Atlin Arts and Music Festival

A few weeks back I had the chance to spend a hot week up in the Yukon and Northern B.C. For years I’ve been hearing from folks in Juneau about the Atlin Arts and Music Festival, but only now, a month from leaving Southeast Alaska for a few years, we got the chance to [...]

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My Inner Mongol

NPR will be turning to best-selling Chinese authors this week to gain some insight into the people’s perspectives on the People’s Republic during its controversial 60 years of rule. Today’s story, the first of the three parts, focuses on Jian Rong’s, Wolf Totem which I happened to pick up not too long ago, fascinated [...]

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Blood, Tin, Straw by Sharon Olds

The title alone was enough to intrigue me, those three words, in combination, so elemental, so earthbound and fragrant.  I think of words written with a piece of straw dipped in an open wound and scratched out across some rusted corregated roofing beside a broken down barn.  This collection was a lot different from, [...]

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In the Stacks: New Poetry Review

In celebration of National Poetry Month, I’m cross-posting this column I wrote for the Juneau Empire which highlights new works of poetry to the Juneau Public Library collection.   Head over to JPL Podcasts to hear an audio sampling of some master poets at work.

Behind My Eyes by Li-Young Lee. Lee is the Keynote Speaker at [...]

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