It’s a uniquely satisfying feeling, opening a box that delivers a new book you have written. I had that pleasure last week, and in the days since I’ve kept Our Story in Many Voices on the dining room sideboard, where I’ve been peeking at random pages as I walk by.
I’m particularly proud of this book because it contains some of my best writing and new ideas. I didn’t have to compromise.
The book started more than five years ago, when Sarah Asper-Smith approached me to edit a catalog for the Alaska State Museum. Years earlier, she had recruited me to edit the labels for the $100 million facility that opened in 2016, part of an extraordinary project that used more than 30 co-curators representing the state’s many cultures.
Originally, the museum’s Friends organization was going to use a local print shop and sell the book only at the museum. But as I thought about all these voices of self-definition that had come into the exhibit, I imagined something more ambitious.
Asper-Smith and I proposed a book to the University of Alaska Press that would interpret the museum, but would also grapple with the complex questions its exhibit raised about the Alaska identity—and if there even is one at this moment in history.
We would raise the money privately and keep creative control, with scholarly peer review. After a couple of past nightmares working with government and non-profit sponsors, I had sworn never again to cede authority over my own words. (In the end, the museum was wonderful to work with.)
As we were getting started, in 2020, the pandemic hit and grants evaporated. If not for Ira Perman of the Atwood Foundation, we would have given up. We won the last of four grants in the summer of 2022 and I finished writing April 2023. With delays for peer review and design, the book was finished this spring.
The University Press of Colorado, of which the University of Alaska Press is an imprint, made a beautiful book. You can order Our Story in Many Voices: The Alaska State Museum Catalog and Guide at this link.
The early response has been amazing. I’m deeply honored by the praise of scholars I highly esteem.
Now I have a new goal.
In this book, I depicted the changing nature of Alaska’s history and identity, but I didn’t explore the changed story itself. As I wrote here last fall, I now intend to write a history of Alaska that tells that tale.
Again, the biggest challenge is the fundraising. But I’ve already received several generous contributions from individuals through my sponsor, the Alaska Historical Society (you don’t have to join to support the project).
This is a new model, and I like it: a non-academic writer who knows and loves Alaska, doing scholarship for general readers, with philanthropic support and peer review assuring rigor and independence.
This beautiful book that still sits on my sideboard is proof that it can work.
If you enjoy my newsletter, please share it.