Alaska Native Writers, Storytellers & Orators: The Expanded Edition - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0967337712 ISBN 13: 9780967337715

Publisher: University of Alaska, 1999

Synopsis

The project was funded, in part, by a Heritage and Preservation Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

ALASKA NATIVE WRITERS, STORYTELLERS & ORATORS: THE EXPANDED EDITION is introduced by Native American author and scholar, Gerald Vizenor (University of California Berkeley), and features: (1) English versions of traditions texts from 15 original Alaska Native languages with facing translations in Eyak, Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Unangan, Alutiiq, Central Yup'ik, St. Lawrence Island Yupik, Inupiaq, and Dena'ina. (2) Contemporary Alaska Native stories, essays, and poems (written in English). (3) A contexts section provides cultural and historical background about selected works. The book also includes 9 photographic plates courtesy of the Anchorage Museum of History and Art and 2 photographic plates courtesy of Alaska Native artist and writer Susie Silook.

Alaska Quarterly Review, now in its 18th year of continuous publication, is an award winning literary journal produced by the University of Alaska Anchorage. It has been appreciatively reviewed by a variety of sources including the Book World section of The Washington Post noting "That one of the nation's best literary magazines comes out of Alaska may seem surprising, but so it is." Library Journal concluded Alaska Quarterly Review is "highly recommended and deserves applause."

AQR focuses on fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry by new and emerging writers but also includes works by established writers as well. Many of the stories, poems and essays first published in AQR (some of them were the first-time publications of their authors) have been selected for The Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Best American Essays, The Andres Berger Award, The Pushcart Prize: The Best of the Small Presses, The Best American Poetry, and the 1999 Beacon Best. Work has also been reprinted in Harper's, Small Press and numerous other collections. AQR won an Alaska Governor's Award for the Arts (1996) and 5 National Endowment for the Arts grants.

About this title

About the Author

Ronald Spatz is executive editor and founding editor of the nationally acclaimed Alaska Quarterly Review. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Creative Writing and Literary Arts and Director of the University Honors at the University of Alaska Anchorage. A filmmaker and writer, Spatz's short subject films that have been broadcast on television, selected for film festivals, and used in schools and colleges. His film, For the Love of Ben, was broadcast nationally on public television. Spatz's fiction has appeared in a wide range of national literary journals and anthologies and has been recognized by individual artist fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Alaska State Council on the Arts. He holds a M.F.A. degree from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop.

Jeane Breinig is Haida (Raven, Brown Bear, Taaslaanas Clan) originally from Kasaan village in Southeast Alaska. One of only three Alaska Haida to earn a doctorate, she received her Ph.D. in English (American and Native American Studies) from the University of Washington. Breinig is currently working on a book about Haida narrative and has published in American Indian Quarterly and Studies in American Indian Literatures. She is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Patricia H. Partnow has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and her ethnohistoric examination of the Alutiiq people of the Alaska Peninsula, entitled Making History, is currently in press. Partnow, a specialist in oral history and the oral tradition, and ethnographic research, is Vice President of Education at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, a nonprofit organization for the celebration, preservation, and sharing of Alaska Native traditions.

From Kirkus Reviews

Despite its clunky title, this is quite a tidy little omnibus of poems, oral histories, folk tales, and stories by Native Alaskans, many appearing in their original languages with English translations on facing pages. Filmmaker and fiction-writer Spatz, the founding editor of Alaska Quarterly Review, is to be commended for organizing the work, which includes translations from more than 15 Alaskan languagesmany (Tlingit, Haida, and Inupiaq) probably never spoken beyond Alaskan shores. Sociologists and folklorists will be particularly grateful for the bibliography and source notations, and those unfamiliar with Alaskan culture will find in the very extensive commentaries a useful orientation to what remains a largely unknown world. The commentaries and notes, in fact, may prove of greater interest to many than the tales and poems themselves, offering as they do a glimpse into the history of our Last Frontier. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Alaska
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0967337712
• ISBN 13: 9780967337715
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: Ronald Spatz, Jeane Breinig, Patricia H. Partnow