PORT ANGELES — The spring writers in residence at Peninsula College offer varying prisms on the world, representing the right and left hemispheres of the brain, as PC biology professor Barbara Blackie puts it.
In three free events starting tonight, John and Jan Straley of Sitka, Alaska, will delve into the literary and the scientific, the fishermen and the whales, the North Pacific Ocean and the Last Frontier.
While John is a novelist and poet whose books include The Woman Who Married a Bear, The Big Both Ways and Cold Storage, Alaska, Jan is a marine biologist with a focus on the seas’ largest mammals.
First off, John will offer a reading of his poetry and prose at 7 p.m. this evening in Maier Hall at Peninsula College, 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
Then the pair will give a joint program at 12:30 p.m. Thursday in the college’s Little Theater, as part of the free, public Studium Generale lecture series.
Jan, a University of Alaska professor who has also spent time in Neah Bay, will give a talk titled “Are You Smarter Than a Sperm Whale?” at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in the upstairs meeting room of The Landing mall, 115 E. Railroad Ave.
Jan will describe how sperm whales in the Gulf of Alaska tune into the sounds of the long-line fishing fleet, and now can “steal” black cod, halibut, and lingcod out from under the boats.
Jan’s talk will go into how the animals’ behavior has hurt the fishermen economically, how the fishermen took their concerns to government scientists and, finally, how two North Pacific Research Board projects are working on a solution to benefit the fishermen and the whales.
Admission to Thursday evening’s talk is free, while donations to the Feiro Marine Life Center, nearby on City Pier, will be welcome.
More about the writer-in-residence program can be found at www.Pencol.edu and by contacting professor Matt Teorey at 360-417-6279.
“Jan is a brilliant woman,” John said in an interview from his Sitka office.
In recent years, his wife has “activated her creative side” more and more.
“She’s crossing boundaries and doing much more creative work, and still doing groundbreaking science.
“I’m looking forward to see what she does there,” in Port Angeles.
As for John, he’ll take his listeners to his part of Alaska, a place that has, all at once, a sense of the city and the wilderness.
Sitka has a cathedral — St. Michael’s — and the streets are packed close together as in a big city.
“And right at the edge of town,” John said, “it’s absolutely wild,” with bears and their brethren.
“That’s what I love about it,” said the writer.
“And the people are likewise sophisticated and wild.”
In their talks, the Straleys travel up and down the Pacific coast. Both lived in Seattle before moving to Alaska in 1977.
John, who was Alaska’s Writer Laureate in 2006 and 2007, can’t imagine living anywhere else — even as his city sees 100 inches of annual rainfall.
This place makes “a fantastic backdrop for John’s novels,” said Blackie, who has known the Straleys since 1989, when they worked together at Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park.
“He really catches the flavor of the place and its people; the quirky nature of southeast Alaska itself.”
Quirky, yes. When he and Jan give talks on life up there, “there’s always a lot more laughter than you’d expect,” John said.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
