New book by MFA alumnus Christine Byl

Christine Byl, a 2006 graduate of UAA's Master of Fine Arts Program, is no stranger to hard work. Her new book, Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods, published this week by Beacon Press, is the lyrical story of her time as a "traildog" building and maintaining national park trails. UAA professor Sherry Simpson says of the book:

"Byl's is not a world of groomed nature, inert tools, or nostalgic rituals, but a vibrant landscape inhabited by people and animals and layered by idea and history. She means this book as a love song, she writes, and it is, not only from her to her fellow laborers, but from the mind to the body, the hand to the tool, the human to the wild."

Join Alaska Quarterly Review, the UAA Department of Creative Writing and Literary Arts and the College of Arts and Sciences for a reading and Q & A with the author on Tuesday, April 23, at 7:30 p.m. in the UAA/APU Consortium Library, Room 307. This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments served.

April Archive