Blog
Joy Harjo’s Spirits Take Hold
My first big event as Alaska Writer Laureate has been postponed because of Covid. I was supposed to introduce Joy Harjo, the Poet Laureate of the United States at an event at the Anchorage Museum on Sept. 10, but the Delta variant has other plans. I expected this,...
Wayne, Debi, Lucky & Rockwell at the Museum
We had a field trip yesterday afternoon to the Anchorage Museum, and it was exciting to see an ivory heron necklace by Haines artist Debi Knight Kennedy in one display, and a large photo of our own Wayne Price paddling a Tlingit canoe in another. I showed everyone I...
Papa Bob Lands & I Free Fall
In a workshop here at UAA's creative writing residency in Anchorage yesterday, writer Ed Allen told us that he divides the world into two kinds of people: the ones who have written novels and the ones who haven't. He reminded me of my dad, who used to say the same...
Writing School Stories and a Switch-Hitting Nun
Here's what I learned in my creative writing classes at UAA yesterday. Novelist Ed Allen (Mustang Sally) said: "In the beginning was the word...With no words we wouldn't be human... Take the words more seriously than yourself." Memoir writer ( Lifesaving) Judith...
Hello Dolly and God
When I was young we drove from New York to Western Pennsylvania every summer and spent weeks at my grandparent's house. They lived in a big old house in a small Allegheny forest town. We picked huckleberries for pies and caught crayfish in the creek. It smelled like...
Creative Writing
Sorry I haven't checked in more this week, I am in Anchorage at classes for my master's degree in creative writing from UAA. It is like camp. They keep us busy from early morning to late at night with lectures and workshops and readings so we can't get in too much...
A Bear, A Harley, and a Women’s Magazine?
I heard Chuck hit a bear with his motorcycle last night at 19 Mile. (Or the bear hit him?) I also heard the motorcycle was wrecked, but Chuck's okay. Keep him in your thoughts. No word on the bear, though. I tell you what, bears should know better than to bump a...