I love the hateful process.~Jo-Ann Mapson
Scan advice from agents and editors, and you’ll find a common thread: too many writers send off their work before it’s ready. But how do you know when a piece is as good as it’s going to get?
This is trickier than it sounds. Part of the fun and frustration of writing is that a piece can always get better. Most published writers will tell you they’ve wished for changes even after their work came out in print. And while much writing goes off half-baked, it’s also possible to overcook a piece, to fiddle with it till it falls apart on the page, or to play with it more or less forever, thus staving off any chance of rejection.
Let’s assume you’ve engaged in that recursive process of discovery, prewriting and drafting and revising until you have what feels like a decent draft. You’ve let it set awhile, and in the most objective of ways you’ve approached it again. You’ve gotten critiques from a few trusted readers. Is it ready for market?
Even when your instinct tells you a project is ready, it’s good to go one more round, taking time to move through the project chapter by chapter, doing the same sort of writer-as-reader analysis you’d do on a good published book by another author. If your piece is an essay or short story, so much the better – there’s a lot to evaluate.
Handwrite your notes, both in the text itself – marking lyric moments, best parts, surprise and delight – and also in a free-standing list. Handwriting keeps your right brain involved in what’s essentially a left-brained pursuit.
Here’s what I look for. I’m not a big fan of checklists, so beware. This sort of analysis too early in the project tends to stifle creative energy. And this is my own personal list,  keyed to what I find engaging in narrative (fiction and non) and slanted toward my own shortcomings. Your ready-for-market survey might look quite a lot different. 

• The basics: notes on time, point of view, narrative distance, voice, and length.
• Beginning and end: Copy down the first and last sentences in order to study the frame for the piece.
• Scene and summary: List these, in order. For the scenes, note ways in which characters change from beginning to end. Note how backstory, if any, works in.
• Characters: What do the characters know about themselves? What are they blind to? Which feelings are articulated? Which feelings need to be articulated? In what ways are they larger than life?
• Arc: Where’s the set-up, the climax, the denouement?
• Surprise and delight: What feels most fresh and alive in the piece? Consider word choice, metaphor, humor, voice, plot, character.
• Suspense: Foreshadowing, not overdone. Consider what’s not said, what’s withheld, and conversely, what’s revealed and where.
• Language and details: Where’s the sharp, smart language? The humor, if any? Make sure nothing’s overwritten or over-explained. Even after a few rounds of revision, I find myself lopping off ends of sentences, where I’ve said too much.
• Lyric moments: Identify the ones you’ve got, and look for places where they should be.
• What it’s about: If you thought you knew and now you’re seeing something more, less, or different, that can be good, as long as you make the most of what you discover. Pay attention to how the focus is revealed to the reader. Sometimes it’s too obvious, sometimes it’s too subtle. Every story is two stories: identify both.
• Where you copped out: Consider the ways in which your project could be more than it is – more emotional depth, more distinctive voice, richer language, more layers.

Try This: Run a ready-for-market survey on a published piece you admire, in the same genre as your own. Then run it on yours. Compare. Don’t let this be a cop out. Your work (and mine) may always fall short, but if you’re serious about becoming a good writer, you need to have the courage to learn where it does.
Check This Out: Literary agent Noah Lukeman’s The First Five Pages should be on the shelf of every serious writer. Subtitled A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile, this volume is an in-depth ready-for-market survey on the first five pages of your project, which is the most agents and editors will normally read unless the material grabs them in a big way. Lukeman offers no secrets, no tricks – just an analysis of common problems and their solutions, including examples and exercises to drive the material home.

Written by a committee of volunteers. Noah Barleywater Runs Away written by John Boyne with illustrations by Oliver Jeffers Eight-year-old Noah ran into the forest one day. This is a fairy tale forest where the apple tree gets upset when an apple is picked and the animals argue with each other. Noah finds a toy [...]

