New field guide features local writers and artists

By Marcia Kuszmaul

Homer Independent Press

“Through poetry, art, and cultural and natural history notes, this book sings the praises of this great land, some of its amazing beings, and our relationships with one another.”

So write editors Nancy Lord, Shaelene Grace Moler and Marybeth Holleman in their introduction to their new book, “Alaska Literary Field Guide.”

At a presentation by the Friends of the Homer Public Library and Homer Bookstore this week, an overflow crowd listened in rapt appreciation as 11 of the 94 contributing poets, writers and visual artists read from the new anthology brimming with images of “what attracts visitors and what enchants and holds us Alaskans here.”

In addition to Homer resident Lord, a former Alaska state writer laureate and widely published author and teacher, readers/contributors with local connections included Anne Coray, Wendy Erd, Erin Hollowell (represented in absentia by Emilie Springer), Linda Martin, David McElroy, Kim McNett and Marilyn Sigman.

Erd and Lord presented works of local poets no longer with us, but whose voices persist – Kim Cornwall, Jo Going and Eva Saulitis. 

The guide organizes Alaska into six major habitat types – marine waters; intertidal and coastal shores; temperate rainforest and coastal mountains; boreal forest; rivers, lakes and wetlands; and tundra – and groups Alaska’s iconic and interesting beings in the habitats where they most closely relate to each other. In addition to indigenous species, the editors included sea ice, braided rivers, volcanoes and other “beings” whose presence is integral to experiencing the great land.

Each entry includes a brief narrative, a poem and an original artwork. Twenty different artists contributed existing and newly created works, including locals Sharlene Cline, Valisa Higman and Kim McNett. The editors, including Holleman from Anchorage and Moler from Sitka, worked to include contributors representing diverse style, region, ethnicity, gender, age and background.

The word and visual images in the anthology are both powerful and playful. Editor Holleman read Seth Kantner’s ode to the North American wolverine, describing “a dark muscle designed to disappear.” Anne Coray paid tribute to the strength and persistence of “Heracleum lanatum (Cow Parsnip)” – with “stalks so tall they often lean but determine to grow taller.”

Coray also read Martha Amore’s reflection on the wandering fleabane and contrasted its humble appearance to more showy wildflowers that “bunch and gather like so many cliques of beauties along high school halls. Yet here you stand, fleabane, spindly in your mismatched colors, splay-toothed and bold and grinning.”

In “Bear 747” David McElroy celebrates the famous Katmai urus arctos as “900 pounds of not exactly troll” before his poem turns to a story of loss and “the emergency call that comes like the bear you don’t see.”

In the course of developing the project, the editors said two themes emerged – the interdependence and direct personal encounters between Alaskans and the state’s other beings and the changes all are experiencing related to a heating climate. 

“It’s starkly clear that the beings of Alaska . . . are living in a time of great upheaval,” they write.

“Alaska Literary Field Guide” (Skipstone, 2026) is available at Homer Book Store and wherever books are sold.