several weeks now and isn’t sure what she’ll do next, though she’s exploring some possibilities. Sara, I wish you all the best.

Though Graphic Arts filed to liquidate its assets last Friday (Nov. 13), I haven’t heard or read any local news coverage of its bankruptcy, perhaps because it did so in Portland, the company’s home base. I did find a couple of short articles online, including one by Publishers Weekly, which reports that Ingram Publisher Services – whose parent company loaned GACPC $1.5 million after the 2006 Chapter 11 bankruptcy and took over its book-distribution responsibilities – will continue “accepting orders, shipping books and processing and crediting returns” for Graphic Arts titles.

What all this means for Alaska Northwest Books’ many authors is unclear. Sara said she has no idea what will happen. And there’s no one at Graphic Arts to provide answers. The staff had cleared out even before the filing. Now the Chapter 7 proceedings will have to play out, which likely means that authors won’t know the status of their books – or royalties – for weeks or months.

Some of Alaska’s book-reading residents are bound to notice the company’s absence, though nowadays many other presses are publishing all sorts of books about Alaska, including the University of Alaska Press, my newest publishing “home.”

Still it’s a big loss, “like losing someone in the family,” as Sara said glumly before we said goodbye. Alaska Northwest Books, 1959-2009, RIP.

Your Turn: Going Rogue -- or not? (plus online book club ideas)

Thanks to Bill Sherwonit for passing on this news item from the Associated Press:

"An independent bookseller in Sarah Palin's home state is donating the proceeds he makes off her book to a group that is among the biggest critics of the former Republican vice presidential candidate.

Don Muller owns Old Harbor Books in Sitka. He's selling Palin's memoir, "Going Rogue," for $28.99, and says he will donate profits to Defenders of Wildlife."

Do I dare ask 49w readers: Are you planning to read the Sarah Palin book? Buy it? Ignore it?

If you're interested in what other readers have to say, KSKA's "Hometown Alaska" (featuring Ellen Lockyear, Kathleen McCoy and Charles Wohlforth) will be having a call-in book discussion at 2:00.


If the Palin question sets your teeth on edge, how about this one? We have another online book club coming up soon -- late December or early January. I was thinking of picking a short story from David Vann's Legend of a Suicide, but the author tells me it's coming out in paperback in March and we might want to wait just a little longer... Since I'm spending the morning mulling it over, I thought I might as well let anyone reading this mull it along with me. Any ideas?

In Defense of Self-Promotion, Part 3: A guest post by Ken Waldman

Two weeks ago, in my first post, I mentioned that in 1996 I attended a conference where I met John Crawford, of West End Press, which started a process that led him four years later to publish my first full-length collection, Nome Poems. I also mentioned that prior to that meeting, I'd self-published a chapbook that included some of the poems which later appeared in that book. Though I'd taken the initiative to self-publish, I'd also been fortunate to have already had poems from that book accepted in such literary magazines as Beloit Poetry Journal, South Dakota Review, and Poet Lore. Those publications, which meant that independent editors elsewhere had vetted the work, surely didn't hurt.

In that post, I also mentioned how earlier this year I'd self-published a book of acrostic poetry for children, D is for Dog Team, which University of Alaska Press picked up for distribution.

In the nine years between, I had six other books from six different publishers, each coming about through its own particular circumstances. I'll briefly tell those stories in the hope that one or more will be of use to other writers.

When Nome Poems came out in 2000, I felt well-prepared for a writer having a first book. I'd finished a reasonable draft of the manuscript six years earlier so I'd been living with the poems for a good long while. Having had so many of the poems appear in journals (and having met Naomi Shihab Nye, who encouraged me on the project—-an episode also mentioned two weeks in my first post here), I was confident the book had real merit and might find a wide readership, at least in Alaska. Also, having self-published twenty-six chapbooks the preceding five years, I had a rudimentary sense of how to market, and, yes, self-promote. In addition, I'd been freelancing as a visiting artist and performer for the past five years, and those skills overlapped with the marketing and self-promotion. And though I didn't know it when that first book came out, my first CD, which had been recently recorded in a rush, was going to come out in less than three months.

