Alaskan Voices
An independent press publishing Alaskan authors – writers shaped by land, season, and the people.
OUR FIRST RELEASE
Across the Wilding Plain
by Kristin Knight PaceKatie Harrison lives on a remote Arctic homestead with her parents and brother Oliver. Every day, Papa takes Katie and Oliver out onto the land to plunge into cold streams, travel secret trails, hear the songs of birds, and uncover the land’s hidden mythologies. Life in the bush has its own peculiar yet predictable rhythm, until the day Papa disappears. At only 15 years old, Katie leaves home with her magical dog Sparrow to hunt Papa down and seek the truth about his disappearance. On her journey she learns that the land is not what it seems, and creatures once relegated to myth and folklore haunt every step of her trek across the tundra.
This novel is a Finalist for the Permafrost Book Prize in Fiction.
Coming Early 2027.
Preserving and Sharing a Wildness
WHO WE ARE
Our daily experience of life happens in a vast, raw place where the boundary between wild and tame is diffuse. Why should the voices and stories that we read have to filter through lifeways built on commodity and mass appeal? Arctic Tern celebrates the voices, ways of life, cultures and aesthetics unique to the North.Dedicated to a people
Alaskans are bound by lived experience to be humbled by the land. We rely on it even while we know in our bones that we are at its mercy. We are rendered almost insignificant, all of our notions of size and scale inadequate to the landscape stretching out before us. Where better to stand and ask the questions that art needs to ask?Dedicated to a place
The art we create has the staggering power to facilitate empathy, shifts in perspective and sparks of connection. No one can own that interaction, and no one can interpose a hierarchy of meaning on it. We believe in a DIY ethos that focuses on economies of generosity, mutual aid, community and empowerment. Art gathers communities, and we aim to provide a uniquely Alaskan platform for that gathering.Dedicated to an idea
OUR TEAM
Committed to
the North
We’ve seen the Alaskan reality shows that paint the most absurd, detached picture of what our lives are actually like. In truth, we are not in survival mode 100% of the time, cascading from one misadventure to the next, battling grizzly bears, fending off our impending death by hypothermia (though this does happen, sometimes). We are people who work tirelessly every day, building lives that weave in and out of the seasons, the landscapes, and the encounters with the sometimes hardscrabble people we meet along the way. We are doing everyday things, but we are not everyday people. Our neighbors have included a polar guide, a family that built their own sod house on the Kobuk decades ago, thousand-mile dogsled race finishers, a diminutive breast cancer-surviving bear hunting guide, grizzled floatplane pilots, and a guy who has been everywhere in Alaska but would never have thought of giving a word of unsolicited advice. We don’t need our stories to be reshaped and reserviced. We don’t need our voices diluted in order to sell. We don’t need to measure credibility by broad appeal. We share genuine stories here to build community, to learn, to show humility, and to engage with the land around us.
Stories from the north. Writers whose work is inseparable from where they live.
Our Mission
The mission of Arctic Tern Press is to give Alaskan writers an in-state publishing opportunity and circumvent the hurdles of traditional publishing by offering a simple submission process, streamlined design and editing, and connections with local booksellers and artists.
Our Vision
Readers who pick up a book published on Arctic Tern Press will encounter authors who give voice to a unique way of life, feel an unfiltered connection to the land, and engender a shared sense of community across a vast and isolating landscape.
ABOUT THE PRESS