Inside you’ll find 32 stories as diverse and far flung as Alaska itself.

*A village girl discovers a surprising new world at a boarding school hundreds of miles from home.

*A mother tries to steer her son toward college but he just wants to be a salty fisherman like his dad.

*An after-work snowmachine outing turns treacherous.

*A revered Iñupiaq elder recalls a traumatic 1930s reindeer drive across extreme northern Alaska.

*A young man struggles against powerful addictions.

*An outsider who arrives to help the village finds he’s the one in need of help.

Discover much more: tales of adventure, love, hopes, and dreams. A follow-up to the popular Authentic Alaska, this anthology offers an insider’s look at the everyday business of living off the land and waterways in America’s most remote state.

CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE: Robert Andrews, Haines; Iva Baker, Kotzebue; Nancy Berkey, Sedro-Wooley, Washington; Albert Bowling, Anchorage; Ethel “Katie” Qalingak Cruthers, Kotzebue; Lucy Nuqarrluk Daniels, Golovin, Alaska; Robert A. Dillon; Burton William Siliamii Haviland Jr., Kotzebue; Kathryn Ann Lenninger, Fairbanks; Marcus Miller, Haines; Joli Morgan, Bethel; Wilma Payne, Pueblo, Colorado; Steven W. Pilz, Wisconsin; Gina Marie Pope, Bristol Bay region; Karl Puckett, Great Falls, Montana; Amy S. Reisland-Speer, Healy; Emma Snyder, Kotzebue; Stephen J. Werle, Noatak; Sonja Whitethorn, Petersburg; and Terrence B. Wilson.

Here are the beginnings of a true indigenous literature from modern rural Alaska. These stories describe amazing situations in matterof- fact style. Within the raw immediacy of the writers’ experiences, we find great human themes of life in transition—pain and loss, redemption and exaltation—all depicted before the astonishing backdrop of Alaska’s natural and cultural landscapes.
    --Tom Kizzia, author of The Wake of the Unseen Object

“Purely Alaska portrays the stunning physical world of Alaska and its spectacular challenges. These stories open hearts and memories to reveal the pain and strength, the joy, endurance and faith of those who survive and thrive within Alaska’s often unforgiving wintery power.”
    --William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, author of Fifty Miles from Tomorrow

Winner, One of America's Best Regional Books 2010 - Foreword Magazine

ABOUT THE EDITORS: The editors are both on the faculty at Chukchi College in Kotzebue, Alaska, a unit of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

SUSAN B. ANDREWS is a professor of journalism and humanities after having been a TV producer for the Northwest Arctic Borough School District and news director at the CBS affiliate in Fairbanks.

JOHN CREED, likewise a professor of journalism and humanities at Chukchi College, is a former reporter for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner who also worked as a schoolteacher in rural Alaska. In the 1980s, Susan and John, a wife-and-husband team, founded Chukchi News and Information Service, a cultural journalism project that features UA student writing in newspapers, magazines, and on websites. The anthology “Authentic Alaska: Voices of Its Native Writers” was compiled from the Chukchi News project, winning a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the Alaska Press Club’s Public Service Award.