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Russell Potter is one of the best known experts on the Franklin Expedition, the failed 1845 attempt at finding the Northwest Passage, which left both ships lost for a century-and-a-half and all the men dead, the last stragglers resorting to cannibalism. Potter coined the term "Franklin Fever" to describe how the story obsesses certain people, leaving them unable to quit thinking and reading about it. As a fellow sufferer of the condition, I've found his writings on the topic to be the best around. He and several other experts will take part in a day-long symposium at the Anchorage Museum this Saturday, September 21. 


I'll be there, and in advance I got to interview Potter. He told me, "It's one of those stories that is fairly simple to relate, and yet which has numerous unresolved aspects which can easily lead people down the rabbit holes. And some people love going down them. It also has pretty powerful historical significance. And there is always more to learn. So, in the sense that it becomes a feverish interest, there really is no known cure!"

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David James is an Alaskan author and literary critic whose work has been published by the Anchorage Daily News, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Anchorage Press, Alaska Dispatch News, Alaska Pulse, Alaska Magazine, and Ester Republic. He is editing a forthcoming anthology of Alaska writing.
Kendell Macomber discusses aerial dancing,which she practices and teaches in Fairbanks, and her pathway into the Fairbanks professional dancing world, where she is a prominent contributor. One day I saw aerialists, and I said, that’s the next level; I have to do that. So I got up in the air and haven’t looked back.” Read more here .
A short story collection appears poised to fizzle out in the early going, then suddenly catches fire with the fourth entry. "Twenty-eight pages and three stories in, readers can be forgiven for thinking that the book will be a collection of mundane tales of urban professionals who cheat on their spouses and nothing more. Apart from being set in Alaska, there seems to be little here that differentiates this book from work found in the average literary journal. Therefore it becomes tempting to decide that it's not going anywhere and set it aside. "This would be a mistake."