May 17-20 Clothing, Art Gifts

presented by the Alaska Peace Officers Association May 14 7:30pm ticket available at Roswig-Giles music in the valley

Irene and William Lampe - December 1955 - my mother is pregnant with her first daughter, Clarissa Rizal Lampe

Irene passed away last year on the 4th of July; she was 86 years old.  This is the first Mother’s Day without her; somehow as much as I tried to feel okay about this day with my family members, I couldn’t help but feel melancholy – it was always such a special day when our mother was alive.  And even though I am not only a mother of 3 but a grandmother of 4, I’m not in any mode to celebrate myself in that role.  I must look for another element…I’ll celebrate my daughters as mothers.

This is your final reminder about the Early Bird deadline for Tutka Bay Writers Retreat - after Tuesday, May 15, rates will go up for members and non-members alike. Register now to take advantage of this opportunity to study and discuss the art of writing with our retreat leader, visiting author Pam Houston. Remember too that we are currently accepting proposals for our fall workshops - the deadline for that is June 1. For more information or to submit, just go to the 49 Writers website.

Today, Friday, May 11, is the deadline for our third and final WYAK contest - "Hunted." It is also the deadline for online submissions for our print anthology of youth writing. There's still time to submit - just go to the WYAK website and send us your entry!

For those of you who attended Steve Almond's "Obsessive Writing" workshop last month - and for everyone who nurtures an obsession - check out Obsession, a new online literary magazine now accepting seriously written pieces of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry that express, implicitly or explicitly, your obsession. Click here to submit, or visit their website. Thanks for this tip from one of our workshop participants - the writing produced there was of high quality, and we would love to see examples of your work published.
Do you love plants and gardening? If so, we have an opportunity for you! 49 Writers and the Alaska Botanical Garden are collaborating to stage garden readings and perhaps offer a workshop or two at their annual Garden Fair on June 16 and 17. If you are interested in planning or assisting, please email us at 49writers@gmail.com. ABG also has volunteer writing opportunities, including help with their widely distributed newsletter, so do contact them at garden@alaskabg.org if you are interested.
On the subject of collaboration, we are delighted to announce that popular essayist, food writer, and memoirist Molly O'Neill has teamed up with top food writers to bring her latest Cook 'n Scribble food writing retreat to Alaska. "Food, Nature & The Writer's Wild Mind" will take place July 12-16 at Tutka Bay Lodge near Homer. This experience will offer a unique opportunity to delve into the sensory aspects of food writing, with instruction and timed exercises designed to keen the senses and to expand the writer's awareness of the rhythms and realities of the natural world and its effect on voice and point-of-view in food narrative, personal essay, blog posts, and memoir. Joining Molly are other masters of the craft - Shauna James Ahern, Hank Shaw, and Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan. Cook 'n Scribble will dedicate some of the proceeds to 49 Writers, and we are also planning a community event with the visiting writers - updates to be posted once final details are in place. 

Tomorrow, Saturday May 12, 10am, a Writers Critique group will meet at Title Wave Books, Northern Lights Mall, Anchorage. Open to any type of writing or genre; all levels welcome. For more information, call Mary at (907) 569 5075.
Also tomorrow, Saturday May 12, noon, the Alaska Center for the Book presents Reading Rendezvous.Sign up for the Anchorage Public Libraries Summer Reading Program. All activities free--music, craft activities, science exhibits, Fiddle Dee Dee, and Don Russell's magic show. Loussac Library, 3600 Denali St, Anchorage.
On Sunday May 13, 1-4pm, the Community Writers Guild will meet at the Bear Gallery, Pioneer Park, Fairbanks.
On Tuesday, May 15, 5.30pm, UAA faculty Tracey Burke will facilitate a conversation about "Hunger and the Working Poor." UAA/APU Books of the Year partners with Loussac Library to co-host the "Conversation Salon Series," a series of discussion around the theme of "The Working Poor." The sessions are moderated by UAA faculty and are not presentations, but opportunities for attendees to discuss issues relevant to themselves and the community. Ann Stevens Room, Loussac Library, 3600 Denali St, Anchorage. For more information, contact Christina Gheen at (907) 786 6374, booksoftheyear@uaa.alaska.edu
Midnight Tuesday May 15 is the submissions deadline for F Magazine's Second Annual Statewide Writing Competition. More details on their website.
Midnight Tuesday May 15 is the deadline for nominations for the CLIA Award, for Contributions to Literacy in Alaska with Alaska Center for the Book. Nominees may be an individual or an organization that has made a significant contribution to the advancement of literacy, literary arts, or the preservation of the printed word in Alaska. Awards will be presented in November. Visit http://coolwebak.hypermart.net/id24.html for more information.
On Wednesday May 16, 7pm, Poetry Parley will feature the poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and local poet Brian Hutton. Out North, 3800 DeBarr Rd, Anchorage.
A little late in reporting this, but Radical Arts for Women announced the winners of the Nicole Blizzard Short Story Contest. Congratulations to the winners and honorable mentions!Grand Prize went to Leslie Kimiko Ward with "Totem."Second place went to Heather Teel with "Kay Baby."Third Place was a tie between Teresa Sundmark with "People Like Us" and Wendy Withrow with "Ms. Connection."Honorable Mentions: Susan M. Stade with "Objects are Closer than they Appear," Martha Amore with "Fairbanks in January," Karen Rasmussen with "A World for Girls," Dorothy Spees with "Ianthe," Rosalie Loewen with "Sleeping Beauty," Sheila Sine with "The Difference," and Alix Layton with "The Rendezvous."

