Inupiaq poet wins Whiting award

Inupiaq poet wins prestigious national writing award

By Mike DunhamAn Inupiaq mom from Anchorage has picked up one of America's most prestigious literary awards. Poet Joan Kane, 32, was among 10 writers to receive a $50,000 Whiting Writers' Award at a ceremony in New York City on Wednesday night.

The Whiting awards have been presented annually for the past 25 years. Among authors who have received the award early in their careers are playwrights August Wilson and Tony Kushner and essayist Tobias Wolff. Alaskans who have previously won include Natalie Kusz and former Daily News columnist Seth Kantner.

Kane's poetry is inspired, in part, by what she calls her "ancestral landscapes" on the Seward Peninsula and King Island.

She has previously received an Individual Artist Award from the Rasmuson Foundation, the Alaska State Council on the Arts' Connie Boochever Fellowship and been a winner in the Anchorage Daily News Creative Writing Contest. Her play, "The Golden Tusk," was presented at the Anchorage Museum this summer. She is co-curator of the "Virtual Subsistence" art and literature exhibit now on display at the MTS Gallery in Mountain View.Comment:  For more on Native poets, see Crow Poet Laureate and Wiyaka Is Poetry Champion.