Storyknife writers' retreat: Alaskan author plans to double opportunity for women writers.

• Author: Gallion, Mari
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Building Alaska

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Dana Stabenow, the author of twenty-nine books including those in the wildly popular Kate Shugak series, doesn't forget where she came from--in more ways than one.

Not only is her Kate Shugak character an Aleut who lives on a 160-acre homestead in a generic national park in Alaska, the state where Stabenow was born, raised, and calls home--but Stabenow also hasn't forgotten the life-changing investment that was made on behalf of Hedgebrook Farm Retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island, Washington, where she was granted two weeks of room, board, and solitude in order to apply her focused energy towards what would later be her first published book.

It was the combination of these two formative components in Stabenow's life that provided inspiration for what she sees as her most important project of all, the product of all her written works combined: Storyknife Writers' Retreat, a proposed six-cabin retreat for women writers--in the tradition of Hedgebrook Farm with an Alaskan twist--expected to serve a projected forty (with potential to serve up to one hundred) women writers each year by providing room, board, solitude, transportation from Anchorage, and Alaska experiences to help them hone their craft.

The retreat will be built on six acres of ocean view property in Homer. Select women writers will be granted a stay between six and eight weeks, write all day, and come together for dinner in the main house, where meals will be prepared and served. These six cabins at Storyknife will give aspiring women writers a place of their own and time free of any other obligation. Their only job while at the retreat is to write.

Where She Came From

Born in Anchorage and raised in Kachemak Bay, Stabenow spent her early years surrounded by Alaska Native friends, neighbors, and culture.

"I didn't realize I was 'white' until I went to college," she says, indicating that skin color was as much a non-issue to her friends as it was to her.

It only makes sense that Kate Shugak, the protagonist in most of her novels, would be a composite of those people to which the author was exposed, representing the quintessential strong and truly Alaskan female character. Stabenow hopes to garner interest among the Alaska Native community, not only in the form of grantees, but also funders interested in helping preserve what will otherwise be lost.

"Litera scripta manent," Stabenow says. "What is written endures. If you don't write it down, it will be lost--period--end. In the Bush, there is a lifestyle going on now that is not going to survive the...