The Internet can make certain kinds of research possible, as we all know. Quick— locate my narrator's  senator uncle and give me all the facts about his turn-of-the-century career, including famous statements he made about preserving Maryland blacks’ right to vote. Quick—the gorgeous church I discovered this afternoon that used to be a synagogue, built in the 1890s; who was on the board of trustees?

These are precisely the sorts of questions I’ve been Googling from my Baltimore hotel room. It’s been wonderful to follow the trail of crumbs—from the Internet to a university library to a hospital to a medical archives and back to the Internet again.

But even more amazing, on this trip and on every research trip I’ve ever made, is serendipity. Serendipity is the reason we visit real libraries with real books, and browse the shelves, not quite knowing what we’ll find. Serendipity is the reason we mention to the librarian, the taxi driver, the security guard, and the bartender what we’re doing in town, just in case they have something interesting to add. Serendipity is how we find out what’s not on the Internet.

And serendipity was the reason I lingered on the once elegant, now elegant-shabby corner of the 1800 block of Eutaw Street in Baltimore, in light rain, on Tuesday afternoon. I checked out the synagogue around the corner. (Boy, a lot of synagogues around this street—I finally realized my narrator might have been Jewish— and yes, the records confirm, she was, whether or not she observed the faith later in life.) I talked to two retired guys sitting on a marble stoop, who were hanging out here because just two blocks west there were too many drug deals going down. (Straight out of “The Wire,” which I watched for the first time just before this trip.) They told me where to walk and what blocks to avoid, and also shared what they knew about the neighborhood’s history.

And then I took my time—looking in a back alley, walking around the Queen Anne-style mansion I’d come to see, trying not to hurry, trying not to be shy. It’s the moments of hanging out, usually solo (unfortunately), that tend to deliver.

I’m writing a novel about a young psychology student named Rosalie Rayner, who was involved in a divorce scandal (also an academic scandal) that made East Coast headlines. I found her census records just weeks ago. The 1900, 1910 and 1920 census gave me her Eutaw Street address, as well as the changing names of her neighbors and her family’s servants (Irish, German, American black) each decade.

And now, here I was on Tuesday. Getting wet. Wondering what to do next.

Suddenly, a man darted out of the building next door. I called out hello to him. He paused just before getting into his car and asked me if I was looking for someone. “Yes,” I said. “Someone who lived here a century ago.”

Turns out, Craig had a hand in owning and renovating both buildings, and had even heard of the family I was writing about. Twenty-four hours and many cell phone calls later, I was invited into 1814 Eutaw Street, once a mansion (“Richardsonian Romanesque” style, not Queen Anne after all) and now an apartment complex. My kind host and his partner, J.W., had gone to the trouble of asking their tenants if I could peek into various apartments. This one used to be Rosalie’s bedroom. Another, her parents’ bedroom. And so on.

We all shared Rayner family stories—with each other, and with the tenants. I promised to share any blueprints or historical photos I come across, and the building owners—reinvigorated about a subject they’d dabbled in when they bought the building back in the 1990s—promised as well. They were excited to find someone who knew something about their building’s history. I was thrilled to get to see inside the building: every staircase and pocket door and beautiful bit of restored woodwork, while we all made our guesses about where certain events (the finding of certain hidden love letters, for example) happened. The tenant who had lived--without realizing it--in Rosalie’s bedroom was excited enough about the century-old history that she said she hoped to “see the movie version someday.”

