The written word doesn\u2019t come easily to acclaimed Alaska writer Seth Kantner. For one, he\u2019s dyslexic, something he recently spoke about in Haines.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do have just really huge barriers \u2013 dyslexia, physical jumpiness, maybe ADD, I don\u2019t know \u2014 I have huge barriers between me, my mind and the page\u2026 I don\u2019t really want to admit it, but I have a heck of a time actually writing,\u201d he said. \u201cI like being outside. I like almost constant physical activity\u2026. Writing is really hard and really frustrating; I don\u2019t do it near as much as people think I do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The attendees at a Saturday reading in Juneau appeared grateful that he does.<\/p>\n
Kantner was in Juneau reading from his newly released book, a collection of writings called \u201cSwallowed by the Great Land: And Other Dispatches from Alaska\u2019s Frontier.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kantner grew up in a sod igloo in Alaska\u2019s Arctic. His first published book was a novel based in part on his own life, \u201cOrdinary Wolves.\u201d He\u2019s also published \u201cShopping for Porcupine,\u201d a kids\u2019 book called \u201cPup and Pokey,\u201d and has two new books in the works. One is a young adult novel currently called \u201cWolverine School\u201d; the other is nonfiction about caribou and is called \u201cA Thousand Trails Home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though he\u2019s known for both genres, fiction feels both safer and more satisfying to him, Kantner said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the stress of \u2026 getting facts right is fairly tough on me,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I feel like I might head more and more towards fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Counterintuitively, it\u2019s also easier to get at deeper truths in fiction, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely, \u2018Ordinary Wolves,\u2019 I had to tell it as fiction so I could tell the truth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For both genres, what Kantner loves is being outside, gathering stories.<\/p>\n
He spends spring and fall at the sod house he grew up in along the Kobuk River, commercial fishes out of Kotzebue in the summer, and \u201croams around\u201d in the winter.<\/p>\n
He wrote \u201cSwallowed by the Great Land\u201d over the course of six or seven years as columns for the then-Anchorage Daily News, and an every-two-week dispatch to Orion Magazine about climate change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI write in a void a lot where I don\u2019t know if anybody\u2019s reading my stuff,\u201d he said. \u201cI assume everybody hates me and doesn\u2019t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he traveled to Anchorage and other places, though, people asked him if he was going to put the stories in a book.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fans are the reason I did this book,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no other reason. People asked me to do it\u2026. But I like the book. It came out good. And I don\u2019t usually say that.\u201d<\/p>\n
This writer likes it, too \u2014 \u201cSwallowed by the Great Land\u201d is an insightful, moving collection of glimpses into the Alaskan Arctic, its land, its life, and its changes. In \u201cWolf Eyes,\u201d for example, Kantner juxtaposes the plastic step-counters his daughter and her friend find in two boxes of Rice Krispies with a broken-legged wolf limping along a riverbank. In \u201cTinniks,\u201d he writes of his simultaneous loneliness and hungriness for caribou.<\/p>\n
\u201cA strange combination, I know, but what can I say: For some of us tundra offspring, these animals are both meals and lifelong companions,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like ironies,\u201d Kanter said while in Juneau. \u201cThey grow thick where I\u2019m from. The elders are dying off, and each person that goes is a huge loss to the region and culture, but also a huge loss to the ironic-ness of life there.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the end of September, Kantner visited Palmer, Anchorage, Talkeetna, Juneau and Haines; in early October he\u2019s visiting Seattle, Portland, Port Angeles, Spokane, Moscow (Idaho) and Missoula. It\u2019s not yet finalized, but in November he may visit other Southeast communities as part of the tour for his new book, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never think of myself as a writer,\u201d he said. \u201cCertainly the only thing that got anything written for me was just being a wolverine, and never giving up on the trail forward\u2026 Food and being out in the country is the center of my life, and writing is sort of just my payment to the land, and my version of patriotism, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact CCW staff writer Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@capweek.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The written word doesn\u2019t come easily to acclaimed Alaska writer Seth Kantner. For one, he\u2019s dyslexic, something he recently spoke about in Haines. \u201cI do have just really huge barriers \u2013 dyslexia, physical jumpiness, maybe ADD, I don\u2019t know \u2014 I have huge barriers between me, my mind and the page\u2026 I don\u2019t really want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":32299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-32298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32298"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=32298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}