Jimmy Bluefeather, the new novel from award-winning writer, photographer, and conservationist Kim Heacox, is the first work of original adult fiction released by Alaska Northwest Books in fifty-six years of publishing. The collaborators recently got together to discuss their groundbreaking effort. AN: Alaska roots this novel and plays a large part in the overall story line. How does the …
While some of us boast about an arduous 7-mile hike along a well-traveled trail, Erin McKittrick and her husband, Hig, have trekked more than 7,000 miles of Alaska’s wilderness. By foot and by packraft, they travel around Alaska, both for their love of adventuring, but also on behalf of their nonprofit, Ground Truth Trekking. The …
I write in the dark. I write with a pencil on a stack of Rite-In-The-Rain paper, awkwardly bound by wire. I write in an ugly printed scrawl. Huddled in my sleeping bag, I write to the accompaniment of my husband’s snores, and my childrens’ gentle sleeping breaths. I write to the hiss of blowing snow …
“I can’t think of a better way to learn craft than to take a cruise with writers. That’s what I did the first week of June. We were a small crowd of writers but I learned a great deal about ebooks, creating conflict in scenes, about building characters and brainstorming plot and other issues pertinent …
“… a book every Alaskan and anyone wanting to know about Alaska should read. Or anyone who wants to cry and smile, be thrilled and terrified, despairing and hopeful. Basically, anyone who wants an awesome story with an important message tucked in the passages and pages should go get a copy. “A highly contagious and …
“After a childhood spent shuttling between her ‘Great Alaskan Dad’ in isolated Anchorage and her ‘Great American Instant Coffee Single Mom’ in genteel Baltimore, Leigh Newman finds that her compass Still Points North. She shares her journey in a memoir filled with tales of surviving bears and flooded tents, as well as a mother whose insecurities …
“Possibly the most side-splittingly funny book to come out of Alaska. The author comes to Alaska to run the Iditarod without knowing what he is getting himself into and it becomes a battle between him and his dog team—almost an equal match in stubbornness.” —Lee, The Homer Bookstore, Homer, AK. Celebrate Iditarod 2013, which kicked …
We recently honored Alaskan author/bookseller Eowyn Ivey with a 2013 PNBA Award for her novel The Snow Child. Thanks to Ivey for sharing this essay with us in celebration of the award (See posts from Jonathan Evison and G. Willow Wilson and look for essays from the other three winners in the coming weeks). Palmer, Alaska readers are invited …
“I read this as slowly as possible over the course of a year, and when I finished it, started right back at the beginning.”—Ruth, Fireside Books, Palmer, AK. Buy Pilgrim at Tinker Creek from Fireside Books.
On the same day that Ann Patchett held the grand opening for her new bookstore, Parnassus Books, in Nashville, Tennessee, last month, another Parnassus Books was celebrating its move from one location, across a creek, to another, in Ketchikan, Alaska. Owner Maggie Freitag says that the publicity from Patchett's store generated a fair amount of …