“Well, a novel first,” I told her. “But who knows.”

I went back to my aging Baltimore hotel and celebrated--running shoes soggy, feet sore, and imagination on fire--with oysters Rockefeller.

Andromeda Romano-Lax is working on a novel tentatively titled The Expert, about Rosalie Rayner and her affair with and marriage to iconoclastic behaviorist psychologist John Watson. Rayner and Watson co-authored the famous (and infamous) “Little Albert” infant fear conditioning study.

Auto and Cycle Show May 11, 12 and 13

Last week in this space I discussed the connections between fiction and history, specifically how writers in both genres are bound by factual source material to different degrees. This week I’d like to continue on a related theme—fiction as a repository for historical memory.

In his 1989 book The Future of the Past, historian C. Vann Woodward notes the difference between historical fiction and fictional history. In the former, invented characters occupy a more or less authentic historical backdrop. Gone With the Wind is a good example. Fictional history, on the other hand, takes actual historical figures and events and revises them as though in a parallel and counterfactual universe. Novels where the Nazis win the Second World War or Kennedy survives the assassination attempt in Dallas fall into this category.

Whatever the distinction, both subgenres are capable of influencing, sometimes dramatically, how past events are conceptualized and remembered in the public consciousness. As Woodward put it:

Far surpassing works of history, as measured by the size of their public and the influence they exert, are the novel, works for the stage, the screen, and television. It is mainly from these sources that millions who never open a history book derive such conceptions, interpretations, convictions or fantasies as they have about the past. Whatever gives shape to popular conceptions of the past is of concern to historians, and this surely includes fiction. (p. 235)
This is plainly true of Hollywood movies. How many of us had ever heard of Schindler (let alone his list) before Spielberg made the movie? Now, how many of us have encountered Schindler in anything other than the movie? Thus everything the general public knows about Oskar Schindler comes from a portrayal that is both historical and fictional. Not to pick on Spielberg, but that he almost certainly took creative license with certain facts and got others completely wrong may therefore be of some consequence.

One might argue that as writers we have a similar obligation, at the very least to consider how our words create images that will endure in the reader’s mind. I would guess that historians spend a lot more time worrying about this than do novelists and Hollywood directors—our respective goals are quite different, after all.

The larger point I hope to raise is that all writing is historical in the sense that words on paper are like the mosquito trapped in amber, a set of facts unique to that particular place and time now permanently suspended and able to be viewed sui generis many years later.

Think of it this way: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a work of fiction. She made the whole thing up. And yet, the novel has profoundly shaped our view of race relations in the South in the mid-twentieth century, particularly for those of us who did not experience that time and place firsthand. Our historical memory resides in such works of fiction.

Here in Alaska we can look to the gold rush novels of Rex Beach and Jack London, both of whom wrote what Woodward would call historical fiction. It almost matters less whether those novels were “accurate” in a historical sense relative to the effect they continue to have on the image of the North in the public mind. None of us are so naïve as to think the story of Buck in The Call of the Wild is one hundred percent true, but reading the tale allows us to relive a collective past. The savvy reader can look past the subject matter itself and discern something of the mores and circumstances, whether cultural, social, political, economic, and so on, in which the book itself was written.

This view demonstrates that the line between fiction and non-fiction is so thin as to occasionally be invisible.

Ross Coen is a historian who writes about the social, political, and environmental history of Alaska and the Arctic. He is the author of The Long View: Dispatches On Alaska History from Ester Republic Press and Breaking Ice for Arctic Oil: The Epic Voyage of the SS Manhattan through the Northwest Passage from University of Alaska Press. He lives in Fairbanks.

