Cover illustration: Indra Arriaga Delgado

A collection of Alaska LGBTQ short fiction and poetry

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA PRESS

EDITORS | Martha Amore & Lucian Childs

This pathbreaking anthology opens a window onto the diverse lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning Alaskans.

Diversity has always been central to Alaska identity, as the state’s population consists of people with many different backgrounds, viewpoints, and life experiences. This book opens a window onto these diverse lives, gathering stories and poems about lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, and queer life into a brilliant, pathbreaking anthology. Featuring a wide spectrum of LGBTQ and straight ally writers, these stories and poems reflect rural and small town life, as well as that of its urban hubs.

In these pages we see the panoply of LGBTQ life in Alaska today, from the quotidian urban adventures of a family—shopping, going out, working—to intimate encounters with Alaska’s breathtaking natural beauty. At a time of great change and major strides in LGBTQ civil rights, Building Fires in the Snow shows us an Alaska that shatters stereotypes and reveals a side of life that’s been little seen until now.

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Praise for Building Fires in the Snow

In these short stories and poems ... we are poignantly reminded that labels can never encompass all the beautiful variations of humanity.—Eowyn Ivey, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Snow Child

... artful reflections that will place you, for a moment, in Alaska and deeper wildernesses as well. Essential reading ...—David Vann, Prix Médicis étranger winner and author of Legend of a Suicide

... a large book of larger empathies, each and every character finding themselves made more whole in one another or in the natural world ...—Jericho Brown, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Tradition and The New Testament

More praise for Building Fires in the Snow