Readers across Alaska will be on the same page this winter.
The Haines Borough Public Library is participating in Alaska’s first statewide “book club,” an effort to transform reading from a private activity to a communal experience.
Tlingit author Ernestine Hayes’ “Blonde Indian” was selected as the first book for “Alaska Reads,” a program launched by the Alaska Center for the Book as the project of state writing laureate Frank Soos.
Hayes will travel to Haines and 15 other towns to facilitate discussions of her book. The local event is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 3. Local author Heather Lende will also participate.
Fifteen copies of “Blonde Indian” are available at the library.
A committee selected “Blonde Indian” for the Alaska Reads event, but Soos said he personally championed its selection because the book is compelling, well-written and has considerable moral force.
“It’s not an easy read necessarily. It’s thought-provoking. It will give them plenty to think about and talk about,” Soos said.
The book, a memoir, begins with Hayes’ childhood in Juneau and “weaves reminiscences of her life, stories from her grandmother, Tlingit history, nature writing, and fiction into a testament of the twentieth-century Alaska Native experience,” according to the press release.
Soos said he hopes this year’s will be the first of many Alaska Reads events. The goal is for the program to continue regularly, featuring living Alaskan authors whose works focus on some aspect of Alaskan life and culture.
Other finalists for this year’s selection were “Ordinary Wolves” by Seth Kantner, “Cold Storage, Alaska,” by John Straley and “Two Old Women” by Velma Wallis.
“I think every state should have something like this,” Soos said. “When you read a book you really enter into a conversation with the writer. Once you have read and come together with a group of people and talked about what you read, it expands the number of questions and ideas you come away from the book with.”
Soos is retired from teaching creative writing at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction for his short story “Unified Field Theory.” He has a new book of essays coming out this spring.