We talk all the time. So what’s so hard about dialogue? In a lecture titled “Riding a Unicycle While Spinning Plates” (2011 Squaw Valley Writers Workshop), author Janet Fitch discussed the ways in which something so seemingly straightforward can go oh-so-wrong.
The first rule of good dialogue, Fitch says, is compression. She points out that while most real life talk is intended to avert conflict, the purpose of dialogue in narrative is to reveal conflict, to bring people to the point where they’re trying to do something to each other, as in a wrestling match. Emerging writers too often use dialogue for exposition or backstory, or they fill the page with useless chit-chat. “If people agree, they don’t need to talk,” Fitch says. “Only generic people speak generically. If anyone could say it, no one should say it. Every line should be a million dollar line, or get rid of it.”
Extending the wrestling analogy, Fitch notes how speakers in narrative often circle like wrestlers, looking for an opening. That means they won’t always come in from the front. In good narrative dialogue, each person comes from a different perspective, bringing needs, wants and desires in relation to the others. Interrupting and trailing off are ways that characters are revealed. “Rarely do people get to finish what they mean to say,” Fitch notes.
She also reminds writers that dialogue is always part of a scene that demands fresh, specific details. “Set up the scene for someone to say something specific and interesting,” she recommends. “Set it up so you see who’s stronger. Who will the reader put their money on? There’s always a winner.”
Bad dialogue, Fitch says, marches down the page without regard for gesture, vocal tone, or facial expression. “Line after line of vocalization means you’re missing the interior world and the landscape,” she says. Beyond dialogue, the scene should include exposition plus ongoing description of the characters and their reactions. And don’t forget landscape. “As they speak, people still have contact with the physical world,” Fitch says. “When people stop speaking, there’s ambient sound.”
Fitch also reminds writers that dialogue is not deposition. Characters gain advantage by not answering, lying, playing mind games, or through counter attack. Like a good boxer, a character should never respond as her opponent expects. “If it doesn’t surprise, don’t write it,” Fitch says. Neither does dialogue have to be linear, Fitch reminds her audience. The narration can shift inside a character and back into the scene.
The best dialogue comes from people who know each other well, Fitch points out. Years of backstory are implied, and conflict is easy to raise. “The better you know each other, the less you have to explain,” she says. “Either the reader will keep up or she’ll be piqued to read on. Writing is seduction: reply obliquely; allow a mystery.”
For a spot-on example of Fitch’s dialogue principles, consider this from Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, a brief dialogue scene involving Rolph and his older sister Charlie, on safari with their father and his girlfriend Mindy:
Charlie and Rolph lie together under a palm tree. Charlie disdains the red Danskin one-piece she chose with her mother for this trip and decides she will borrow a pair of sharp scissors from the front desk and cut it into a bikini.
“I never want to go home,” she says sleepily.
“I miss Mom,” Rolph says. His father and Mindy are swimming. He can see the glitter of her swimsuit through the pale water.
“But if Mom could come.”
“Dad doesn’t love her anymore,” Rolph says. “She’s not crazy enough.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Rolph shrugs. “You think he loves Mindy?”
“No way. He’s tired of Mindy.”
“What if Mindy loves him?”
“Who cares?” Charlie says. “They all love him.”
These million dollar lines are simple, their value amassed by who says them and how they’re presented. They do everything good dialogue should. There’s landscape and gesture. We weave inside Charlie and Rolph and back out again. These kids don’t agree, and they don’t come in from the front – they riff on each other to get at what matters most to each of them. They disagree over their mother, and over Mindy, and over what love means when it involves their father. Charlie wins this round, getting in the last word on Dad. The scene illustrates beautifully how conflict can be rich and deep without necessarily being strung tight. The lines spoken by these children manage to simultaneously reveal their innocence and their depth of understanding.
Check This Out: Fitch wrote her breakout novel White Oleander after a stint at Squaw Valley. She was getting rejections but didn’t know why until she figured out that there’s good enough, and then there’s something else. What is it you can’t see about your writing? That’s the challenge she poses to writers.
Try This: To enrich your dialogue scenes, Fitch recommends keeping a notebook of gestures, facial expressions, and vocal qualities. Watch TV with the sound off to discover how gestures convey meaning and reveal conflict. Pay attention to people in meetings. How do they move? How do they laugh? Describe their vocal quality, using musical terms. Note how gestures underscore and how they contradict what is said.
Deb cross-posts at www.selfmadewriter.blogspot.com.

