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)

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Trout by Teri Sloat

Fine print: I found this (Pacific Northwest) book at random in the Alaska section of Title Wave.

What I’m reading now: "Bless Me, Ultima" by Rudolfo Anaya

I’m new to the children book thing. Or, rather, I’m coming back to them after devouring them as a child when we checked out as many books from the library as we could carry. (The rule still applies, though sometimes I cheat with the convenient baskets Loussac provides.)

What I do know is that it is very easy to get lost among all those tiny book spines so when I find a book I like, I want to keep getting it as presents until I’ve covered my baby shopping list.

“There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Trout” by Teri Sloat is one such book. I’ve already bought two copies and if Title Wave had had another the other day, I would have gotten a third because one of the women in my knitting group just had her baby and she’d have fun reading this story to little Trixie.

The story is like the song we all know about the lady and the fly, and it is just as catchy. Maybe more so. Only it has Alaska-Pacific Northwest animals like trout, salmon, otter and whales. The illustrations by Reynold Ruffins are bright and fun and you can watch the lady’s belly grow and grow until she swallows the ocean. “What a commotion! She swallowed the ocean!”

Why aren’t more adult books this silly and fun?

32 pages, Owlet Paperbacks (2002), Ages 4-8

Just Breathe Normally by Peggy Shumaker

Fine print: I bought this book expecting to like it because I like “Blaze.”

What I’m reading now: “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” by Ann Brashares.

One moment you’re enjoying Alaska life with your husband, biking on a path safely separated from motor traffic. Next moment a kid on an ATV barrels around a blind corner and almost kills you both. You’re so injured you don’t even remember the accident and must listen over and over again while your husband tells you how strangers held your head and helped save your life.

One moment you’re a sixteen year old getting the younger siblings ready for school. Next moment, your mom is dead and your dad’s crazy second wife won’t let you eat an orange from a bowl on the kitchen counter.

Like Heather Lende, another beloved Alaska writer who got struck while riding her bicycle, Peggy Shumaker, a professor emerita of English at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, faced a grueling recovery after an accident. Lucky for us readers, her memoir “Just Breathe Normally” keeps the grueling moments to snapshots and drifts between recovery and prose poems about Shumaker’s family history. Like with her book of sensual poems “Blaze,” this “poemoir” is full of lyrical gems, humorous surprises, poignant insights and also pain.

The snippets look unflinchingly (and sometimes flinchingly) at childhood, the present and all that in between. The portrait of her dysfunctional family is unsentimental toward her parents yet still tender: These are my parents, this is what I got and how we dealt, I’ll tell you how I judged them then and now let you judge. Not bitter. Well, not too much.

The nonlinear telling means that some scenes a reader might expect aren’t included, but the moments we do get often inform how the more standard-fare incidents would happen. A couple of times, I’m a little lost and don’t know how we got from there to here, but mostly the shifts in time and place are nice and clear and understandable and usually the vignettes can stand alone enough or are beautiful enough to make up from any confusion.

This could have been a memoir that dwelled on snippy medical staff, unfairness (like her not being able to drive while the boy who hit her can) or growing up too soon, but it is all told poetically and with such lyrical language that it rises above each of these things (and also sits on my nightstand for a week while I indulge in page-turning fiction). The beauty of the language and the wisdom in the vignettes make up for the fact that “Just Breathe Normally” brings up a lot of memories about time spent in hospitals and my grandparents’ death, moments I don’t want to revisit.

The picture on the book flap is a stock author photo from before the accident so you missed what I and others saw at a reading at Title Wave in September. Her eye was still healing and partially closed – the slight disfiguration made her story so much more real. This isn’t fiction, this isn’t an academic musing on pain, this is something that changed her being in ways we can see, as well as read about.

University of Nebraska Press, $24.95, 267 pages. Part of the American Lives Series edited by Tobias Wolff

The Spanish Bow by Andromeda Romano-Lax – Review extras

Fine Print: I reviewed this novel for the Anchorage Daily News. Below is what didn’t make the article.

What I’m reading now: Still Water Saints by Alex Espinoza

Wisdom in book by (real life) Varian Fry, an American who helped artists reach safety during World War II: “You can’t take away people’s idea of themselves. Not at the last minute, when they’re facing a dangerous situation. It makes them less stable, less predictable. Everyone clings to some silly thing or other. Everyone seems to have one thing they can’t live without.”

What I don’t mention in my review is that I didn’t really want to like this book so it took me by surprise that I couldn’t put it down after I read the first line in the parking lot. It was a sunny day and the car was heating up, but I opened the door rather than go inside and finish my errands. Why didn’t I want to like this book? Nothing against Andromeda, who I’ve seen a couple times at readings and seems pleasant enough. Her book on renting public use cabins is my bible for cabin adventures and I have another book of hers on my shelf. No, it was more pure jealousy. I applied for a grant she got from the Rasmuson Foundation when I was writing my novel and needed a computer in order to work. I thought she had books already out so I deserved the money more than her. So petty, so true! I think some of the characters in her novel would appreciate it.

But I did like the novel, though the middle was a bit rough getting through and I wanted the narrator Feliu Delargo to be more political and emotional from the get go. Even death does not rattle him until it is piling up to his ears and even then he is too calm. He’s Spanish! Where’s the passion? It all goes to the cello, which we could see more of. And he could have some small victories.

I also liked that his hometown is named Campo Seco—dry countryside. And then there is the scene when the peasants take the bull. You’ll see what I mean. Ayayay.

Here are some more quotes that I want to share (all out of order and without permission from the publisher):

“ ‘Feliu,’ he (Justo) said. ‘We’re living in a time of messages, not art.’ ”

“The beast over there doesn’t know what’s coming. But we do. I recommend the middle road.”
“But you’re not middle—middle is moderate, Loyalist, prodemocracy…"
“No. The other middle."
“Which is?”
“Survival.”

“Duarte’s cello was a glossy caramel color, and the sound it produced was as warm and rich as the instrument looked. It sounded like a human voice. Not the high warble of an opera singer or anyone else singing for the stage, but rather the soothing voice of a fisherman singing as he mended his nets, or of a mother singing lullabies to her sleepy children.
“When the cellist reached a crescendo on one of the lower strings, I felt a strange sensation, both pleasurable and disturbing. It reminded me of holding a cat, feeling its purrs resonate with me. Listening, I felt the sensation strengthen, as if the cello’s quivering vibrato was actually boring into me, opening a small hole in my chest, creating a physical pain as real as any wound. I was afraid of what might fall out of that hole, and yet I didn’t want it to close, either.”

“After the cello came, my world both shrank and brightened, like a piece of wood burning down into red-hot coal. I woke, for the first time in my entire life, knowing exactly what I needed to do.”

Al-Cerraz: “I still think that motocars are the way of the future. It fascinates me. Is there any more important question, really, than what will last?”

Harcout, Inc. 560 pages. $25.

Read what the New York Times printed.