Sometimes you meet a person through her writing, and you just hold your breath and hope she is as incredible in person. I first met Arlitia through her poetry, but as our paths began to cross through the Alaska writing community, I was so happy to learn that she is an incredibly empathetic, generous person, just like her writing. We are so honored that she’s part of Storyknife’s Advisory Council.

A dramaturg in Seattle described Arlitia Jones’ work best when she said “None of her plays are like any of her other plays.” Her imagination is not a room she goes to in her head; rather it’s the whole journey on any path that takes her to a new place. She finds the kernel of story in a women’s running team training to the music of Verdi’s operas, the speechifying of Mother Jones, the legend of Butch Cassidy or the Spirit Photographers of the American Spiritualist Movement in the 19th century.

Jones, who lives in Anchorage, began as a poet. Her volume of poems The Bandsaw Riots won the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Award from Bear Star Press in 2000. In the years that followed, the voices took over and she broadened into a playwright. Dialogue is fast poetry. Jones is a shameless eavesdropper. She’s a completely unreliable narrator, a world class exaggerator and has a memory like a torn screen–these are her best writerly traits and she incorporates them all to get at the truth. Make that: The Truth. Her latest play, Summerland, will receive its world premiere in January 2017 at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. She’s also the founding co-director of TossPot Productions in Anchorage and a member of the Dramatists Guild.

Mother Jones: You’re my guard, are you? Well aren’t I just the fool? Here I thought I was addressing my Maker, the Almighty Lord who’s got the power, if not the authority to keep me locked up in this jail, who has the power to say when I eat and when I shit, when I stand, when I sit, and who I speak to and who I don’t. Used to be before I was put in this jail I had the sun and the moon put up in the sky free for everyone by the King of Heaven and Earth and that’s how I knew when to wake up and when to go to sleep but now I got Lord Shatterprick telling me when to rise and when to fall and, if that don’t sound like someone who thinks he’s God, then I’m nothing but a little ol’ woman who don’t know sick ‘em! But I do know my constitutional rights! (Hellraiser)

This week, I’d like to introduce you to an incredible person that I get to work with on a fairly regular basis. Nancy Lord isn’t just an amazing author, she’s an phenomenal teacher and environmental advocate.

Nancy Lord, a Homer writer of fiction and nonfiction, in the last thirty years has participated in 23 different artist residency programs, some of them multiple times. She has found that she writes as much in a one-month residency as she does in the other eleven months of a year (when “life” gets in the way.) Her writing mostly has an environmental bent, and her books include Fishcamp, Beluga Days, and Early Warming. Most recently she edited the anthology Made of Salmon: Alaska Stories from the Salmon Project. Her novel, The Pteropod Gang, is forthcoming next year. She also teaches creative writing in Homer and in the low-residency M.F.A. program at the University of Alaska Anchorage and science writing in Johns Hopkins’ on-line graduate science writing program. She is a former Alaska Writer Laureate. She loves beachcombing, bird and wildlife watching, and libraries. Her webpage is writernancylord.com.

Where to begin. President and CEO of Southcentral Foundation (SCF), the non-profit health arm of Cook Inlet Region, Inc. Visiting Scientist at Harvard University. MacArthur Award recipient. CIRI shareholder, Old Harbor tribal member, Seldovia tribal member, mother of six, grandmother of twenty-seven or maybe it’s thirty now.

Those are just some of the facts. Here are two of my favorite stories about her.

In the spring of 1988, the Anchorage Daily News ran a story about a retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island in Washington state, called Hedgebrook. I read it and thought, How wonderful for some lucky writer. Katherine read it and called me and said, “You should apply for that.” I said, “Are you crazy? They’d never take me.” She called again the next day and said “Did you apply?” And the next day. And the next day. A week later I said, “Okay, I’ll apply if you promise me you’ll shut up about it when they turn me down.” I applied, was immediately accepted and became one of Hedgebrook’s first residents in October 1988.

In 1993, my first Kate Shugak novel (Fun fact: Shugak is Katherine’s mom’s maiden name) was nominated for an Edgar Award. Katherine ditched her family to come to New York City to be my date at the awards ceremony. Before we went downstairs to the banquet, she gave me this ivory storyknife brooch:

 

I was wearing it when I won.

Hedgebrook, to which Katherine nagged me to apply, was the inspiration for Storyknife, and, with her gift of that brooch, she named it, too (see our logo at the top of the page). It seems only a natural progression of events that she is now a member of our Council of Advisors.

It is my great pleasure and privilege to introduce you to Ernestine Hayes, an important member of our Advisory Board, as well as a fabulous writer! Ernestine spent this spring traveling around the state of Alaska as the first Alaska Reads! author. Her incredible spirit, stamina, and talent as a writer and teacher were in evidence at every stop along the path in dozens of communities.

Ernestine Hayes belongs to the Wolf House of the Kaagwaantaan. Her first book, Blonde Indian, an Alaska Native Memoir, was published in 2006 and was the selection for Alaska Reads 2016. Her essays, articles, short stories, and poetry have been published in Studies in American Indian Literature, Huffington Post, Alaska Quarterly Review, Tipton Review, and other forums, including selection of her poem “The Spoken Forest” for permanent installation at Totem Bight State Park. Her next book, The Tao of Raven, is forthcoming October 2016 by University of Washington Press. A grandmother and great-grandmother, she lives in Juneau.

In her first book, Blonde Indian, Ernestine Hayes powerfully recounted the story of returning to Juneau and to her Tlingit home after many years of wandering. The Tao of Raven takes up the next and, in some ways, less explored question: once the exile returns, then what?

 

The Amazing Erin (I think that’s actually her real name) is even as we speak putting together a Council of Advisors for Storyknife. Allow me to introduce you to one of them.

This is Kathleen Alcalá. She was a co-writer in residence when I was at Hedgebrook the first year it was open (we watched them raise the sixth cottage while we were there), and we have remained friends ever since. She teaches, and she writes magic realism with terrific titles (Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist is my favorite) and fiction as a product of a fascinating family history where she discovered Jewish ancestors fleeing the Inquisition had resettled in Mexico and gone underground so successfully that she grew up thinking they were Protestant.  She spoke about it on Oregon Public Broadcasting.

She learned that the cruel arm of the Spanish Inquisition reached Saltillo, her ancestral home in Northern Mexico. Her family arrived later, but she says this connection grounded her stew of heritage firmly into real history. Combining her Crypto-Jewish background with her also hidden native Opata ancestry gave Alcalá fodder for a rich trio of novels.

Kathleen was one of the first people I told about Storyknife, she was one of the writers to test drive the first cabin (the writers will have a hot plate because of her), and she was the first person I thought of when Erin sold me on the idea of the Council.

She also has a new book coming out in September.

She lives on Bainbridge Island in Washington state and I can tell you she sets a fine table. This book is a result of a years-long investigation of where that food comes from.

In The Deepest Roots, Alcalá walks, wades, picks, pokes, digs, cooks, and cans, getting to know her neighbors on a much deeper level. Wanting to better understand how we once fed ourselves, and acknowledging that there may be a future in which we could need to do so again, she meets those who experienced the Japanese American internment during World War II, learns the unique histories of the blended Filipino and Native American community, the fishing practices of the descendants of Croatian immigrants, and the Suquamish elder who shares with her the food legacy of the island itself.