In the midst of that busy time, I'd booked a tour. First stop was the AWP conference (AWP is an acronym for Associated Writing Programs, an organization that's the clearing house for all things Creative Writing in higher education, though over the years its reach has extended further) in Kansas City, where I was to see the book for the first time, and where I'd bought space in the exhibit hall to sell my book and chapbooks. From there, I was off to Denver, where I'd rent a car. After a bookstore gig in Denver, I had a coffeehouse show in Boulder, then events in Albuquerque—-where the book was published—-and then several dates in Arizona, which included gigs in Phoenix, Prescott, and Flagstaff. Then I'd drive back to Denver, and fly home to Anchorage.

In Kansas City, I was excited to see the new book. Though a slow four-year process, there had been a sprint at the end so the books could arrive in Kansas City in time to sell at the conference. And since West End Press had been affiliated with University of New Mexico Press, the designer at the university press had worked on the book. In retrospect, it was odd I hadn't seen the cover beforehand, or even thought to ask—-or even thought to ask to proof the book. Still, when I first set eyes on the book, none of that seemed to matter. The design was better than anything I could have envisioned. Then I leafed through the pages.

Though I'd given a pristine copy to my publisher, it was a pristine hard copy from my ancient double floppy disk computer with Leading Edge word processing, my ancient Panasonic printer. This meant that someone at the press had to retype the manuscript. In the retyping, there had been mistakes, which in-house proofing didn't catch. The first poem I looked at, I found one small typo, and over the next two weeks, as I toured the Southwest, I must have found at least a dozen more, invariably in the midst of reading one of the poems at a public event. And though the discovery of each new error felt like another quick awful punch deep to my gut, and the accumulating number felt like a curse, I had no choice. The book was out in the world, blemishes and all. At least the book looked great, and, really, most of the errors were so minor no one else would likely notice. After struggling the past several years to sell chapbooks for $5 and $7, it was a pleasure to display this full-length book with color cover. It felt underpriced at $9.95.

While I didn't sell hundreds those first weeks, I happily sold a fair number and made some connections I've maintained to this day. Back in Anchorage, after landing at the airport, I decided to stop in Waterstone's (the airport bookstore that pre-dated Mosquito Books), where I introduced myself to the manager, Jana, who happened to be in. Before leaving, I offered her a copy of Nome Poems, which she accepted and promised to read. Ultimately, this simple act was one of the smartest things I've ever done for any of my books. Though Jana had been quick to warn me she didn't read much poetry, she did read the book as promised, enjoyed it, and felt others would also enjoy it. Over the summer, she displayed the book at the front table she reserved for recommended Alaska reading.

The next months, I stopped at Waterstone's every time I flew out of Anchorage, or returned home. Invariably, I saw a stack of my books on the front table. From Jana I learned that against the odds—-after all, this was poetry—-the book sold steadily.

This was one of the reasons why West End Pess went through most of the 1,500 run through the rest of the year and decided to reprint. On my end, I was quick to argue that for the next round of books the typos be fixed and the price raised to $11.95 (this second edition also eventually sold out, but far more slowly; West End Press was reluctant to invest in a third printing, so with John Crawford's blessing, in 2008 I reprinted it myself—-another example of self-publishing). Another reason the book sold so well was because while West End Press (and University of New Mexico
Press) were both small publishers, they were long-established small publishers. I learned how if I researched worldcat.org, I could see which libraries bought the book (and, indeed, this minute just looked it up, and saw 124 libraries, from the New York Public Library to the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library, owned the book in their collections; while the number could be more, it could certainly be less—-a similar check on my other books teaches the sad truth about that).

Since Nome Poems quickly went into a second printing, it made sense for me to pitch another book to my publisher. After all, I had plenty more Alaska-set poems—-again, many already published in respected national journals. This time, after I sent a manuscript, John Crawford quickly agreed to publish To Live on this Earth, which came out in 2002. Instead of setting all poems in the Bering Straits region, this book had poems set state-wide: a section of Interior poems (some music-based), a section of Southeast poems, a section of political poems, a section of rural poems (more poems from the Bering Straits region, as well as poems set in Eek and poems set in Barrow), and a short final section set in Alaska and beyond.

In 2004, at the AWP conference in Chicago, where I again had a table in the exhibit hall-—now with two full-length poetry collections, three CDs, and the chapbooks piled off to the side—-a young editor and publisher I knew asked to buy me a drink. We talked. A long-time fan of my work, he'd published a journal (where my work had appeared), ran two annual book contests, and brought out other books as he wanted. He asked if I'd consider having him publish a book of mine.

