In Alaska, winter is not an easy season. There is snow and ice and darkness. But this is also the season of gratitude. Whenever I get mired in the difficulties of budgeting, facility maintenance, the onslaught of emails, I remember the gifts that are the women writers of Storyknife, our founder Dana Stabenow, the incredible Storyknife Board, and the delightful Maura Brenin and Katie Emerick who work so hard to make every writer’s time at Storyknife comfortable and productive.

I remember the words of 2024 alum Emi Macuaga, “Storyknife is an essential residency for women-identifying writers. With passion and great care, founder Dana Stabenow, Executive Director Erin Hollowell, and their incomparable team make this place truly special, infusing it with a warmth and intimacy that provides the safety and security crucial to the hard work of creating honest, truthful, powerful art.”

It takes a mighty team. Part of Storyknife’s mighty team is our Advisory Committee, a group to whom I turn with questions and concerns, who give me feedback and great advice. I’d like to take this moment to introduce you to two new members.

Lisa Page is co-editor of We Wear The Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America,  (Beacon Press).  Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, LitHub Weekly, The Crisis, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, Playboy, the Washington Post Book World, Playbill, The Chicago Tribune, and other publications and anthologies, including Skin Deep: Black Women & White Women Write About Race (Doubleday). She has worked as a freelance writer, editor, speechwriter, lyricist, instructor, actor and  literary consultant. She created the Playboy College Fiction Contest. She is the former President of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. Lisa Page is assistant professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at the George Washington University where she previously served as Interim Director of Africana Studies. She is also a resident faculty member of the Yale Writers’ Workshop. She lives outside Washington, DC.

Christina Chiu is the Grand Prize Winner of the James Alan McPherson Award for her novel Beauty, which was also selected as a Kirkus Best Books of 2020. She is also author of Troublemaker and Other Saints, a nominee for the Stephen Crane First Fiction Award and winner of the Asian American Literary Award. Chiu’s stories appear in journals and anthologies including Tin House, The New Guard, Washington Square, The MacGuffin, Charlie Chan is Dead 2, Not the Only One, Washington Square, Down by the River; she has won literary prizes from Playboy, New Stone Circle, El Dorado Writers’ Guild, The APA Journal: “In the Heart.” Her story “Waves” was nominated for the Pushcart. Her essays appear in Electric Literature, Next Tribe, and Publisher’s Weekly. She received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University where she was the recipient of the Claire Woolrich Scholarship. Chiu has also received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Lannan Foundation and is the recipient of the Van Lier Fellowship. 

Finally, an update and a plea. There is but a little time left for Storyknife to meet the Challenge Match that a wonderful cohort of donors has offered. We’ve $19,000 to go to meet our $50,000 target. The good news is that $31,000 has been raised, and for that we are so grateful. The more challenging news is that we have exactly five weeks to cross that finish line. Please consider donating whatever you can to support the women writers of Storyknife. And to those who already have donated, gratitude is more than word, it’s what fills our hearts.

May your winter holidays be filled with light and laughter,
Erin