And She Was by Cindy Dyson

Fine Print: I read the Advance Reading Copy of this book in 2006. It is now in paperback and several people have asked me about it so it was time for an entry.

What I’m reading now: The Accidental by Ali Smith

I picked up And She Was casually and flipped to a random chapter which transported me to the Aleutians where women killed a man with an ulu knife. Soon, I restarted at the beginning and the book was invading my dreams.

At the heart of the intriguing first novel by Cindy Dyson is a flawed young blonde, who like so many before and after her, follows a lover up to Alaska. Her fisherman boyfriend is almost as flawed as she is, however, and her stay in the damp islands will be wrought with problems, including mysteries that surround some her coworkers and the customers at the bar where she slings drinks and avoids rough hands.

Brandy’s story mingles with tales of Aleutian women taking justice into their own hands. The chapters with the women of different generations and circumstances are especially powerful and stayed with me long after I set down the book.

The ending and final chapters don’t quite live up to the rest of the book, and one scene could have been eliminated, but don’t let that scare you from meeting some unique Alaskan characters.

A great vacation read if you can handle a little murder with your margarita.

Hardback: William Morrow (HarperCollins). $24.95. 304 pages.

Paperback: Harper Paperback. $13.95. 304 pages.

UAA Readings

What I'm reading now: Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

In case you haven't heard, University of Alaska Anchorage is hosting a bunch of free readings this week and next, featuring Alaska and Outside writers. Last night I listened to Anne Caston and Judith Barrington. Very enjoyable.

Each reading is 7:45 to 9:15 p.m. at the UAA Recital Hall, Room 150 of the Arts Building. To see schedule, click here.

Away by Amy Bloom

Fine Print: I read this a couple months ago but am moving across town so I decided to write the blog before I gave the book to Title Wave.

What I’m reading now: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (better than all the hype)

Blog update: While I like to think that I publish these things on the whole in relative obscurity it seems more people are randomly finding Alaska Book Report (thanks for the books, Epicenter Press), which is good but also hard because it means I actually have to pay attention to posting things.

Amy Bloom’s Away isn’t so much a book about Alaska as a literary novel about a journey that takes a woman into Alaska. It is about survival and it is about a mother’s love and it is told very well.

At a book reading at Title Wave several months ago, Amy Bloom the author displayed all the qualities that remind me why I’m glad I’m living in Alaska and not on the East Coast with high heels and sophistication and impatience. Almost as if we should apologize for not reading her short stories or the New Yorker often enough, but as she spoke she became just another person that has molded her personality to her environment (or chosen an environment that suits her personality) and when she read a section about the protagonist’s experience on the Telegraph Trail encountering a cabin with children, the author’s personality melted and gave away for the story, a feat which still amazes me as possible since authors put so much of themselves into books.

The story begins in New York but the New York of 1924 and Lillian, the main character, is only days away from eating her own dress out of hunger not in a Manhattan apartment sipping martinis.

The book is so vivid and rich at times that it is strange thinking about Bloom inventing it. When I could, I would put her out of my mind entirely and just focus on the story and words, which was easy enough done because the book is quite absorbing. The Alaska she describes is one I do and do not know and at times the story lessens on her arrival but worth it nonetheless.

Sarah by Kaylene Johnson

Fine Print: I bought this book for my father-in-law.

What I’m reading now: Boating for Beginners by Jeanette Winterson

Yes, our young governor already has a biography. I bought Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down at the Alaska Professional Communicators' luncheon, then at a dinner reception later that night sat across the from the governor herself. It was a surreal experience.

At the luncheon Kaylene Johnson explained how she had ten weeks (ten weeks!) to write this book, which fell into her lap after the publisher and another writer parted ways. Johnson wrote a chapter a week, followed leads she could (even when the sources added, “You know this is all off the record, right?”) and approached the book like several newspaper features strung together. Johnson won APC awards when she wrote for the Senior Voice and her journalistic voice comes out in this book which reads rather like a newspaper article, including interviews from family, friends, and Sarah Palin.

I didn’t meet Palin, more my table was next to her table at the Alaska Bar Association Convention, which I attended because Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the keynote speaker and a member of my book group invited several of us to listen.