Of course I'd be interested, I told him, and mentioned how one weekend in 2003 I laid out sheets with favorite poems that hadn't been in the first two books (though most had been in the self-published chapbooks, and many had appeared in literary journals), and constructed six more full-length books. The preceding year, I'd entered contests, but gotten nowhere. He could have his choice of one of those books.

“Whoa,” he said. “I don't work that way.”

“No?”

“No, give me all your poems,” he said. “I'll choose the book I want to publish.”

I shrugged my shoulders, and we shook hands. After the conference I sent him the six collections I thought had been ready to go, and told him to have at it.

Fourteen months later, May 2005, I heard back. And while I'd never have chosen the poems he chose for a full-length book, I had to admit the poems cohered in a different way—-instead of a geographic, or narrative, arc, these were mostly all dark and energetic. The challenge was in finding an order to the book, and after we went back and forth several times, we agreed how it would read, first poem to last. Since his strength was editing, not design, I asked whether I could suggest a professional designer. He thought that would be fine, especially since I offered to split the cost.

By early July we were ready to go for a mid-September publication date. I'd seen proofs-—the front cover, the back cover (which included the blurbs I'd solicited), the poems inside, all the rest. My designer only needed a final okay from the publisher for the last of the changes. A week stretched into two weeks, stretched into four. Mid July turned into late August.

It was a little more complicated than this, though. I'd set up dates in the Midwest, including ones in the publisher's home state. I'd wanted not only to have the book to sell, but had planned to set up even more dates specifically around having the book available. I also expected to use the book to apply for certain grants and fellowships. Having a book is one thing. Having two books is something more. Having three is even more-—and I was waiting for that third book. And there was even more to it than that: in October I was turning 50 years old. Not only was this book a present to myself, but I had a big double CD coming out, and in early August had just recorded my first children's CD, which I realized could also come out in time for my birthday. Everything was seemingly on track, but for this poetry collection, which had fallen through cracks. The publisher was not returning emails from the designer, who was asking whether the last fix was correct. Nor was he responding to my emails, phone calls, or letters, all checking about the status of the book. Without confirmation, I wrote, I couldn't market it in any way.

Labor Day weekend, I decided to call a new friend, Bryce Milligan, a writer and musician who was also the publisher of Wings Press in San Antonio. We'd met two months earlier when he attended my performance at Gemini Ink, a San Antonio literary organization. Afterward, he'd bought one of my books, one of my CDs, and we'd talked. Though we hadn't been in touch the past two months, he didn't seem surprised to hear from me. I explained my dilemma, and asked him, as a writer and publisher himself, what he'd do if he were in my situation.

“I can do that book myself,” he said. “I have a small hole in my schedule. Get me the files, and I could have it out in ten days. All you need to do is promise to buy some of the books from me.”

“I need to do that anyway,” I said.

“500 books?” he said.

“I'd need to buy 500 anyway,” I answered. Though I hadn't formalized such an arrangement with John Crawford at West End Press, I'd had to buy books, then buy more and more, and had gone through 500 relatively quickly. This seemed a more efficient way to do it, even if I had to spend more of my own money up front for my own stock.

Later that day, I called the other publisher. Getting the machine, I started to explain that since I hadn't heard from him, I'd be withdrawing the book. At that, he picked up the phone, and sputtered how he'd sue me if I'd withdraw the book.

“But you haven't answered the phone or returned an email in two months,” I reminded him. And then I reminded him the book was supposed to be out in mid September, which was now an impossibility. “Somebody else has offered to do the book,” I said.

“I'll sue you,” he said, and explained he'd already put in a lot of time and money into the project. Then he hung up.

When I called back Bryce, he suggested that since I had no contract with the first publisher, there was no grounds for a suit, and that I should talk one more time with him and try to establish firm dates. “If he balks,” Bryce said, “remind him you have another publisher.” He paused. “And while I'd be happy to do that book, if he does decide to do it, you can just get another to me in the next couple of days, and I'll do that one. Like I said, I have a hole in my schedule.”

“But don't you want to see the poems?”

“I'm sure they're fine,” he said. “I read your other book and saw your show. Let me know what happens.”

