Alaska Story Project

This podcast features the work of author, editor, and teacher, and FisherPoet, Lara Messersmith-Glavin.  In each essay from her recently published book, "Spirit Things", Lara holds an object or detail from her early life aboard the family's Kodiak seiner and then takes us beyond into realms of history, science and story.  

In the Introduction to "Spirit Things",  Lara writes, 'When we live wit...

Bruce Rettig recently published Refraction, An Arctic Memoir.  Refraction is a Pushcart prize nominee, and has received recognition and multiple awards including an award for non-fiction with the San Francisco Writing Contest, an International Chanticleer Book Award and a Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Award.  Bruce also writes literary short stories, creative non-fiction, essays and flash fiction/nonfiction.  He co...

Brendan Jones lives in Sitka, Alaska with his wife, three daughters, six chickens, and one dog.  He first came to Sitka as a young man to land what work he could find.  Soon he was writing for the Sitka Sentinel, and has gone on to write for a range of publications including The New York Times, the Smithsonian, GQ, Washington Post, Patagonia and others.  He has recently won the 2022 Green Earth Book Award for Whispering Alaska.  Al...

Dan hosts John and Becca Wolfe, co-authors of Alaska Adventure, 55 Ways, Southcentral Wilderness Explorations, published this summer by Mountaineers Books, Seattle, Washington.

This 50th anniversary edition of 55 Ways, first written by Helen Nienhueser, represents three generations of wilderness exploring and collaborative writing.  

Helen writes in the Forward:  “It gives me great pleasure that my son and granddaughter are the coaut...

Award winning author of several books, including The Only Kayak and Jimmy Bluefeather, Kim Heacox is also an opinion piece writer for The Guardian US.  He’s published some 18 pieces—10 in the last year with The Guardian. 

Kim:  “My Guardian pieces are framed within my credo of activist writing, that it’s not only my right but my responsibility to challenge power & the prevailing order, to speak out as best I can, using story, hu...

Award-winning author and naturalist Hank Lentfer returns to the Alaska Story Project with an audio piece, “10 Sounds That Make You Feel More Alive”.

Hank reads from his book, Ravens Witness, the Alaska life of Richard K. Nelson, a passage from his earliest memories living with the Iñupiaq in the Arctic. 

“We yearn to pull together with neighbors and celebrate our collective success. So why do we find ourselves living in such rancorou...

Ray Troll's Ichthyomuse, Art and Rock & Roll

• Formative years, early influences
• Art as Ray’s childhood superpower
• Kansas to Seattle, art scene, grad school, up to Ketchikan
• Ketchikan, art scene, native culture, studio above a fish plant
• Obsessing, drawing and painting fish; 
• First T-shirt project, “Let’s spawn”
• Growing his T-shirt empire;  “Spawn ’til you Die”;  “Humpies from Hell”
• A description of Ray’s work by Brad Matsen; bo...

A thought and theme from Wendell Berry, “coming into the peace of wild things.”

• A story from the Alaskan cabin with an astonishing encounter with a large, magnificent buck.
• Reading liner notes from a collaborative DVD project with Kurt Hoelting, ASP podcast #5.
• “Wildness is a process and not a place.  Nothing stands alone.  The environment is inside as well as outside.  The human mind is wild habitat.  Poetry is the wild edge of l...

Jonathan White is a writer, surfer, sailor and educator.  His work has been published in Orion, The Sun, Fine Homebuilding, and Natural History.  His first book, Talking on the Water, (Sierra Club, 1993),  explores creativity and the natural world.  It grew out of "Seminars Afloat" with writers Gretel Ehrlich, Ursula Le Guin, and Peter Matthiessen, along with other visionaries, activists and artists, such as poet Gary Sny...

The Art of Listening  

• Stunning recordings from the natural world of Alaska  
• Hank's story of his "acoustic awakening"  
• An iconic recording of a Loon with Richard Nelson 
• Several of Hank's favorite recordings and the stories behind them  
• Hearing, Listening and the Art of Listening  
• Robin song:  getting to know individuals  
• A wolf howl and a Malamute's response  
• The Art of Listening and being human  
• Recordi...

Stories of Connection:  Barry Lopez;  Faith of Cranes & Sandhill Cranes;  Raven's Witness & the life and work of Richard Nelson;  sound recording. 

• Barry Lopez and the importance of story. 
• A childhood memory from the Arctic & reflecting on our times now. 
• Building a home in Gustavus and considering Sandhill Cranes. 
• Raven's Witness:  Friendship naturalist & author Richard Nelson. 
• Nels' time in the Ar...

Growing up with salmon, fishing for salmon, and transboundary mining issues. 

• Early memories & running north through the Inside Passage in the family seine boat. 
• Fishing for sockeye salmon off of Noyes Island in SE Alaska. 
• Alarmed by the Mt. Polley mine disaster, and implications for the major transboundary, Alaska—B.C. rivers with vital salmon runs. 
• Embarking on a documentary film project:  "Sisters and Rivers" co...

In conversation writer Holly Hughes:  

• Early years on the waters of Alaska as a fisher and operating a salmon tender. 
• As a mariner, the necessity of paying full attention and its influence on writing.  
• Holly reads from Sailing by Ravens. 
• A reading from Passings, which was recently awarded the American Book Award.   
• Choosing full engagement with both the challenge and beauty of our circumstances. 
• Reading from Holly’s newly releas...

33 years of behavioral research with Alaska's Humpback Whales. 

• Formative years as a whale biologist. 
• The remarkable characteristics of Humpback Whales. 
• Songs of the Humpback Whale. 
• Whale brains, four times as large as a human brain. 
• Spindle neurons and social behavior. 
• Whale communication, ocean acoustics.    
• "Whale internet". 
• Concerns:  Ocean noise, ships, military, seismic testing, entanglements. 
• Warm water ano...

Treadwell Gold, An Alaskan Saga of Riches and Ruin.   

• Approaching Juneau, Treadwell on Douglas Island. 
• The Treadwell Mining complex and Sheila's personal connection to its history. 
• The Alaskan Gold Rush;  placer mining, hard rock mining, and the Klondike. 
• A timeline, beginning with the Tlingits to the decline of Treadwell. 
• A description of life in Treadwell during it's heyday. 
• The business of a successful mine; labor ...

Alaska Writer Laureate 2008-10, Nancy Lord. 

• Coming to Homer, Alaska and early years as a set netter on Cook Inlet. 
• Reading from Fishcamp: Life on an Alaskan Shore. 
• Beluga Whales. 
• The Harriman Expedition and Green Alaska. 
• Early Warming:  Crisis and Response in the Climate-Changed North;  feedback loops and permafrost melting. 
• Ph:  A Novel;  pteropods, ocean acidification. 
• Reflections on Science and Art;  the FisherPoets gatherin...