Welcome January!

Welcome to January – new Board Members and Friends of Storyknife!

Storyknife is welcoming in the new year with three new board members! We are excited for new ideas and leadership of these three amazing people:

Esther Cetina

Born in Anchorage, Alaska, Esther Cetina is of Alutiiq and Filipino descent. Her mother is from Old Harbor, AK and father from Oregon. She is married to an Army Veteran and together they have 4 children, three boys and one girl. With over two decades in the non-profit healthcare sector, she has seamlessly transitioned through various roles, including serving as the Director of External Affairs at Old Harbor Native Corporation and the Administrator of Medical Services at Southcentral Foundation and currently is the CEO & Founder of Rising Solutions, consulting firm. As a consultant, she works with her clients in partnership, organizing comprehensive problem-solving strategies and developing strategic plans, ensuring alignment of business objectives, opportunities and driving sustainable growth.

Esther holds a Master of Science in Counseling Psychology from Alaska Pacific University, complemented by a bachelor’s in human services and Psychological Studies. Her dedication and impact were emphasized in 2017 when she was honored with receiving the “Top 40 Under 40” award from the Alaska Journal of Commerce. Adding to her accomplishments, she co-facilitated the “Charting the Future of Primary Care” training at Harvard Medical School.

Claudia Mauro

Claudia Mauro is a poet, science writer, and the founding director of the nonprofit literary publisher, Whit Press. She is the recipient of two Seattle Arts Commission CityArtist Grants, and a Wyoming Arts Council Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry.

She is a voting member of the National Book Critics Circle, PENAmerica, and The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. An alumna and former board member of Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat, she has also served as a judge for the Lambda Book Awards.

Her books include; Stealing Fire and Reading the River (Whiteaker Press 1999, 2004), both Lambda Book Award finalists. She was a presenter at the inaugural TEDxSeattle speaking on the importance of independent media. Claudia also has extensive experience as a backcountry pilot in Alaska and was employed for over 20 years as a field science tech for the Alaska Dept. of Fish & Game, and for NOAA as Marine Survey Tech crew on their research and survey vessels.

Dawn Peppinger

Dawn Peppinger is a born and raised Alaskan Native. She retired from the US Postal Service, Alaska District, after a 38 year career starting as a clerk then promoted to various management positions within the Marketing and Operations Departments.  Now retired, she is involved in volunteer work, traveling, beading, sewing and discovering new craft hobbies. She enjoys reading many genres and appreciates the opportunity to support Storyknife’s vision.  

We’d like to take this moment to reflect back on the amazing generosity of the folks who supported the writers of Storyknife last year. We’ve updated the Friends of Storyknife page to honor those who donated at all levels. Honestly, as I read over the list, I am overcome by the connections on it – alums of Storyknife and their friends and families; longtime donors who’ve now become like family to us; fans of Dana and her work; donors who have been introduced to Storyknife by other supporters; and the ripples that go out every time a writer crosses the threshold back home and tells about their time at Storyknife overlooking Cook Inlet.

You may be tired of hearing me say it, but thank you, thank you, thank you. None of this is possible without the generosity of the donors.

Finally, today has been set aside to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his work in the world. Rather than posting a quote from the large archive of Dr. King’s speeches and essays, we suggest that each of us consider the concrete actions that we can take, especially in this time, to evoke the mission of the King Center: to create a just, humane, equitable and peaceful world by applying Dr. King’s nonviolent philosophy and methodology. Let us also remember the work of Coretta Scott King, an author, activist, and civil rights leader who was truly a force in her own right. What can each of us do today and going forward to carry on Dr. King and Coretta Scott King’s legacy?

Sincerely,
Erin
Executive Director of Storyknife

Welcoming the Light

In Alaska, we are particularly attuned the light. Or, this time of year, to the darkness. And so we greet the winter solstice and the return of the light with upraised faces and hope.

2023 has been a difficult one in the world, for nations, communities, and individuals. There have been moments of joy and happiness, and moments of devastation and horror. As part of the holiday season, those of us at Storyknife want to, for this time, focus on gratitude and hope for 2024.