After the first publisher reaffirmed that if I gave him more time, he'd have the books for me by November 1, I went to work typing in poems so I could email Bryce a file. Within a day, I was done. Less than two weeks later, I had a preview copy of the book--which I titled The Secret Visitor's Guide--just in time for a major fellowship application. I received the bulk of my copies in late October, just after my birthday. Mid-November, I received copies of And Shadow Remained, the book from the Ohio publisher. The book looked beautiful and some readers have commented that it's their favorite of my collections. It remains the only one that was so deeply edited. Despite the confusion with the communication, I was grateful for the help; in fact, without that confusion I'd never have had the Wings Press publication.

My fifth book, Conditions and Cures, was a finalist in a 1994 book contest from Steel Toe Books, a new poetry publisher out of Kentucky. Maybe I had a slight advantage because not only had I once met the publisher, Tom Hunley, in passing, but was acquainted with his own poetry, which I liked. Though I don't make a habit of entering contests, in 1995 I tried again. This time I wasn't even a finalist, but received a personal note from Tom, telling me he'd enjoyed the book, as had another judge. It was the third judge who hadn't much liked it, which was why it had been eliminated before the final cut. Regardless, he especially admired the sequence of comedy sonnets in the collection, was mulling doing a chapbook series, and wondered whether I'd be interested.

I answered that indeed I'd already self-published the comedy sonnets as a chapbook, albeit in slightly different form. And while I'd be happy to have him do a chapbook, it made no sense. With the two poetry collections I now had, plus the two about to come out in the next two months, I'd really have no way to sell a chapbook for whatever price we figured. But if he'd be interested in doing the full-length book, which had been judged good enough to be a finalist the year before, I'd certainly agree to it, and could certainly guarantee I'd buy some hundreds of books, which would lessen his risk.

A few weeks later, Tom agreed to publish the book with a summer 2006 publication date.

My last poetry collection began after an idle comment. March 2006, after a reading in San Antonio for my new Wings Press book, the publisher, Bryce Milligan, mentioned that if he could find a book of really good political poems, he'd publish it in a second. I rued that many of my political poems had already been published, and let Bryce's remark slide.

But three weeks later, subletting a little house in Louisiana, watching the Daily Show on Comedy Central, I wrote a political sonnet in the manner of the comedy poems that led to Tom Hunley accepting the Conditions and Cures book. So, now I had one new political poem. Torture was a breaking story then—-alas, as it sometimes remains now—-and a few days later I wrote an Abu Ghraib poem. The next weeks I wrote a Laura Bush poem, a Barbara Bush poem, a George W. Bush post-Katrina New Orleans poem. Somewhere I wrote a sonnet in George W. Bush's voice. Mid-May to mid-July, working for the first half of the summer in Skagway, I wrote several dozen more, most in the 43rd president's voice. Quickly, I'd somehow accumulated a whole book, so emailed Bryce, who answered that his distribution had changed, so he could no longer do books without a nine-month to one-year lead time. Besides, he wasn't convinced the project really worked for him.

I disregarded Bryce's criticisms. Convinced I had a new book on my hands, and one that felt especially topical, I made a few more queries, and remembered a friend, a well-published poet, who was an especially skilled self-promoter himself (and I should mention not only has this poet hosted me several times at his various reading series, but we originally met more than a decade ago at an AWP conference), who had a publishing house that was currently in hiatus. Maybe he'd be interested.

Though that part of his business remained in hiatus, he wrote back to say he'd be happy to help where he could. In this case, while he'd “publish” the book, we were both aware for most intents I was self-publishing through him. He supplied the ISBN and his publishing company's name, and would enter the necessary paperwork, so the book at least could be considered authentic, at least through the process the book business has established. Meanwhile, I'd design, manufacture, distribute, and pay for the book. Mid August, I picked up 2000 copies of As the World Burns: the Sonnets of George W. Bush and Other Poems of the 43rd Presidency from a manufacturer in Austin, Texas-—one chosen because I knew it specialized in short-run projects, and I'd be swinging through Austin anyway about the time the book would be done.

