UA Press author wins national award

Congratulations to Fairbanks author Linda Schandelmeier! Schandelmeier received the 2019 WILLA Literary Award for her book of poems, Coming Out of Nowhere, published by the University of Alaska Press. This nationally recognized award honors the best in literature, featuring women's or girls' stories set in the West that are published each year. Women Writing the West (WWW), is a non-profit association of writers and other professionals writing and promoting the Women's West. The award is named in honor of Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather, one of the country's foremost novelists. The winning authors and their books will be honored at the WWW Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas this October.

Coming Out of Nowhere is part poetic memoir and historical document set on the family homestead six miles south of Anchorage, Alaska, where Linda grew up in the 1950s and '60s. The sparsity of neighbors and roads, and isolation imposed by family circumstances made life solitary and sometimes lonely, but rooted in the natural world. This book tells the story of a resilient family surviving on moose meat, potatoes and whatever else they could gather. The poems in this collection suggest a level of human experience beyond the mundane, one in which trees and mountains are almost members of the family. Schandelmeier does not shy away from unpleasant details in her family history, but she also recognizes the experience as one which was nurturing and unique.

Learn more about this title and many others at alaska.edu/uapress.

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