Come out and support the Juneau-Douglas and Thunder Mountain high school girls’ and boys’ soccer teams as they host several Cancer Awareness games on May 9 and May 15, 2012!!

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It is old but still has a few good years left. It is on the third floor of the house and will need a crane to remove it. The good news is that with some construction contacts that is probably not a problem. Getting it to and into a new owner’s house will be their responsibility.
If you or anyone you know is interested, you may call Tim at 957-0271 or Heather at 321-0054.

The annual Hershey's Track Meet is upon us once more, this time with a few changes to shake things up! Click here for more details, and get your running shoes ready! To register, visit our special events tab on the left or look for the green flyer coming home with your child from school.

Corkboardme -- an online site that lets you make and store one free corkboard at a time-- took me only a few minutes to learn to fill and drag sticky notes, (plus several more hours to try to find sites that were better).
Tell me I didn't just waste the last five hours.

My intention was just to look--one more time--for a simple online way to do storyboarding and timelining. I've spent half the day tinkering with things that don't quite work (this one doesn't print or convert into PDFs easily, that one tilts each little post-it note at a rakish angle that makes it hard for me concentrate). The ones I recommend so far are Lino-It and, for group brainstorming and storyboarding, GroupZap. But I'm still looking.

Why all this time-wasting -- I mean, purposeful researching? Because I'm convinced that visual schematics can help us better understand novel and other long-form narrative structures.

Cathy Day, who has an excellent blog about creative writing pedagogy, describes writers as "plotters" or "pantsers" (as in, seat-of-the-pantsers, or non-planners). For plotters, she recommends using index cards, whether real or virtual, to plan out long works.

Does it sound a little pedestrian (i.e., non-literary) needing to use cards, outlines, or other organizational tricks? I must admit, I've often thought so--and I'm still wary of the idea of planning any novel too carefully, since completely fixed plots seem antithetical to narrative discovery and the organic development of character.

But consider: many famous authors do use cards and outlines. One of them is Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Laks. In this great interview she credits learning about creative nonfiction structure from Lee Gutkind, and you can see a photo of her real (not virtual) note cards all lined out in rows.

I also know some writers who use Scrivener for keeping notes and outlining chapters. (And after spending a half-day trying out various "free" products, I'm starting to think that $40 for more powerful, bug-free software isn't a bad investment.)

What interests me even more than planning books using note cards etc is reverse engineering published works in order to understand alternation of scenes and summary, pacing, chronology, character development, theme, and so on; the possibilities are endless. Students who took my Plot class last spring got a quick immersion in the idea of breaking down published or finished works, scene-by-scene, but it's a sloppy process using handwritten cards or a spiral notebook. Surely, there must be a graphically beautiful way to create and share these projects.

Do you storyboard or timeline? Have you found a way to visually break down a published novel or memoir that you're studying, chapter-by-chapter or scene-by-scene? (I'm still looking for some easy timeline-style graphic that would allow a reader to make a horizontal schematic with different lines for various subplots or craft elements).   

Please, share what you know here!

Juneau-Douglas High School Assistant Principal Paula Casperson is this year's recipient of the Dr. William Demmert Leadership Award from the University of Alaska Anchorage College of Education. The award recognizes Alaskans for significant contributions to the education of Alaska Natives through advocacy, teaching, practice and/or outreach programs. The award reflects the shared mission of Dr. William Demmert and the UAA College of Education to provide educational opportunities for Alaska Native Students.

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2008 Northwest Coast Artist Gathering - Juneau, Alaska ----- Insert L to R: Aldona Jonaitis, Nicholas Galanin, Nathan Jackson, Marianne Nicholson -- sponsored by Artstream Alaska with support from Sealaska Corporation

In 2010 and again this year in 2012, Sealaska Heritage Institute has assumed the role of sponsoring an artists’ gathering held the day before the biennial “Celebration” gathering of the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimpshian peoples of the Northwest Coast.  The artists’ gathering is scheduled on Wednesday, June 6th, 11am to 3:30pm at the Old Armory (now the Juneau Arts & Culture Center).  All artists working in the Northwest Coast Native art traditions are invited to this event.

For clarity purposes, this artists gathering is a spin-off on the original productions created and sponsored by the non-profit organization Artstream Alaska in 2006 and 2008.