Here are some of the things we are grateful for:

  • 52 women writers who spent a total 1,176 days in residence at Storyknife in 2023. They wrote, napped, planned, and gathered to form a community.
  • 224 individuals this year donated to support the writers of Storyknife. Thank you for believing that women writers deserve the time and space to devote to their craft!
  • Because of your generosity, Storyknife raised enough funds to meet the $50,000 challenge grant! This will be an incredible boost to the beginning of 2024. There is no way to overstate our gratitude to the amazingly generous supporter who offered the challenge and the wonderful people who stepped up to help meet it.
  • All of warmth, kindness, enthusiasm, and humor of the writers that were in residence in 2023.
  • All of the excitement and pure joy of the writers who are scheduled to be in residence at Storyknife in 2024.
  • The entire community of Storyknife. Storyknife is a new organization. Sometimes Dana and I can’t believe that it’s only been three years that writers have been in the Storyknife cabins and meeting around the table in Eva’s House for dinner. In the past eight years, the Storyknife community has built six cabins and the main house, nurtured 128 writers, and helped create a solid foundation upon which the organization can grow into the future.

May the new year bring peace and light and room for stories that heal and generate hope.

Sincerely,
Erin
Executive Director of Storyknife

Books Make Great Gifts!

It’s winter at Storyknife, a time for celebrating and snuggling up on the sofa to read a good book. And if you need some last minute gifts, might we suggest any of these amazing titles by Storyknife alums?

American Bastard: Jan Beatty’s lyrical inquiry into the experience of being a bastard in America, traveling across literal continents—and continents of desire as Beatty finds her birthfather, a Canadian hockey player who’s won three Stanley Cups—and her birthmother, a working-class woman from Pittsburgh.

Elegiac and powerful, Ancient Light by Kimberly Blaeser uses lyric, narrative, and concrete poems to give voice to some of the most pressing ecological and social issues of our time.

An Eye in Each Square by Lauren Camp is part social critique, part imaginative biography of enigmatic painter Agnes Martin, and part treatise on the multiplicities of the natural world.

Curating the House of Nostalgia: Kersten Christianson’s collection of poems grounded in far-flung northern settings that weave along stretches of pitted road, open spaces, and the interior landscapes of the unforeseen circumstances of bereavement and moving forward. 

Rainbow, Rainbow by Lydi Conklin: In this exuberant, prize-winning collection, queer characters seek love and connection in hilarious and heart-rending stories that reflect the complexity of our current moment. 

Moon and the Mars by Kia Corthron: A young girl of African American and Irish descent navigates life in the impoverished yet ever-vibrant Five Points district of New York City, while the nation marches to Civil War.

Injustice, humor, and resilience collide in Stephanie Cotsirilos’ first novella, My Xanthi — when a Greek immigrant woman’s wartime secrets teach a criminal defense lawyer about love’s triumph over inhumanity.

Paradise is Jagged: In this extraordinary collection, Ann Fisher-Wirth looks levelly at mortality, grief, and memory, and reckons with what it is to be urgently alive, bringing her incisive nuance to subjects ranging from the loss of a beloved sister to Mississippi’s Parchman Penitentiary to our imperiled natural world to the comforts of marital love. – Catherine Pierce, Mississippi Poet Laureate

Best Be Prepared by Gwen Florio: A coastal town dispute over a tsunami-evacuation tower that could block lucrative new development has deadly consequences in this environmental thriller.

Ghost Forest: Buoyant, heartbreaking, and unexpectedly funny, Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung weaves memory and oral history to paint a moving portrait of a Chinese Canadian “astronaut” family.

Autumn Song: Essays on Absence by Patrice Gopo invites readers into one Black woman’s experiences encountering absences, seeing beyond the empty spaces, and grasping at the glimmers of glory that remain.

Set in Hilo, Hawai’i, Jasmin Iolani Hakes’ Hula is a sweeping saga of tradition, culture, family, history, and connection that unfolds through the lives of three generations of women—a tale of mothers and daughters, dance and destiny.

