Featured artists<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\tJill Kaasteen Meserve was this year’s featured artist, while Kersten Christianson was the featured author, Bowman said. Meserve designed art featured on the cover of this year’s edition as well.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“(Meserve) plays around with the idea of tradition and what it means to be a Native artist,” Bowman said. “She likes to incorporate pop culture into her work, which is really fun.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Christianson, this year’s featured author, isn’t new to Tidal Echoes, she said in an interview.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“I have been published in 12 issues of Tidal Echoes. I go way back with it,” Christianson said. “It’s an honor to be recognized in such a way. I’m just appreciative and excited about it.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
A creative writing teacher at Sitka High School, Christianson said much of poetry is focused on the far northern places of the U.S. and Canada.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“It’s always been a passion of mine to write. It’s been a lot of fun to write in different places in the state,” Christianson said. “A lot of my poetry deals with northern places, northern space. I do a lot of road tripping. Wilderness and loss and mileage and Tim Horton’s coffee. I mostly do free verse poetry. I dabble with form poetry.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Christianson also has three books currently published, available in small bookstores around the state ”Curating the House of Nostalgia,” “What Caught Raven’s Eye,” and “Something Yet to Be Named.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
For other aspiring poets, Christianson’s advice was to step up to the plate and swing.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“Just say, ‘Yes,”’ Christianson said. “Jump into every writing opportunity there is, even if you have to step out of your comfort zone to do it.” <\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
• Contact reporter Michael S. Lockett at 757-621-1197 or mlockett@juneauempire.com.<\/em><\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eased restrictions streamlined the production, but the release event will still be online. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":83797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[74,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-83796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-arts-and-culture","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83796","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\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83796"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=83796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}