Alaska Center for the Book

Supporters of writers, literacy and education are winners of the 2020 Contributions to Literacy in Alaska (CLIA) awards, announced by the Alaska Center for the Book.

This year’s winners are Matthew Komatsu, founder of the Danger Close Alaska program for veterans and civilian writers; David Stevenson, director of the Creative Writing and Literary Arts program at University of Alaska-Anchorage; and the late Phyllis Fast, an Alaskan anthropologist and author. An award for excellence in early childhood literacy goes to Sealaska Heritage Institute and Best Beginnings.

Alaska Center for the Book is Alaska’s liaison with the U.S. Library of Congress Center for the Book. Since 1993, the CLIA awards have honored more than 90 people and programs from across the state for significant contributions in literacy, the literary arts, or the preservation of the written and spoken word.

This year’s awards are being presented virtually as part of Alaska Book Week, Oct. 4-10.

Matthew Komatsu of Anchorage was selected for his leadership in building Danger Close Alaska, a literary community of civilians and veterans. The program was started in 2016 to provide opportunities for writers of all levels. Komatsu is an author and a veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has been widely published in literary journals, nominated twice for Pushcart Prize and won a 2017 Alaska Literary Award. In 2018, Komatsu received a grant from the Pulitzer Center to travel to Japan to explore the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami in which his grandmother was killed. Learn more about Komatsu and Danger Close here.

Dr. David Stevenson of Anchorage is director of the UA-Anchorage Creative Writing and Literary Arts program, and guided the low-residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program from its inception. In addition to teaching and mentoring others, he is a novelist and book reviewer, and has written extensively on mountain climbing and the outdoors. Stevenson’s short fiction collection, Letters from Chamonix, was the 2014 winner of the Banff Mountain Book Award for Fiction and Poetry. For more about Stevenson, visit his blog here.

Dr. Phyllis A. Fast, an anthropologist, professor, artist and author of Koyukon Athabascan descent, is winner of a posthumous CLIA award. Born and raised in Anchorage, she earned her bachelor’s degree at University of Alaska-Fairbanks as a young woman, and then returned to school in her 40s to earn a masters from UA-Anchorage and her doctorate from Harvard. She taught at UAA and UAF before retiring in 2014. She was the author of the award-winning Northern Athabascan Survival: Women, Community and the Future. Her writings also include two children’s books and four Native American novels. She died in September 2019.

Sealaska Heritage Institute and Best Beginnings are joint recipients of the Sue Sherif Literacy Award, for their excellence in early childhood literacy. Sealaska Heritage Institute created the “Baby Raven Reads” series as part of its early literacy program for Alaska Native families, and Best Beginnings created “Seasons of Alaska.” Both series highlight indigenous themes and Alaska Native authors, illustrators and photographers, with the goals of encouraging young children to become readers, allowing Alaska Native children to see their cultures reflected accurately, and improving cross-cultural understanding. Learn more here and here.

Do you know of a person, agency or program doing great work for literacy and literature in Alaska? CLIA award nominations are accepted year-round here. You’ll also find information on previous CLIA award winners and the other programs we support.