Nocturne: Set in a technicolour world of dreams, ghosts, classical music, and Key West storms, Jodie Hollander’s compelling second collection charts the emotional journey of the daughter of a professional classical pianist.

Where My Umbilical Is Buried: Amanda Galvan Huynh weaves a code-switching tapestry that unabashedly confronts, complicates, and celebrates the lineages and experiences. These are intricate poems that manifest healing and dreaming for the self and future ancestors. — Anthony Cody, author of Borderland Apocrypha

 Slow Scrape by Tanya Lukin Linklater: Drawing on documentary poetics, concrete-based installations, event scores, and other texts, this book cites memory, Cree and Alutiiq languages, and embodiment as modes of relational being and knowing.

回 / Returnby Emily Lee Luan: Through the recurrence of memory, myth, and grief, 回 / Return captures the elusory language of sorrow and solitude that binds Taiwanese diasporic experience.

Ocean Mother: Using poetry to weave together striking narratives of family, environment, Indigenous identity, decolonial love, and her Chamoru culture, Arielle Taitano Lowe goes on a journey inward and overseas as she explores the relationships between culture and identity, colonialism and inherited trauma, sense of place and generational healing.

Love and Other Rituals: Selected Stories: At home in the Philippines, and abroad in the US and New Zealand, the characters of Monica Macansantos’s debut story collection search for a sense of belonging and understanding, and contemplate the tentative nature of home.

Five Reports of Fugitive Dust: In Mary Mercier’s debut full-length poetry collection, she merges her scientific background and poetic skills to share with us how she experiences nature—as a part of it, rather than a mere onlooker. 

Brace for Impact is Gabe Montesanti’s memoir about joining an elite roller derby team, healing from family dysfunction, and embracing a queer identity. 

Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry – Entries by Ruby Hansen Murray and Keetje Kuipers. Blending art and science to celebrate this diverse yet interconnected region through natural and cultural histories, poetry, and illustrations.

In membery, Preeti Kaur Rajpal writes the memory of her family’s expulsion from their homeland during Historical India’s Partition, threaded with her experiences as a Sikh American woman during the post-9/11 era.

The Death of a Jaybird: Essays on Mothers and Daughters and the Things They Leave Behind, Jodi M. Savage’s deeply empathetic and often humorous collection of essays explores the author’s ever-changing relationships with her grandmother and mother, through sickness and health, as they experience the joys and challenges of Black American womanhood.

Artie and the Wolf Moon:Olivia Stephen’s middle-grade graphic novel follows 8th grader Artie Irvin as she uncovers her hidden werewolf heritage.

Storyknife Writers Retreat’s mission is to provide women with the time and space to devote to their writing. Thank you to all of the people who make Storyknife possible. We so appreciate our community and its dedication to the mission.

Let me tell you about the impact of supporting women writers

I bet that you read To Kill a Mockingbird when you were in school. For a long time, it seemed like it was on every required reading list. The novel made a huge impact on many students, leading to discussions about empathy and equality. And even though the book has come under warranted scrutiny recently for approaching racism from one direction, the white outsider, it certainly has provided a jumping off point for teachers and students to discuss the interconnectedness of race, class, and gender. 

If it were not for the generosity of two friends, Harper Lee would never have had the opportunity to write it. Michael and Joy Brown gave Lee an incredible holiday present in 1956, a year’s salary so that she could take off from her day gig as an airline ticket agent.

To Kill a Mockingbird was so successful that Lee was able to repay the Browns for their gift. But in all honesty, the gift was more than money. It was an emblem of support – that Harper Lee had something to say to the world and that it was worth giving her the time and space to write it.

And so #GivingTuesday has arrived with the barrage of emails from important organizations that you’ve supported. We’re sliding in here as well to say that your support of Storyknife makes it possible for new stories to come into the world that change our culture. A book like Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes are Watching God, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, or Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.

To the many people who have already supported the women writers of Storyknife, thank you. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for validating women writers, for believing that the work they do is important for them individually and for our culture as a whole.

May your December be filled with time for you to read and reflect. We hope that the work of many women writers makes its way into your hands and hearts.

Take care,
Erin
Executive Director of Storyknife

Support Women Writers – Support Storyknife

The Amazing Storyknife Writers

Please celebrate these amazing writers in residence at Storyknife in 2023

The 2023 residency season has wrapped up. The cabins are now dreaming of the writers who will create in them next year.

But the office of Storyknife is not closed. Oh no, we are already planning for 2024. Applicants who received invitations are responding. End of the season maintenance is being planned. And end of the year fundraising is shifting into high gear.

It takes a considerable amount of work to raise the money so that the women writers of Storyknife have to pay nothing for their stay. In 2024, we have eleven travel scholarships, and seven fellowships (with three more in the works).

The true heroes of Storyknife are not Dana, our founder, and the staff. The true heroes are the donors who help put food on the table, keep the lights on, pay for maintenance of the buildings. We are in the midst of a $50,000 challenge match. That means if you support Storyknife in your end of year giving, your donation will go twice as far.

You also have the opportunity to give just a bit each month. Recurring donations are so helpful, and spreading your support out over the year helps both Storyknife and the donor.

So, please consider donating to support the women writers of Storyknife. We know that you believe that women need the time and space to devote to their work. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.

Take care,
Erin
Executive Director of Storyknife

Support Women Writers – Support Storyknife

2024 Adjudication Complete

Let me tell you about the blessing. I sent letters to the women writers who have been selected to be in residence in 2024. It’s joyous because I know that Storyknife will be a place that those writers will feel cherished and productive.

At the same time, I sent out letters to the women writers who are on the waitlist. Even though it’s not the best news that they could receive, there is still a chance that they’ll spend some time at Storyknife next year. We always have writers from the waitlist who get an opportunity because someone else couldn’t accept the offer for a residency. So there is still hope.

Let me tell you about the sadness. I sent letters to the women writers who were not selected for either a residency or on the waitlist. We had 985 women apply this year for a 2024 residency. You now get a sense of the number of letters that went out with disappointing news. And here’s the worst part – these women writers need the time and space to devote to their writing. They have worthy stories to tell. Their voices are important. We just don’t have space for everyone who applies.

Each year I feel a great sadness for these women who receive letters with discouraging news. I’ve been one of them, advocating for myself and not receiving an opportunity. Please know that I’m sending up my love, my care, my hope that every woman writer keeps putting her words on the page. That everyone who applies to Storyknife knows that their stories are the way we change the world. And that women’s stories are needed now more than ever.

~Erin Hollowell

Executive Director of Storyknife

The closing of the season

October is passing so quickly. It’s hard to imagine that right now in the Storyknife cabins are the last of the 2023 writers, working through our first snowfall, watching for moose, marveling at the amazing autumn sunsets. 

Meanwhile, our incredible team of adjudicators are carefully attending to the 985 applications Storyknife received for the 2024 season. Each applicant’s hopes honored and acknowledged. Notifications will go out in November for the 2024 residency season.

We are still asking that you include the women writers of Storyknife in your year-end giving. We’re at 60% of our $50,000 challenge grant goal. Thank you so much to the amazing donors who’ve been so generous! Please remember that your support goes directly to fostering the women writers of Storyknife, giving them the time and the space to devote to their writing. This is a revolutionary gift which will lead to more diverse stories in the world.

And speaking of gifts, Tuesday, October 17, at 7pm Alaska Time, you can listen to some of this month’s incredible writers in residence read from their work. Live from Storyknife, an event co-sponsored by 49 Writers, will be available via Zoom on this page. And if you miss it, or want to see any of the previous months’ amazing writers, check out the recorded events here.

Thank you for being part of the Storyknife family legacy.
Sincerely,
Erin Coughlin Hollowell
Executive Director of Storyknife

Click here to donate through our secure servers

If you prefer to donate via check, please make one out to Storyknife Writers Retreat and send to PO Box 75, Homer, AK 99603. Thank you!

