“Transplanted is an honest, frank and unsentimental memoir about a life-threatening leukemia diagnosis and an against-all-odds recovery. Birgit Lennertz Sarrimanolis is a skilled writer. She packs the pages with the kind of medical and logistical details anyone dealing with cancer in Alaska will appreciate, and yet this is no “how to” manual. Her story is deeply personal—and that is why it moved my heart and gave me hope.”

— Heather Lende, Alaska State Writer Laureate and author of Of Bears And Ballots and Find The Good

“An exhilarating read, Transplanted is a braided story chronicling the author’s excruciating battle with cancer against the backdrop of Alaska’s far northern landscape, a place of wild contradictions and inclement weather. Engulfed in a wilderness of her own, made up of multiple hospitalizations and the weight of exhaustion and pain, the author takes refuge in the healing powers of the hills, trees, sky and trails she has so vividly come to love…The author’s eloquent language and crisp attentiveness to place, shine, both lyrically and poetically. As sure as permafrost resists the melt, she fights long and hard to regain her health, though her life will never be the same again. Quiet triumph can be found in the fog of loss, and this author artfully shows us how.”

— Monica Devine, Author of Water Mask

“One woman’s account – lyrical, moving, occasionally quite funny – of making her home in the Far North, only to find that the wilderness was inside her.”

— Jennifer Brice, author of Unlearning To Fly… Read More

In the course of a lifetime, so much has changed in rural Alaska. Time has eroded the past ways of living; leaving in its place, a complicated straddling of the old and new.

The author takes us through the life and hard times of Kim-boy. From family loss to memories gained, Kim-boy struggles to find his way and make sense of both time and place. This is a story that could be told in many parts of Rural Alaska.

Kim-boy’s life is a story of changes and, perhaps, tragedy. His life was a sand bar as the tide rises. Smooth at first, seemingly endless, only to narrow and disappear with the incoming tide of an everchanging world.

—Samuel Crow, born and raised in Bethel, Alaska, retired educator, currently with AVCP (Assoc. of Village Council Presidents)

This is a story of cultural change through the character of Kim-boy who lives along the Kuskokwim River in Alaska. He experiences the advent of outsiders who come from the Lower 48 and disrupt his hunter-gatherer life of living off the land. Kim-boy’s world changes as his culture transitions from a barter to a cash economy. But Kim-boy is resilient. He overcomes the challenges as he is forced to adapt to an academic classroom, deal with the negative effects of alcohol abuse, experience the harsh reality of death and disease and the tearing down of his supportive, extended family.

Each chapter begins with an epigraph to remind the reader that the land of the Yup’ik on the Kuskokwim Delta is part of a larger world. And, prior to each chapter, a short poem by the author challenges the readers’ thinking. It is a gentle nudge to ponder the events happening on the Kuskokwim and what’s to come in the next part of the narrative.

I could very well have known Kim-boy. I grew up in a town on the Kuskokwim at about the same time period. I can attest that Sky Changes brings to the reader a sliver of the life among the Yup’ik during this time.

—John Weise, PhD, retired Alaskan educator

 
About Cirque Press

Cirque Press was established in 2017, to publish the work of writers from Alaska and the Northwest.

It developed quite naturally from Cirque Journal, established in 2008.

Sandra Kleven and Michael Burwell are founders, editors and publishers.… Read More

A scholar, memoirist, and biographer, Alan Weltzien, as On the Beach amply demonstrates, is also a major Montana poet. Just as Norman Maclean knew rivers and family, Weltzien knows mountains and shorelines (and rivers, too), knows steep pitches and snow, knows what it means to grow up and grow older, what it means to be a son, a husband, and a father; these are poems of work and books, history, friendship, and returning home. Deeply moving, and deeply felt, On the Beach stands with the finest poetry and nature writing ever produced in the Treasure State.

—Brady Harrison, author of The Term Between: Stories

I wish this poet was sitting at my kitchen table, wise-cracking and spinning tales. His eyes and his heart are wide open. His intellect, both electric and electrifying, strikes lightning poem by poem. He’s humorous, humble, humane. Alan Weltzien’s On the Beach, threads “decades of geographies” into a heartfelt collection of memories and conjectures, all offered to us by the generous professor who laughs at himself when “shat” upon mid-lecture by a bird in an outdoor classroom. At the height of his artistry, this poet winks and claims he’s “ever more certain of what I don’t know.”

—Lowell Jaeger, Montana Poet Laureate 2017-2019

About Cirque Press

Cirque Press was established in 2017, to publish the work of writers from Alaska and the Northwest.

It developed quite naturally from Cirque Journal, established in 2008.

Sandra Kleven and Michael Burwell are founders, editors and publishers.

 … Read More

In Nothing Got Broke, Larry Slonaker does a remarkable thing: He puts you firmly on the Hi-Line of Montana, sends the ceaseless wind swirling around you, gives you a taste of the beer, and sets you up with a view down Main Street and into the hearts, hopes, and broken dreams of the people in that place. That he gets Montana comes shimmering off these pages…. Slonaker reveals it with appropriate measures of reverence and unflinching candor.

—Craig Lancaster, author of And It Will Be a Beautiful Life and 600 Hours of Edward

Doug Rossiter has a secret, and in the spirit of modern Western writers Kevin McCafferty and C. J. Box, Larry Slonaker roots us firmly in today’s Montana as that secret is slowly revealed. Along the way, Slonaker holds up a mirror for us, where we can ponder Rossiter’s ruminations on the truths of Manifest Destiny in the American West, and squirm because they cut so close to the bone.

—Doug Pope, author of The Way to Gaamaak Cove

Larry Slonaker knows the raw world he writes of, in this gritty narrative slashed with liberal dashes of noir. He demonstrates a sharp eye for details that count and a keen ear for dialogue inflected with regional accents.

—Ron McFarland, author of The Rockies in First Person and Appropriating Hemingway

About Cirque Press

Cirque Press was established in 2017, to publish the work of writers from Alaska and the Northwest.

It developed quite naturally from Cirque Journal, established in 2008.

Sandra Kleven and Michael Burwell are founders, editors and publishers.… Read More

“I felt like I was swept downstream in a fastmoving river, bounced off rocks, swirled into eddies, and spit out on the bank to dry. Feldman’s storytelling is expertly crafted, visceral and raw though he skillfully manages to squeeze in charm and tenderness to boot. In other words, this book has it all. A meaty, passionate, sexy mystery that will twist your gut. Take a big bite and chew a while on Feldman’s whodunit. It’s really, really good.”

—Monica Devine, author of Water Mask

“Crisp dialogue drives the action at high-speed in this short novel that takes place in a small town, where a local boy who left to become an LA detective returns from an Internal Affairs Group investigation as a suspect in a gruesome murder. Add romance and lust. What more could you want?”

—Ron McFarland, author of The Rockies in First Person, Subtle Thieves, and Stranger in Town

 
About Cirque Press

Cirque Press was established in 2017, to publish the work of writers from Alaska and the Northwest.

It developed quite naturally from Cirque Journal, established in 2008.

Sandra Kleven and Michael Burwell are founders, editors and publishers.… Read More

Author Index