UA Press releases new poetry book about an Alaska Homestead

The University of Alaska Press has released Coming Out of Nowhere: Alaska Homestead Poems by Linda Schandelmeier.

Linda Schandelmeier grew up on the family homestead six miles south of the fledgling town of Anchorage, Alaska in the 1950s and '60s. The sparsity of neighbors and roads, and isolation imposed by family circumstances, made life rooted in the natural world solitary and sometimes lonely. This book, part poetic memoir and part historical document, tells the story of a resilient family surviving on moose meat, potatoes, and anything else they could gather. Schandelmeier does not shy away from unpleasant details in her family history, but she also recognizes the experience as one that was nurturing and unique. 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.

Linda Schandelmeier holds a B.S. degree in biology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her poetry has been awarded numerous prizes and distinctions, including an Artist in Residence at Denali National Park, an Individual Artist Project Award from the Rasmuson Foundation, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Alaska State Council on the Arts, and the Midnight Sun, Fejes, and Anchorage Daily News-UAA prizes for poetry. Her poems have been set to music and performed in Carnegie Hall and elsewhere. She is the author of one poetry collection, Listening Hard Among the Birches. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, including Alaska Quarterly Review, The Northern Review, Cirque, Ice-Floe, and Connecticut River Review.

For more information about this title and many more please, visit www.uapress.alaska.edu or call (800) 621-2736.

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