In the 49 Writers Active Voice Podcast, writers and artists reflect on how current issues shape their works. The ongoing series is hosted and produced by Katie Bausler from Juneau, Alaska for 49 Writers, a support and networking organization for Alaskan writers. Guests include Ernestine Hayes, Susan Orlean, Tommy Orange, Kim Heacox and Pam Houston.
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Our latest episode was recorded with the keynote speaker for the 2025 North Words Writers Symposium in Skagway, Alaska. Pulitzer prize nominee Eowyn Ivey talks with guest host Summer Christiansen about her writing discipline, the challenges and joys of writing from rural Alaska and why her latest book, Black Woods, Blue Sky, is her most personal yet. Learn more about Eowyn and her work at her…
Shauna Potocky is a poet and painter who spent a decade as park ranger in Yosemite National Park. She is now a devoted resident of the community of Seward, Alaska. Along with the Kenai Peninsula, it is the inspiration for her second collection of poems and artwork, Sea Smoke, Spindrift and Other Spells. On a visit to Juneau she talked with host Katie Bausler about poetry, community and the value…
Katie’s guest Josh Fortenbery plays live tracks and reflects on the writing of his debut album. Southeast Alaska grown and produced, No Such Thing as Forever is getting strong reviews in Americana circles from across the country to across the pond. Fortenbery’s songwriting is informed by both his immediate and the greater human family. “I’m just trying to be honest about my grief, anxiety, and…
Katie's guest for this episode is Kate Troll, author of a memoir with an unusual focus. It chronicles, as she entered her seventies, meeting two siblings for the first time. And how these discoveries both challenged and strengthened her newfound family and her relationships with the siblings she grew up with. All in Due Time, A Memoir of Siblings, Genealogy, Secrets and Love, can be found at…
In this episode, host Katie Bausler chats with Lucian Childs, author of Dreaming Home , a powerful collection of six linked short stories on the outing of a gay teenager by his younger sister, his father’s violent reaction and how that trauma ripples through the course of four decades. The stories, set in Texas, the San Francisco Bay Area and Florida, deftly weave issues like conversion therapy,…
In her debut album, Sisters of White Chapel, Alaskan writer and musician Annie Bartholomew brings a fresh approach to traditional folk music, channeling the under told stories of some of the working women of Alaska's Gold Rush. And as she tells 49 Writers Active Voice producer and host Katie Bausler, sex work was the only choice for many women in late 19th century mining towns. Bartholomew wanted…
Beth Ann Mathews, her husband Jim and nine year old son Glen were living a full and vibrant life in Alaska’s capital Juneau, which, as she describes lies, “between the ocean and a retreating glacier, a dynamic landscape that challenged and nurtured us.” She could not have imagined the challenges the family trio would overcome when Jim sustained a rare type of stroke brought on by a relatively…
Acclaimed author Melinda Moustakis on her debut novel, Homestead. In this first 49 Writers Active Voice Podcast taped LIVE, we go back in time to the last years before Alaska became a state, and the tumultuous relationship of unlikely homesteaders. Inspired by the story of the author's grandparents, Homestead was reviewed "absolutely remarkable" by the Historical Novel Society. And "spare,…
Tommy Orange on his commended debut novel "There, There", which tells the intertwining stories of Native Americans en route to a pow wow in Orange's hometown of Oakland, California. He discusses what to expect from the highly anticipated sequel, the current reckoning of the past genocide of Native Americans, white supremacy and the quest for hope versus hate. Since its 2018 publication,"There,…
Linnea Lentfer discusses and reads passages from her debut novel. "Hold the Tide" is told by a young girl raised like Lentfer, hunting deer and gathering berries in remote and wild Southeast Alaska. Unlike the author, her protagonist grew up in a prior century, the child of a shunned and threatened single mother. Lentfer began writing her book when she was 12, the same age as her narrator. "Hold…
