Publications

In addition to 20 years of our literary quarterly, ConnotationsThe Institute produced two anthologies to capture key ideas and voices that have been central to our work.

From the Island’s Edge: A Sitka Reader, edited by Carolyn Servid (Graywolf Press, 1995) commemorates the first decade of the Sitka Symposium. It received a Critics’ Choice Award in 1995 as one of the year’s best anthologies.

“Many cultures and schools of thought are brought together in this volume, which includes essays, poetry, and short fiction. The selections revolve around complex dilemmas on political, ethical, social, and environmental fronts—dilemmas faced by individuals, families, communities, and the larger society. Underlying these deliberate questions is a broader, yet more specific questions addressed by contributors to this collection: what is my role, my responsibility, my work in relation to these issues?

Poets and astronomers, anthropologists and novelists, natural historians and philosophers, linguists and folklorists offer their perspectives—perspectives rooted in Western and Native American traditions, in the written word and the spoken. They juxtapose aspects of the human experience that are seldom considered in relationship—the poetic imagination and the reasoned argument, and ultimately, the public shape of our private lives.”

**Please contact us with order inquires for From the Island’s Edge.

The Book of the Tongass, Carolyn Servid and Donald Snow, editors, (Milkweed Editions, 1999), offers a varied portrayal of the Tongass National Forest that encompasses the forested mountains and islands of Southeast Alaska, home of the Island Institute.

“Alaska’s southeast corner harbors the largest contiguous expanse of temperate rain forest on earth, much of it within the majestic, mysterious Tongass National Forest. Nuzzling Glacier Bay, the forests of the Tongass lie on a maze of islands and along a coastline protected by granite mountains. These mountains hold moisture along the coast, which combines with the region’s geology to form a land of huge trees and a habitat for some of the most abundant wildlife left in the county. This book captures the region’s incredible beauty and presents the unfinished story of what humans will do with one the last, best places in our midst.”

**Please contact Old Harbor Books with order inquiries for The Book of the Tongass by email or at 907-747-8808.