Palin, her husband Todd and their newborn Trig slipped in after Ginsburg’s husband introduced the Justice. Palin accidentally sat in Mr. Ginsburg’s seat and there was a moment of confusion in looks and gestures: “Who are you?” “I’m the Justice’s husband.” “I’m governor.” Because neither seemed to recognize the other. Then a handler came swooping in, directing people to proper seats, all the while the diminutive Justice is preparing to enthrall a ballroom full of lawyers and a couple book group members than snuck in. Her speech was more entertaining than watching Mayor Begich and Palin eat salad, but still, an eventful day.

Which is to say nothing about the book except that she is real and in the photos and stories of the book you learn how she is real and how she is our local celebrity at the same time.

Read the first chapter online.

159 pages. Epicenter Press. $19.95.

40 Below Ink

Fine Print: I read about this new publishing company in the Creative Opportunities section of the Anchorage Daily News and decided to investigate.

What I’m reading now: Spiderwick Chronicles, special edition (Okay, I got this book from my cereal box, but it is entertaining and just long enough that I didn’t finish at breakfast.)

40 Below Ink is a brand-spanking-new publishing company based out of Fairbanks. Kirkpatrick Hill, Dermot Cole, Laurel Downing Hill and Carolyn Kremers sit on the advisory board. The independent press wants to challenge the images of Alaska coming out of New York and Hollywood with fiction and non-fiction. They are also actively seeking submissions of illustrators for cover designs.

Publisher Barbara Farris answered several questions via email.

What is your background in writing and publishing?

I’ve been writing my entire life, at work and on my own time.

Why did you decide to create a publishing company?

I saw a need for authentic Alaska stories and decided it was time to fill that need.

What are your goals for 40 Below Ink?

To survive. On a more serious note, we want to publish excellent work by Alaska authors.

Any projects in the works now?

We are currently considering one fiction manuscript and one non-fiction proposal.

What are some tips for writers?

l. Have a group of friends read your manuscript and give you honest feedback.

2. Edit again and again.

3. Read your entire manuscript out loud - that will help you find any stiffness.

4. Prepare your submission package according to standard industry guidelines. I recommend Formatting Your Manuscript.

5. Forget about rejections and just work every day to improve your writing skills.

What kind of submissions would really excite you?

I’ve said we want authentic Alaskan stories, so we’re getting a lot of “Into The Wild” type stories, with a twist. Authentic Alaska doesn’t have to mean backpacking or bears or mountain climbing stories. Excellent writing is our bottom line. We love unique ideas. Take for example the book, “The Spellman Files,” based on a family of private investigators. It is fresh and humorous.

We love good humor in a story.

Anything you’re not looking for?

We’ve recently decided not to accept children’s books for now. This will probably change again in the future.

What are your plans for distribution and sales?

All the typical stuff publishers do. However, there is a trend in big publishing houses for authors to do a lot more marketing than they’ve done in the past. We are following this trend by looking for authors who have the time and energy to put into marketing.

Other resources for writers and readers?

McCoy and Blackburn is an independent press located in Ester, Alaska.

Anything else you’d like to share with people interested in books by Alaskans and about Alaska?

There are more non-fiction books published each year than fiction. If you are new to publishing, you can get a head start by writing a non-fiction book first. After that is published, your chances of getting an agent or publisher for fiction go up. Agents and publishers look for writers with a “platform.” A platform can be a column for the newspaper, being a famous actor, having another popular book out or being an expert on a subject. It is getting harder and harder for writers without a platform to get noticed. Therefore, I suggest people build their own platforms. Start writing for Alaska Magazine, or the Anchorage Daily News, for example, or get that non-fiction fiction written and published.

New Literary Magazine

Fine print: This comes from Mike Burwell, the poet from the previous post.

What I'm reading now: The Innocent Man by John Grisham (for my book group, but better than I feared)

Cirque & Feed Yer Mind

Mike Burwell & Randol Bruns, Editors

A regional literary journal with a strong connection to the North Pacific Rim: Alaska, British Columbia, Yukon Territory, Washington and Oregon—invites submissions of short stories, poems, creative nonfiction, translations, plays, reviews of first books of poems, B & W photographs, drawings, etc. for its inaugural Fall Equinox issue. Cirque, is a more traditional literary journal. Flipped over the journal becomes Feed Yer Mind, a contemporary ‘zine’ (spoken word, slam poetry, and hip-hop).

