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Award-winning Alaskan author visits UAS
By Eric Morrison
Whalesong Editor
Award winning
mystery writer John Straley spent two days at the UAS Juneau campus
earlier this month to help inspire students to get “fired up
about writing and reminding them that anyone can do it.”
The author of such critically acclaimed books as The
Women Who Married a Bear and The Music of What Happens, said he
hopes his example of living and working with a learning disability
will inspire others to pursue their dreams of becoming writers.
“I’m really interested in helping students
take stock in their own experience,” said Straley. “They
all have enough material to write exceptional stories, it’s
just a question of finding a relatively easy technique and the discipline
to do so. And if I can do it, anyone can do it.”
This is the third year the Sitka-based author has visited
the Juneau campus, spending this year’s visit among multiple
Humanities and English classes. “I love talking to students,”
he said. “I love getting out of Sitka and I love meeting people
out of my own age group.”
“It’s always intense coming in for two days
and speaking to eight classes, but it’s intense and I enjoy
that,” he said. “If I’m going to be here I like working
and interacting.”
Straley has spent 25 years as a private investigator
in Alaska, and even though he works fulltime as a writer, he still
enjoys taking on the occasional investigation case. “Being
a writer helped me become a private investigator,” he said.
“Being a private investigator is really about documenting other
peoples experiences.”
He said that his writing has been mostly influenced
by natural history and nature writers, and is particularly inspired
by Richard Nelson, William Stafford and James Welch.
In his visit to UAS, Straley stressed the importance
of learning how to write well in college. “Writing is the most
common medium for expression,” he said. “Through writing
students will communicate what they know and what they learn, and
by their skills in writing they will be judged.”
Straley also emphasized that writing is a process and
that it takes lots of hard work and perseverance to become a writer.
“No matter what you think of your own intelligence or abilities,
you can write, you can do it,” he said. “And when you
start to do it, you’ll learn from it … (you) don’t
have to be fabulously intelligent or particularly gifted, as evident
by listening to me.”
Email Erik Morrison at jserm2@uas.alaska.edu
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