Although the original directors and producers, Preston Singletary and Clarissa Rizal are not a part of the coordination of this year’s event,  the following is a brief history of the original Northwest Coast Artists’ Gathering…

Northwest Coast Artists’ Gathering 2006 & 2008 – sponsored by Artsream Alaska

The original Northwest Coast Artists’ Gatherings were sponsored by Artstream Alaska with additional financial support from Sealaska Corporation. The mission of the Northwest Coast Artists’ Gathering is to bring together artists and facilitators that work in the indigenous northwest coast style of art: to foster dialog; to develop connections; to explore new materials and techniques; to inspire new work; and to create a community that is inclusive and thoughtful, and that honors tradition while moving into the 21st Century.

In 2004 Alaska Native artists Clarissa Rizal and Donna Beaver were photographing and filming at “Celebration 2004,” for their regalia documentary project. Clarissa spent time with long-time friend and fellow Tlingit artist Preston Singletary. The concept of creating an artists’ gathering began when Clarissa and Preston talked and wished for an opportunity to meet each other’s artist buddies (Clarissa introduces Donna and Preston). They had no idea that they would meet over and over again, even later that year in September 2004, with approximately 20,000 Native Americans from all over the hemisphere at the opening of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). and with assistance from Artstram’s Board of Directors and other volunteers, Preston and Clarissa coordinated the first  NWCAG in 2006; four years later in 2008, and again with assistance from Artream’s BOD and volunteers, Chloe French coordinated the Northwest Coast Artist Gathering receiving support from the NMAI.

The Northwest Coast Artist Gathering was a unique opportunity for artists from all backgrounds who work in Northwest Coast inspired art forms to meet and share information about themselves and their work.  The event was sponsored by  our non-profit Artstream Cultural Resources (now Artstream Alaska) and partially funded by Sealaska Corporation.  Artstream Alaska held the first Juneau event in May 2006, one day before Sealaska Heritage Institute’s well-known biennial Celebration. This first Gathering – as it is sometimes referred to – was a one-day event and drew about 125 artists and arts organization representatives.

The second Artist Gathering in June 2008 was a two-day event, again sponsored by Artstream Alaska with partial funding from Sealaska Corporation and NMAI and coordinated by artist Chloe French.  The first day featured an artist panel discussion on Native Alaskan art-related issues, sponsored and organized by the NMAI. Several Alaskan Native artists made up the panel — including Marianne Nicolson from Victoria, B.C., Nathan Jackson from Ketchikan, and Nick Galanin from Sitka, along with moderator Aldona Jonaitis, Director of Museum of the North, University of Alaska, Fairbanks.  Later, all participating artists were given the opportunity to introduce themselves during a Power Point Presentation featuring their work; this is a highlight of the event since many have either seen an artist’s work and not met the artist or have met the artist but was not familiar with their work!  During the second day, Gathering participants worked on an interactive collaborative design project based on the issues discussed during the morning’s panel discussion. Keynote speaker Walter Porter from Yakutat gave his lecture,“Box of Daylight” (view Walter’s lecture from event). Both days’ activities were held at the Old Armory in Juneau.

Many events occur during the Sealaska Celebration.  Artstream was pleased to be able to provide space at the Old Armory for the HAIL awards ceremony, spearheaded by the late Andy Hope III.   HAIL stands for “Honoring Alaskan Indigenous Literature” and that organization’s event presented awards to five outstanding Native Alaskan writers, of which Clarissa Rizal received one of the awards for her “Jennie Weaves An Apprentice:  A Chilkat Weaver’s Handbook.” Artstream also agreed to rearrange its Gathering schedule to accommodate Sealaska Heritage Institute’s final set up preparations for the Native Artists’ Market, which was also to be held in the Old Armory following our event.

The Gathering’s volunteer organizing committee included Clarissa Rizal, Preston Singletary, Aldona Jonaitis, Jan Steinbright, Donna Beaver, Chloe French, Doug Waugh that reflected a mix of cultural and professional backgrounds, including teachers, artists, curators and arts activists, both Native and non-Native.  A big thanks to all the artists who attended and all our volunteers who made 2006 & 2008 Gatherings a success!