Submission Deadlines: June 21, 2008 for Fall Equinox 2008 Issue (Published September 2008), December 21, 2008 for Spring Equinox 2009 Issue (Published March 2009). Electronically: submissions@feedyermind.com By Mail: Feed Yer Mind & Cirque, P.O. Box 873325, Wasilla, Alaska 99687. Submission guidelines and inquiries to inquiries@feedyermind.com. Web site:http://feedyermind.com

Also, there is a new Alaska publishing company, 40 Below Ink, which seeks fiction and non-fiction submissions from Alaska writers.

Cartography of Water by Mike Burwell

Fine Print: I have moved across town and all my Alaska books are in some box I have yet to find. Luckily, Mike Burwell sent me a copy of “Cartography of Water.” Yeah! Someone has heard of my blog.

What I’m reading now: Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose

For a portrait of pain, one might find Alaska an ideal setting. The high rate of suicide would not surprise all those I left in Southern California, who only know of cold and darkness in this northern place, but the careful poet eye and heart finds more, finds all the metaphors and questions about loss that they need, and finds beauty in the survival, in the green shoots of spring, in “bugs ripening” and a broken branch beside the trail.

“Cartography of Water” by Mike Burwell and published by a new press created by poet Anne Coray spans several decades of writing and includes poems previously featured in his chapbooks. The subject matter ranges from the poet’s arrival in Alaska to his complicated relationship with his son. Burwell received his MFA in poetry from University of Alaska Anchorage. He has been a guide and climber in the Alaska Range and Wrangell-St. Elias and teaches poetry workshops at UAA. He also writes environmental impact statements for the U.S. Department of Interior, researches shipwrecks and studies anthropology.

This book is poetry you can read on your lunch break with coworkers chatting around you and trying not to spill their cup of soup on your head, but be careful because you will soon tune out their conversations about the amount of sugar in certain drinks and the latest actions of the pope. You may forget you are under halogen lights altogether and breathe slowly, as if you were sipping fresh brewed tea, while the poem draws you in and pries you open.

The poems are full of Alaska details that miss the tour guides—Quonset hut, tangerines that arrive on frosted crates. Burwell captures experiences universal to many Alaskans (“April, and still / no sign of spring”) and takes the “wet winter road” to a sadness battling all humanity. We also hear about the more scenic Alaska of bears, birches and borealis, though even then there might be an unexpected insight. After a climb, he notes “All that work / and no epiphany, no transformation.”

A calculated pace creates elegant verses and stanzas. Sometimes the careful pauses make the rhythm so appealing that the words themselves and their collective meaning are almost, almost secondary. When the precision lapses (as it rarely does), it makes the roughness all the more apparent. Some of the poems are lists that don’t intrigue or capture me, but that’s the beauty of poetry books—Skip that one, read others three times in a row.

“Cartography of Water” comes with an audio CD which includes a discussion with Burwell and Coray and reading of seven poems. The interview brings up his past, son, the title and writing poetry. It is a nice recap of the book and gives new insights into the poems. You can attend a short reading in your comfy pants and blow your nose all you want without disturbing anybody.

Here is a sample of the phrases that reminded me why I love poetry so much and how it is so enriching to enjoy the landscape of language and images:

“All day / I knew the spruce were bigger / than my only good thought” (The Right Place in Oregon)

“perfect and alert darkness” (Morning Prayer to Water)

“I touch the cool waist / of the planet” (Dream Island)

“In June with the sun coming down like a bronze mallet” (Summer on the Out Island)

“We sat with men so serious with drink / they made women enter through separate doors” (The Lake at Northway)

“This is the world / I need, each day, / to plunge into” (In the Middle of Winter / the Water Taxi Leaves the Dock at Jakolof Bay)

“Without medicine, your mind can’t hold / the world for long, a scar redraping itself” (Picture at Swan Lake)

Birds I looked up in Sibley’s: merganser and yellowlegs

Side note 1: The Anchorage Daily News asked me, as an arts reviewer, to write what I liked and disliked about arts in 2007 and what I was looking forward to in 2008. For my dislike, I wrote that I disliked that the Daily News reduced then eliminated the book section. They edited that sentence out.

Side note 2: I have Alaska Book Report bookmarks. Soon to be the must-have reading accessory.

Side note 3 (I really need to visit this blog more often so that I don’t need to bulge a post with everything): Radical Arts for Women is sponsoring a short story contest open to all women in Alaska. For more information, visit www.radicalartsforwomen.org. Deadline is Feb. 1.

(NorthShore Press, $16, 78 pages)