One Austin friend who has professional experience designed the text of the book, working gratis. I paid the manufacturer for the services of its in-house designer, who did the cover. After picking up the boxes, I drove seventy miles to San Antonio, where I left two dozen copies at Bryce Milligan's as a thank-you, then drove several blocks where I knocked on Naomi Shihab Nye's door in the same neighborhood. I had no appointment, just a standing invitation to visit, which I'd previously never taken her up on. Naomi was in, but busy, and quickly leaf through the book, lauded the project, and asked to have several copies of the book, which she promised to pass along to contacts she thought would appreciate it—-one of which directly led to an invitation to read fifteen months later in Pittsburgh at the International Poetry Forum (and the stipend from that one invitation, and an accompanying school visit in town, which came as a result of the first invitation, alone nearly paid for the whole run of books). By the way, for anyone interested in that book, you won't find any mention on my regular website because I work in a variety of venues in a variety of communities, and there's no need to mention the political nature of some of my writing. I do have a parallel website: www.kenwaldman.com/astheworldburns. One other note about this book. Though the Ohio publisher had been challenging to work with as he published my collection, the following year he offered to take on this political book in my behalf, which meant helping place it with Small Press Distribution in Berkeley, which then meant national distribution that it couldn't have had otherwise, at least not without me or my nominal publisher spending an inordinate amount of time and money.

Finally, the publication of my 2008 memoir, Are You Famous?, is a variation of all these stories.

In 2002, I attended BookExpo in New York City (indeed, I attended this past May for the first time since, and wrote about it in 49 Writers), and met representatives from Cinco Puntos Press, of El Paso, who were friends of friends. The business manager at the time was the son-in-law of the owners. He was also an Irish flute player, and offered to host a house concert if I was ever passing through El Paso. Early 2003 I took him up on it, and during the tour of the Cinco Puntos Press office, met their marketing director, Jessica Powers, a writer, herself. Jessica liked my poetry—-a reviewer for New Pages, she favorably wrote about my second West End Press book, which I'd dropped off on her invitation—-and we remained in touch. (An odd aside: a few years later, driving through El Paso, when she still lived there, I stayed one night with her and her then husband; she passed along a book that she'd recently been given to review, which was coming out in a few months, and which she thought I might be interested in—-that night I stayed up until 5 a.m. to finish Ordinary Wolves.)

In 2007, Jessica phoned me that she was mulling starting a publishing house. We'd last seen each other in California in 2005, when, during a visit, we exchanged manuscripts. She read a draft of Are You Famous?, which I'd recently written. I read her young adult novel, The Confessional, which Knopf was going to publish in the next year. So two years later, as I listened to Jessica tell me her plans, she asked whether that manuscript of mine was still available. It was certainly available, I let her know, which started a process that led to her publishing the book in August 2008—-more of the story of how that book came to be is in the final chapter of that book, the postscript. (One thing not mentioned in the book is that while Jessica is a terrific editor, and a smart marketer, and has been just great to work with, book design is not her strength; and while design is not my strength either, if I hadn't my experiences, that memoir would have looked much different, and, I believe, much worse, if I hadn't worked hard as an advocate to make sure certain things looked the way they did—-having that say can be one of the advantages, and disadvantages, of being involved with a small press.)

I thank Deb and Andromeda for the opportunity to write here. Funny, I apologized to Deb last week at the length of these posts, and promised this one would be shorter; instead, obviously it's the longest yet. I do go on. Funny, too, I meant to respond to Andromeda, who commented on my last post; I'm not sure about the thicker skin stuff since this past week I just got rejected from being on the roster of touring artists in Alabama schools. I'm not sure whether I'll even bother seeking an explanation. It feels like such a little thing since I don't get to Alabama much, but I did wonder what more I could offer, or how I could have done this differently since I answered the questions, followed the directions on the form, and included reasonable supplemental materials. I'd even been in touch with the director of the program before applying--and a well-respected musician who runs an arts council in the state, who himself does a lot of school visits around the state, who'd hired me to work in his community's schools, and who is a big supporter of my work, had been one of my references. One thing for sure: we're inevitably getting rejected in this business for a multitude of reasons, some of which are out of our control. That doesn't seem to change.

Funny, too, that when I first imagined these posts, one of the subjects I wanted to write about was the challenges of getting work distributed throughout our state, which, in my case, has meant challenges with working in collaboration with Todd Communications, Alaska Geographic (formerly ANHA), and others. I have one more chance next week; I'll strive to get to that, briefly.

