Joan Kane reading at UAA

Kane recently made national headlines by being named one of 10 emerging writers awarded the 2009 Whiting Award. She will read from her newly published book, "The Cormorant Hunter's Wife," recently released by NorthShore Press. A discussion will follow with other Alaska Native poets.

Kane notes that in the past, Alaska Native literary traditions were passed on orally. Today's modern writers are transferring that tradition into written communication, but with their own historical and personal influences. "Our writing originates from the exceptional landscapes that have been home to our ancestors for tens of thousands of years," she wrote in curating the current "Virtual Subsistence" exhibit at MTS Gallery. "We write to reflect identities that become increasingly plural in contemporary contexts. We write to reconstruct the narrative of Native people within the state and nation and generations to come."

Kane is Irish and Inupiaq Eskimo. After growing up in Anchorage's Muldoon neighborhood, she earned her bachelor's degree from Harvard and her MFA from Columbia University. Kane received the John Haines Award from Ice Floe Press in 2004, was a semi-finalist for the Academy of American Poets' Walt Whitman Award in 2006, and received a 2007 individual artist award from the Rasmuson Foundation. Her play,"The Gilded Tusk" won the 2009 Anchorage Museum theater contest and she was selected as a finalist for the American Poetry Foundation's Ruth Lilly Fellowship. In October, she received a Connie Boochever Fellowship for emerging artists from the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the Alaska Arts and Culture Foundation, followed a few weeks later by the Whiting Award.

Kane's poetry has been featured on KSKA, with the 2009 Freeze Project, at the MTS Gallery, and other venues. Kane lives in Anchorage with her husband and son, and is a consultant to Alaska native village corporations and communities.

Copies of Kane's book will be available for purchase and signing at the Nov. 17 poetry reading. For more information on the event, contact carolben@gci.net. For information on Kane and her book, visit www.thecormoranthunterswife.com/.