Join us in changing women writers’ lives

Last Thursday, as I sat at my desk at Storyknife, I heard a magnificent cacophony of sandhill cranes flying overhead. Maura, Storyknife’s chef, and I rushed out to watch hundreds of cranes start their yearly southward migration over Storyknife. And then we noticed that the writers were outside as well, faces tilted to the sky, laughing at the sheer spectacle of all those cranes. All I could think was I can’t wait to see those cranes in the writing that will come from this.

Because that’s the way it is at Storyknife, every part of the experience informs the writers here. Here’s how Keetje Kuipers, April 2023 writer in residence put it, “Gazing out the window of my Storyknife cabin, I felt not just a clarity of scenery—the glowing blue sky, the sharp peaks across the inlet—but a clarity of purpose. In such a setting where everything you need as both an artist and a human is provided, it is possible to be single-minded in the best sense. I wrote and revised more in those days of residence than I have been able to in the last year. My book is closer to being complete, and I am closer to understanding how to finish it.”

The Storyknife experience is transformative. To the forty-six people who answered the call to donate last week, you gave the women writers of Storyknife almost $10,000, putting us one-fifth of the way toward the challenge grant goal – Thank You!!! When we reach our $50,000 goal, your gifts will be doubled.

And speaking of gifts, Tuesday, September 19, at 7pm Alaska Time, you can listen to some of this month’s incredible writers in residence read from their work. Live from Storyknife, an event co-sponsored by 49 Writers, will be available via Zoom on this page. And if you miss it, or want to see any of the previous months’ amazing writers, check out the recorded events here.

Thank you for being part of the Storyknife family legacy.

Sincerely,
Erin Hollowell
Executive Director

Click here to donate through our secure server

If you prefer to donate via check, please make one out to Storyknife Writers Retreat and send to PO Box 75, Homer, AK 99603. Thank you!

Join us in changing women writers’ lives

The weather has changed. The wind is cold and sunset is coming earlier. The moody storms of autumn have moved in with the September writers in residence.

This time of year we turn our thoughts to fundraising. Last year we made our fundraising goal of $175,000 with the help of 421 beautiful donors. This year, 274 donors have stepped forward, but we still need to raise $66,000 to meet Storyknife’s fundraising goal for 2023. The goal is higher this year and I would like to explain the increase:

  • Inflation has hit Storyknife just as hard as everyone else. Utilities, maintenance, and food costs have radically increased.
  • We now have three full-time employees. Storyknife’s organization is growing and we need sustainable staffing. Three full-time employees during the residency season assures that the weight of providing services to the writers in residence isn’t too much for one or two people.
  • In our third year of providing seven full months of residencies, we are finally able to make a budget that truly reflects the costs of running a large facility and providing services for over 52 writers each year.

The past few years, we’ve had a generous donor who has offered a challenge match for every dollar raised up to $50,000. This generosity has made it possible for Storyknife to grow our community of supporters. We are proud to announce that the same, very generous, donor has issued a challenge grant for the end of this year – they will match every dollar donated between now and December 31st up to a cap of $50,000. But we need meet that cap to trigger the match.

This generous match allows us to do the following:

  • get a jumpstart on support for 2024 residencies.
  • provide many more travel scholarships for the 2024 residency season.
  • continue to support more than fifty women writers each year by providing them with the time and space to devote to their craft.
  • continue to support those writers with the beauty, nourishment, and devotion that they and their writing deserve.

Ove the next few months, I’ll be sharing their voices with you so that you know exactly how much your donation means to the women writers of Storyknife.

Please consider an end-of-the-year donation to help Storyknife meet the challenge grant and continue to support women writers as they produce their important and culture-shifting work.

Thank you for being part of the Storyknife family legacy.

Sincerely,
Erin Hollowell
Executive Director

Click here to donate through our secure server

If you prefer to donate via check, please make one out to Storyknife Writers Retreat and send to PO Box 75, Homer, AK 99603. Thank you!