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Salmon Project anthology features local writers

Photo Courtesy of The Salmon Project

This month, the Salmon Project is releasing a new anthology of essays on the fish and the culture surrounding it in Alaska. Freelance Reporter Shady Grove Oliver spoke with Homer author Nancy Lord. Lord is the former Alaska State Writer Laureate and editor of the book, which is called Made of Salmon: Alaska Stories from the Salmon Project.

SGO: So, to start off, I’m curious about this Made of Salmon book and what the goal of it was.

NL: Made of Salmon is an anthology. It’s a project of something called the Salmon Project, which is a nonprofit. The purpose of all of their work is to engage Alaskans with salmon and to help Alaskans think about their connections to salmon. In a way, it’s sort of a soft conservation effort because if people all across the state are thinking about their relationships to salmon and how important they are to their families and cultures and so on, hopefully they’re going to do what they can do to protect the resource and the habitat the salmon need.

SGO: Tell me about some of the works in it and some of the contributors.

NL: There are 21 essayists who were commissioned to write full-length essays and there are 33 other writers in it who wrote shorter pieces that are more like personal stories about their connections to salmon and there are photographs by Clark James Mishler.

  SGO: As the editor of this anthology, tell me a little bit about what salmon means to you. Why is this an important topic for you?

NL: For me, personally, I have quite a history with salmon. When I first came to Homer I worked at the cannery like so many of the people who come to town. I worked at the Tutka Hatchery in the late 1970s when they were raising salmon over there. Then, I started set net fishing in the late 1970s and did that for many, many years. So, my life has intersected with salmon all my adult life. It’s very clear to me how important they’ve been to what I have as a community and culture, as well as the economics of it.

SGO: What do you think people should keep in mind as they read this anthology and why is this an important topic for people to be thinking about at this point in time?

NL: Well, really, when you think of salmon, it is the one thing that really ties us all together as Alaskans. I think there are very few Alaskans who don’t connect to salmon in some way, that don’t eat it as a portion of their diet or enjoy fishing one way or another. So, I think it’s sort of common ground that we can all share and if we can all share something, it brings us all together. There are sport fishermen and subsistence and commercial and often, there are allocation issues among them and among gear types. But, if we can get together and respect everyone else’s reliance on salmon, I think it will bring Alaskans together. It’s the one thing that might really help us be a large community.

SGO: Tell me about some of the parts of this book that you really enjoyed and that really stood out to you.

NL: I had a great time editing this. It’s not something that I really wanted to do before the Salmon Project asked me to do it. It was a joy, actually, to work with all of the writers. The main essayists, all of whom I knew previously as writers because they’re mostly fairly prominent writers in the state, and then all the other writers who were people that I didn’t know. I was really struck by the passions they all brought to the project and the diversity of voices I wouldn’t have imagined. One of the readers who’s going to come down from Anchorage and read with us on Friday is Michael Dinkel and he used to live in Soldotna. He wrote this really great piece asking how many salmon is enough? He was kind of testing himself on how many salmon he needs for his family and then how he can use all the parts of a salmon. [It was] a really great thought piece and a completely different approach that I never would have thought of. Then, there’s Richard Chiappone, a local person who wrote about his history growing up in New York State and wanting to salmon fish and then gradually moving west and landing on the Anchor River eventually, and the importance to him of chasing the idea of a king salmon across the country to meet its reality.

SGO: There’s going to be a reading and launch event for this book this week in Homer. What do you have planned for that?

NL: Friday at 6 p.m. at the library, sponsored by the Friends of the Library, we’re going to have some of the contributors to the book read. Jerre Wills, who is local, is one of the contributors of a shorter piece. We have Kirsten Dixon, who people know as a great chef and the owner of the Tutka Lodge, but she’s also a great writer, so she’s reading her piece. Rich Chiappone’s going to read. Michael Dinkel’s going to read and I’ll read a little bit from the introduction.

Shady Grove Oliver is the former KBBI News Director and currently works as a freelance reporter around the state.