Northwest Coast Artist Gathering 2006 & 2008 coordinators L to R: Doug Waugh, Aldona Jonaitis, Alan Pizzarelli, Donna Beaver Pizzarelli, Clarissa Rizal, Jan Steinbright, NMAI art director Keevin Lewis, and Preston Singletary

The 2012 Native Artists Gathering sponsored by Sealaska Heritage Institute is inviting all Native artists to bring photographs of their work to share and network.  There will also be an artist panel discussion and light refreshments.  We envision SHI’s gathering of artists is a welcomed event and enjoyed by all!

First Friday openings all around town this month, including several GRAND OPENINGS! A great evening to stroll around town and check out what is new for the summer.

Pick up your May First Friday Flyer at the JACC or download it here.

Welcome and thank you to Ross Coen, our May featured author! 
A disclaimer right at the outset:
I am a historian and a writer of non-fiction. I don’t write poems, plays, short stories, or novels, and if I have a creative bone in my body it’s probably one of those really small ones in the inner ear whose proximity to the brain has no bearing on the functioning of either hemisphere.
And yet, I subscribe to the view most forcefully (and somewhat controversially) expressed by Hayden White, professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz, that the historian and writer of fiction utilize the same basic compositional techniques, albeit in the pursuit of different forms.

The construction of a historical narrative, according to White’s thesis, requires the writer make numerous subjective decisions regarding not merely word choice, but also characterization, dialogue, ordering of events, and so on. Thus the discourse may be as much a product of the historian’s literary talents as his or her fidelity to the record and application of a suitable historical method.

In other words, historians and novelists both write stories—the difference is that the latter gets to make things up while the former has to remain grounded in the evidence.

I’m not complaining, mind you.

Being restricted by my source material is really the only thing that enables me to write. If all bets were off and I had the freedom to write whatever, even violate the laws of physics within the narrative if I wanted to, that bone in my inner ear, the one that heretofore only received and amplified vibrations from another source, would be hard pressed to make any sound on its own.

I once wrote a 25-page historical account of an old backcountry miner in the 1950s where the only source material was a ledger of mining claims, a few newspaper clippings, and the sourdough’s diary, all eleven pages of it. Far from being restricting, the experience proved strangely liberating. I could not step beyond the information in those documents, so I was forced to build the most engaging narrative possible within a limited factual space. Had I been writing a piece of historical fiction, the freedom to invent things would not have been freedom at all. I would have been paralyzed.

Perhaps it’s like haiku. When you’re limited to three lines, with five, seven, and five syllables per respective line, the restriction provides exactly the structure within which creativity, far from being stifled, can actually take form.

But that’s me.

Other writers, including many who have bookmarked this site, likely treasure the freedom inherent to the fictional form. And yet, I’m certain that poets, playwrights, and novelists are similarly bound by facts whether they realize it or not. You can’t, for example, write a short story in which a character rides the F train to the Bronx—it goes only to Queens and Brooklyn—or if you do, there had better be a good reason!

The historical approach appeals to me for another reason. It means most of my interactions are with papers and books, not people. I’m not a misanthrope, really, but I find the process of research so much more pleasant when I can sit quietly in some library or archive and work my way through a box of original documents. Interviewing people in the course of research, which, yes, I’ve done many times, can be such a messy business. Now you’re dealing with personalities and agendas and individual memories that, as we all know, are constructed, conditional, and highly suspect. At least historical documents don’t change over time. They can still lie, of course, but they don’t change the way our memories do. In fact, it’s sort of fun when documents lie and put you in the position of not merely interpreting them but solving a puzzle as well. Small victories for the history nerd, I suppose.

I’m very pleased to be this month’s featured writer. The process of writing interests me as much as the product, and over the next few weeks I will post additional thoughts on researching and writing historical narratives, especially as contrasted with other forms. I’d like to hear what you think, so please, post comments!

Ross Coen is a historian who writes about the social, political, and environmental history of Alaska and the Arctic. He is the author of The Long View: Dispatches On Alaska History from Ester Republic Press and Breaking Ice for Arctic Oil: The Epic Voyage of the SS Manhattan through the Northwest Passage from University of Alaska Press. He lives in Fairbanks.

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