Congratulations to the University of Alaska Press and authors James Barker, Ann Fienup-Riordan and Theresa Arevgaq John for their win this weekend for Yupiit Yuraryarait: Yup’ik Ways of Dancing! “A significant literary contribution to the understanding of Alaska and Alaskan history,” the book was selected for the Alaska Library Association’s 2011 Alaskana award.
Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year—has long had a special hold on wilderness photographer Jeff Jones, who has spent two decades photographing its wild and remote beauty, the result of which is the stunning photo-book Arctic Sanctuary, released this week by the University of Alaska Press.
“It is a call to action to protect this sanctuary of wildlife . . . It beautifully showcases a pristine land caught in the crosshairs of the greatest of human calamities, including global climate change and the grim search for energy resources.”—Art Wolfe on Jeff Jones’s Arctic Sanctuary
Particularly vulnerable to climate change, the region serves as a measure of environmental health as well as a rare window into a world that is whole and ecologically intact.
Currently, celebrated nature photographer Art Wolfe of public television fame has a review on his blog, including a number of images from the book. More of Jones’s photography may be seen on his website and in the book available here.
For more than thirty years, live-trapping grizzlies was all in a day’s work for wildlife biologist Will Troyer. A bear researcher for the National Park Service and later a bear-viewing guide on Alaska’s Katmai Coast, Troyer has also authored three memoirs, including Bear Wrangler, published in February by the University of Alaska Press.
Tomorrow afternoon at 1:30, Alaskans can join Will Troyer—sans furry friends—in a presentation and book signing at the Cooper Landing Library. For more information, see the announcement in the Cooper Landing News.
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Repeat photography is an exceptionally useful technique in identifying changes to a landscape over time—but it is also a highly difficult undertaking requiring the photographer to identify where the historic photograph was taken so that the new photo may capture precisely the same field of view.
“It takes a lot of sleuthing, that’s the fun part; your geography becomes really good,” says photographer and arctic biologist Ken Tape whose recent book, The Changing Arctic Landscape formed the basis of the exhibit that made its debut this weekend at the University of Alaska Museum of the North. In fifteen sets of repeat photographs, Tape puts into stark relief dramatic changes in the arctic landscape—from shrinking glaciers to tundra landscapes overtaken by vegetation.
To learn more about Then and Now: The Changing Arctic Landscape, please visit the Museum of the North’s page here or read a review from Saturday’s Fairbanks Daily News–Miner here.
The National Weather Service ardently admonishes in all caps: A WIND CHILL WARNING MEANS THE COMBINATION OF VERY COLD AIR AND STRONG WINDS WILL CREATE DANGEROUSLY LOW WIND CHILL VALUES. THIS WILL RESULT IN FROST BITE AND LEAD TO HYPOTHERMIA OR DEATH IF PRECAUTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN.
This is little comfort for a publicist who must wait for the bus twice a day.
But we in Chicago are not alone in our brutal winters. And for a few winter-weather survival techniques, I've turned to some books from those who know very well the tinging fingers and toes and icicled eyelashes of a long winter—The University of Alaska Press.
Painting a picture of early twentieth-century village life along the Bering Sea, two memoirs by Edna Wilder, Once Upon an Eskimo Time and The Eskimo Girl and the Englishman, poignantly capture the day to day life of an Eskimo village in a rapidly changing world.
Conservationist John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club in 1892 to "to make the mountains glad," was not one to disrespect Mother Nature, no matter what weather she offered up. In his letters documenting his travels through Alaska in 1879 and 1880 he provides a rare account of southeastern Alaska history, alongside breathtaking observations of glaciers and the untamed landscape.
Finally, another brave nature-lover, Will Troyer, offers his personal experiences as the former fish and game warden and manager of the Kodiak Island brown bear preserve in Bear Wrangler. It is the very exciting account of his thirty years as an authentic pioneer in the last vestiges of American wilderness.
Perhaps we should all stay inside, stay warm, and vicariously experience the snowy courageousness of others through these and other books from the University of Alaska Press.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune recently reviewed Against the Grain: The Literary Life of a Poet, a Memoir by Reed Whittemore, calling it, "A witty and close-to-the-bone account of one poet's life—one that deeply explores the tough choices to be made between life and art."
At 12pm (Eastern Time) on Saturday, July 28th, 2007, Book TV will be presenting the annual "Best of the Best from the University Presses."
Included in the schedule is the University of Alaska Press title Alaska Native Art: Tradition, Innovation, Continuity by Susan W. Fair.
"The Best of the Best from the University Presses" was originally presented on Sunday, June 24th, 2007, at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC.