Where Am I? Sitka Story Lab Student Anthology
The Island Institute's Sitka Story Lab program released this new book of Southeast Alaskan student writing in May 2016. Called Where Am I?: Stories of Strange Landscapes, Wrong Turns, and New Worlds, the anthology features fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and zany creative experiments that convey the disorientation and the discovery that young people experience, from being in the wilderness to simply growing up. The young writers come from Sitka, Hoonah, Haines, Wrangell, and Skagway, and are as young as nine years old and as old as eighteen. "The writing ranges from fantastic and playful to emotionally moving and dark," said Story Lab Coordinator Sarah Swong. "I'm impressed at how creative and varied these writings are, and at how open students were to feedback and improving their work." The project offered students the chance to write a piece for publication and to hone their writing with an editor.
The Island Institute's Sitka Story Lab program released this new book of Southeast Alaskan student writing in May 2016.
Called Where Am I?: Stories of Strange Landscapes, Wrong Turns, and New Worlds, the anthology features fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and zany creative experiments that convey the disorientation and the discovery that young people experience, from being in the wilderness to simply growing up. The young writers come from Sitka, Hoonah, Haines, Wrangell, and Skagway, and are as young as nine years old and as old as eighteen.
"The writing ranges from fantastic and playful to emotionally moving and dark," said Story Lab Coordinator Sarah Swong. "I'm impressed at how creative and varied these writings are, and at how open students were to feedback and improving their work."
The project offered students the chance to write a piece for publication and to hone their writing with an editor.
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Clancy and the Gentleman<br />
Katie Holmgren<br />
The Gentleman saw the man wash up on a Sunday. It was the day<br />
before, however, on a Saturday, that the man was just a little speck<br />
in the ocean and that the Gentleman had first noticed his existence.<br />
Since then, he watched from his little sea-side abode, the<br />
wind blowing sand into his tea and the palms dancing the tango<br />
behind him. It was the best entertainment he’d had for days—<br />
watching this little speck in his personal paradise— and so he sat<br />
throughout the night, watching, until the next Sunday morning<br />
when he saw the man wash-up.<br />
It wasn’t the prettiest washing-up the Gentleman had seen. The<br />
poor fellow was slapped against the sand and left there unconscious,<br />
in an unnatural position. He just lay there, the merciless<br />
waves lapping over his sandy, drenched body. He wasn’t dead, so<br />
the Gentleman dragged him up the shore into his camp out and<br />
waited.<br />
The man awoke in the afternoon to reveal dark gray-blue eyes, as<br />
if the ocean had seeped into his sockets during his time at sea. But<br />
they were nice eyes, and was the rest of his face too. He appeared<br />
to be middle-aged, with gray whiskers and bushy eyebrows. His<br />
clothes were ragged and damp, but he still looked to be a man of<br />
good nature. “Hellah there,” he said squinting at the Gentleman.<br />
“Why hello.”<br />
He lifted his cheek off the ground and the sand stuck to it. He<br />
stared at the gentleman, “Who might yah be.”<br />
“I’m the Gentleman. And you?”<br />
It took a while for this to register with the man. He wiped the sand<br />
off his cheek and looked around confused. He looked at the fire,<br />
and the ocean, and the palms. And then the little shack, the sky,<br />
Southeast Alaska <strong>Student</strong> <strong>Anthology</strong><br />
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