49 Writers Publisher Interview: Epicenter Press

Continuing our series of 49 Writers Publisher Interviews, we check in with Kent Sturgis, president and publisher of Epicenter Press, Inc. Sturgis is a two-term former president of the Independent Book Publishers Association, a national trade organization. He was born and raised in Fairbanks, where he edited the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner during the pipeline boom. He has edited dozens of books and written two of his own.

Who started Epicenter Press?

Lael Morgan and I incorporated Epicenter Press in Fairbanks in 1988. We are a home-grown book press that sells Alaska stories to the outside world.

Lael Morgan forced me get into book publishing. No kidding. She didn’t hold a gun to my head, but she might as well have. If you know Lael Morgan, you know how persuasive – “relentless” might be a better word – she can be.

I was taking a sabbatical from journalism after twenty years working the Associated Press and later the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. “Let’s go into book publishing and buy Alaska Northwest Publishing Company from Bob Henning,” Morgan suggested in a telephone call in 1987. We had not seen one another for twenty years since working together on the Daily News-Miner during the Fairbanks flood. Henning’s company published books about Alaska; including the Milepost, and two magazines, including Alaska magazine. We went to see Henning in Edmonds, Washington. He introduced us to three other prospective buyers who had approached him. But even after the five of us combined our financial resources, we couldn't raise enough cash to make a deal.

After the group broke up, Lael and I went back to Henning thinking we might buy the books only. At that time, Alaska Northwest had two to three hundred titles on its list. Henning was encouraging. I remember going home one weekend with a huge stack of sales and inventory reports. I discovered that the company had lots of inventory in the slow sellers, and not much stock in the best-sellers. A light went on in my head. This meant that in addition to raising money for the sale price, which apparently included the dubious value of the slow sellers, we would have to raise additional money to reprint the bestsellers.

We backed off, deciding it made more sense for us to start a book-publishing enterprise from scratch--one book at a time. And that’s what we did.

Which books were among the first you published?

The first year, 1988, we published four titles. Lael and I each contributed one.

Lael wrote Art & Eskimo Power: The Life and Times of Alaskan Howard Rock. This is an absorbing and important biography of the Eskimo journalist who founded the Tundra Times and helped fight for settlement of the Alaska Native land claims. Although we got a very nice review in Publishers Weekly, leading us to believe, falsely, that national reviews would not be difficult to get in the future, I wish we had held off publishing this book until we knew more about book promotion and marketing and had better distribution.

I contributed Four Generations on the Yukon, a pictorial biography of the Binkley family in Fairbanks, which had been running riverboats on Alaskan waters for four generations (five, now). We also published Reaching for a Star, a history of the Alaska Constitutional Convention by Gerald Bowkett, and Steamboats on the Chena, a history of the riverboat trade into Fairbanks, by Basil Hedrick and Susan Savage.

At the time, crude e-mail was just coming into use, but there was no such thing as an “attachment,” and not yet available was the software that ultimately leveled the playing field for independent publishers to compete with the big New York houses. It cost a dollar a minute to telephone the Lower 48, and FedEx was nowhere to be seen. There was no book-publishing infrastructure in Alaska — no book editors, designers, marketers, and certainly no book printers. I moved to the Seattle area to learn how to publish books.

What niche do you hold in the marketplace?

We are a regional trade publisher specializing in nonfiction titles about Alaska. Within this regional “niche,” we publish all varieties of nonfiction. Although most of our titles relate in some way to Alaska, we do occasionally publish titles from elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

What are some of your best-selling titles?

Each publisher has its own definition of what constitutes a best-seller. In our realm, we consider a title to be a best-seller if it is reprinted on a regular basis and has sold mid tens of thousands of copies.

Four titles come to mind:

1. Two Old Women by Velma Wallis. We published the original cloth edition of this unusual story based on an Athasbascan Indian legend. The book won a Western States Book Award and later won a book award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. We sold paperback rights to HarperCollins and, through agents, licensed translation rights worldwide. Two Old Women has been published in eighteen languages.

Even going on fifteen years after its original publication, this amazing little book continues to be a bestseller in Germany, where five editions have been published. The book has been read in its entirety on the German version of National Public Radio. In Italy, the owner of a chain of hotels was so taken by the book that he published a private edition, placing a copy in every one of his hotel rooms. Our standing joke for a while with Velma Wallis was that her book was competing with the Bible in Italy. And the Two Old Women story goes on and on. One of these days it will be made into a movie.

2. Lael Morgan wrote Good Time Girls, the charming history of prostitution in Alaska and the Yukon. This book was on the LA Times best-books-of-the-year list after its publication and Lael was named Alaska historian-of-the-year by the Alaska Historical Society for this work. We have sold about 50,000 copies of two editions of this book, and it continues to be a bestseller year after year.

3. It was a pleasure working with Governor Jay Hammond on his autobiography, Tales of Alaska’s Bush Rat Governor, which was a huge success due to the governor’s immense popularity and because the book was so well written and entertaining and received glowing reviews. The book was published after Hammond left office. But he loved to interact with people and made more than one hundred public appearances on behalf of this book.

Shortly after its release, we scheduled a signing for the governor at Hearthside Books in Juneau. It quickly became apparent that the bookstore would be overwhelmed with Hammond fans, so the event was moved to the Juneau community center. Instead of running the scheduled hour and a half, the event continued for more than four hours, with lines of people circling the block waiting to get in. Hammond signed 900 books!

4. And, then, of course, there was Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down, by Kaylene Johnson. Predating the 2008 presidential election, Sarah was the first and only book in print about Sarah Palin when Republican presidential nominee John McLean selected Palin as his running made. The cloth first edition and two paperback editions sold nearly 200,000 copies. Two of the editions appeared on New York Times bestseller lists on the same weekend.

Has there been a shift in what readers expect and which Alaskan authors/books do well?

Fundamentally our market in Alaska is one part local audience and one part visitors. At the heart of this market is interest in Alaska adventures, lifestyles, the Alaska dream, and personal stories about unusual aspects of living in Alaska. Still, we have seen a few shifts.

Individual titles about sled-dog racing, mainly the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, don’t seem to sell as well as they once did. There are many mushing books in print.

In recent years, we have ventured into the true-crime genre, thanks to the work of Tom Brennan. This content sells well, and may be bringing young and new readers into books. Books about the “unexplained” such as Strange Stories by Ed Ferrell and Haunted Alaska by the late Ron Wendt are popular year after year.

History can be a tough sell, but a recent bright spot has been North to the Future: The Alaska Story, 1959-2009, by Dermot Cole. Publication of this absorbing history was made possible by the Alaska Historical Society.

Literary nonfiction, which is difficult to define, has been a mixed bag for us over the years. But we have been pleased to discover in recent years that these titles have found a place in the literary nonfiction market outside of Alaska and help sell some of our other titles to a broader market. Two titles that come to mind, which I strongly recommend for the quality of the stories and fine writing, are Surviving the Island of Grace by Leslie Leyland Fields and Moments Rightly Placed, the Aleutian memoir by Ray Hudson.

Our 2009 year-to-date bestsellers:

1. The Spill, by Sharon Bushell & Stan Jones
2. Good Time Girls, Lael Morgan
3. North to the Future, Dermot Cole
4. Haunted Alaska, Ron Wendt
5. Amazing Pipeline Stories, Dermot Cole
6. Jon Van Zyle’s Alaska Sketchbook (new edition)
7. Alaska Blues, Joe Upton
8. Sarah, Kaylene Johnson (cloth First Edition)
9. Cold Crime, Tom Brennan
10. Strange Stories of Alaska and the Yukon, Ed Ferrell

How many books do you typically publish each year?

This varies depending on our financial situation and the number of promising proposals we have in hand. Some years we publish as few as two new titles. In busy years, when sales have been strong, we have published as many as a dozen.

Recognizing that not every book idea or project will fit on our list, we also have begun to reach out to authors, self-publishers and private and public entities through Aftershocks Media, a subsidiary enterprise that offers editing services, consulting and mentoring, book packaging, print brokering, and distribution of titles other than our own.

In which genres?

Within the Alaska category, we publish memoirs, history, humor, true crime, books about sled dog racing, Native American stories, and books by and about strong Alaska women. We’ve also published a few guides, although generally we do not publish travel guides, and a couple of self-help titles. We call all this our “Alaska Book Adventures.” As a rule we do not publish fiction, children’s books, or poetry.

Over the years, what kinds of changes have you made with your list?

With the availability of on-demand digital printing, we now can keep in print indefinitely titles that otherwise might have been dropped from our list in the years past as sales slowly declined. Even when we print on an offset press, we tend to do smaller printings now, knowing that we can get a reprint delivered from most North American printers in about 30 days. At the same time, we have been moving away from color gift books and so-called “coffee table” books. The main thing we look for now is the quality of the story.

