Alaskan themed fairy tales
by Vicki Heisser |
As part of a creative writing class, Dr. Dennis Humphrey and his class collaborated
to create a collection of fairy tales with Alaskan connections. Dr. Humphrey then
edited the collection and published it through Amazon's self-publishing website, KDP.
He plans to repeat this process in the fall for his creative writing class with a
science fiction theme.
I had a chance to speak with one of Humphrey’s creative writing students, Kerra Apolo,
about this project and her experience in the writing class. “It was something that Dr. Humphrey wanted to do. I first heard of it during our writing
group's meeting while writing our horror play. He started with a horror writing class
and then moved to fairytales. I was in the horror writing class and continued on to
fairytales to continue writing and growing my skills. I have been writing fairy tales
since I was little. But the challenging part of this class was trying to figure out
a story based in Alaska or that has an Alaskan-esq feel to it without being culturally
insensitive. Some of us made up a story and some of us took a public domain story
and gave it a twist.”
Writing isn’t always easy, and as Apolo notes, when it comes to writing, “Figuring
out what you want to write is the hardest. So I say, ‘Do the research. Take pieces
you like. Make a list of basic story structure. Start writing.’ My advice is to always
keep a notebook near. You never know when an idea will hit.
To check out Kerra Apolo’s work, as well as the work of other students in Humphrey’s
creative writing course, you can purchase a copy of the collection on Amazon. All royalties from book sales will be donated to PWSC.