In Douglas Burdens’s The Battle of Giants there are two men who have laid their money down on killing a bull moose with no less than a 72 inch rack. With this betting they have made subsistence hunting into a game that seems to be a waste of this particular […]

I believe that all the genres of Alaska literature have a connection to the landscape. I think that it is impossible to write of Alaska without including the landscape and wilderness. Even in our largest cities of Anchorage and Fairbanks it is there looming in our backyards tempting us. The […]

  Initially, I was not looking forward to this class or the content. I remember my Alaska Studies lessons with discontent, and used to find I wasn’t interested in the literature or history that my state had. However, upon discovering the absolutely engaging content in the assigned book, I was […]

Alaskan literature differs from other literature in one very important way: it is not composed by  only those native to Alaska. Over the course of this semester, I noticed that while there was  a large amount of literature written by those who live in Alaska, there was an equal amount […]

  Alaska Literature tells stories in many different formats.   Poems about Alaska paint pictures as they use descriptive language to share a story.   “The grey shepherds of the tundra pass like islands of smoke,’ writes John Haines in The Field of Caribou.   The beautiful language of his […]

Winter, spring, summer, and fall.   These are the four seasons we know.   I’ve never heard of another season of any sort in any other culture.   Has anyone else?   Or can we all find common ground in the seasons, at least in the more extreme parts of […]

Literature of Alaska and Yukon Territories is much different from the literature that can be found in other places across the world. Writers have more landscape to be written about, there are mountains, rivers, lakes, flowers, natural disasters, and even activities that are much different from those found in other […]

Although we recognize the four seasons in Alaska, it is different by each person, culture, location, and setting.   Sometimes people will say that there is spring/summer and fall/winter.   This is because our summer season is so short, and winter feels so long.   In my location and culture […]

“The Scene and the People’ by Ronald Johnson is based on more present day Alaska or Anchorage than the writing we read beforehand. He writes about walking 4th and 5th avenue and people on the streets working together to make enough money to buy a bottle of alcohol.   Ronald […]

As much as I can be an avid reader, I have to be honest, I have read next to zero Alaskan authors’ works; John Haines and Jon Krakauer being two I can remember. What I loved best of all is simply the exposure to the plethora there is of Alaskan […]

Seasons in Alaska are different than most other places. The geography is so varied throughout the state that seasons can be vastly different from one city to the next. In the dead of winter, for example, Fairbanks reaches staggering low temperatures (-50). A few hours away, the Anchorage are only […]

Seasons in Alaska are different than seasons in other places.   Our winter is anything but typical.   Some years we are buried in record amounts of snow and some years we have rain in December.   Our winter does always mean lots of darkness as the sun barely peaks […]

What sums up most about this semester of literature of Alaska are that most of the writing is centered in the great outdoors as the center piece, and secondly, the great people that have made history in the north. The writings may be about the writer themselves. It may be […]

Our seasons in Alaska are drastic, wild, and changing. Every year is different, and each season inserts itself in our collective memories which we can refer to later, such as “Don’t you remember the summer of 2004?” It’s almost a test, as our seasons are the way we can truly […]