Inupiaq poet wins Whiting Award

According to the Anchorage Daily News, On Wednesday in New York City, Anchorage resident Joan Kane received one of ten 2009 Whiting Writers' Awards, which customarily go to writers early in their publishing careers. The award is one of the most high-profile literary awards in the U.S., and along with that prestige, it comes with a $50,000 fellowship. Alaskans who have previously won are Natalie Kusz and Alaska Dispatch contributor Seth Kantner. Kane is a member of the younger generation of King Island Inupiaq, who have had little physical connection to their ancestral home because the Bering Sea settlement was abandoned in the 1950's under government pressure. That palpable sense of loss and history influences many of Kane's poems. The ADN report features an early poem of Kane's, which won the college-student section of that paper's creative writing contest in 2000, but KSKA has two recordings of Kane reading newer poems (which Alaska Beat assumes have been included in her first collection, The Cormorant Hunter's Wife). Listen to them here and here. Kane will be reading in Anchorage at the UAA bookstore on November 17th. See the schedule of events, here.