Describe your ideal author. In other words, if one of us wanted to wow you with a proposed project, how would we do it?

The dream author is a marketing-savvy, self-promoting individual living in Alaska who comes to us with a tight, well-written, skillfully self-edited work with strong commercial potential that makes us shout “Eureka!” when we read it, and who has access to photos scanned at the proper density — if we need them. I’m grinning as I write this. I have never met such an author.

The economy has hit publishing hard. Are you seeing any encouraging signs? What is the future for small and regional publishers?

You have to be an optimist to be in this business. Even when the overall economy is in decent shape, book publishing is a challenge for all the reasons you can imagine – declining literacy, disappearance of many independent book stores, returns, increased reliance on the web, and a growing array of e-reader formats and devices. Meanwhile, there are too many publishers printing more paper books than can be sold.

E-books comprise the fastest-growing segment of the book industry, yet the percentage of the total is still very low. But this is the wave of the future.

I believe the small, independent niche and regional publishers may find it easier to survive than the large national trade publishers. But “easier” is a relative term. A lot of trade publishing companies are going to fail if they do not adjust to changes. But others will rise behind them, more attuned to the new technology and changing needs of the reading public.

Meanwhile, we all can take solace in this: content will always be needed, no matter what the delivery system.

What do you most want to communicate to readers about your books and to writers about submissions?

Perhaps it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway--start with original material. No matter what your topic, fiction or nonfiction, tell a story that will entertain as well as inform.

Maintain high standards for your work. In dealing with agents and publishers, share only your very best effort. Unless asked to do so, do not submit any draft material. Seek objective criticism of your work. Take with a grain of salt praise from your family and friends.

The cover letter should be the best letter you’ve ever written. Slave over it.

Often I am surprised to receive nonfiction proposals from authors who have spent a great deal of time researching their subjects, but little time researching prospective publishers.

If you are considering self-publication or have interest in publishing as a business, join the Independent Book Publishers Association (formerly the Publishers Marketing Association).

The best book I have seen about the publishing process for prospective authors is How to Get Happily Published by Judith Appelbaum.

Kent Sturgis can be contacted at kent@epicenterpress.com.

49 Writers Weekly Round-Up

Have you weighed in on the MFA question this week? We'd love to hear from writers who've earned MFAs, who are working on MFAs, or who are wondering if they should pursue MFAs.

Another popular post this week was part two of featured author Ken Waldman's "In Defense of Self-Promotion." Ken's post along with Mark Coker's Smashwords Book Marketing Guide inspired author Arne Bue to push his comfort zone to post a "non-academy award winning video I made, starring old me."

Also, author Ann Chandonnet shares a link to BookTour.com, where authors can enter and search for upcoming events.

Of course, blogs are another great place to promote your work. Debby Dahl Edwardson, author of the picture book Whale Snow and Blessing’s Bead, is featured in an interview on a blog called Through the Tollbooth

Our own ex-gov Sarah Palin apparently has her own ideas about how to get readers to buy a book: omit the index. That way folks who want to know what you said about them have to plunk down some cash. But then again, with a print run of one million, do you really care? But is it really one million? Daily Finance crunches the numbers on the Palin memoir, providing some interesting insight into how these things do (or don't) work.

Praeger Books announces the release of Barry Scott Zellen's second nonfiction book on the transformation and modernization of the Arctic region: Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic. The second of a three-volume project exploring the foundations of security, stability and sovereignty in the modern Arctic, it examines the challenges and opportunities of a polar thaw; considers the impacts on geopolitics, international security, and international commerce; and discusses what a “post-Arctic” world might look like.

The book includes an introduction by former Alaska Governor and U.S. Interior Secretary Walter J. Hickel, and a foreword authored by Professor Daniel J. Moran of the Department of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. "The author argues that the twilight of the reign of ice in the Arctic marks the dawn of a new geostrategic pivot and economic powerhouse—a rich new navigable “Mediterranean” basin full of beneficial promise for the future of the Arctic rim nations, the indigenous Arctic peoples, and human history," notes the publisher.

Looking for an agent? Check out the recent Writers Digest article "24 Agents Who Want Your Work" and its companion piece, "10 Things You Should Do Before Querying an Agent."