'Dark Winter Nights' to hold statewide open mic

February 22, 2016

"Dark Winter Nights: True Stories from Alaska" will hold its first open-mic storytelling event across Alaska using the Online With Libraries video conferencing network.

The events will be held from 6-8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 25, in the Noel Wien Library and will include storyteller locations in Kodiak, Valdez, Unalaska, Kenai and Juneau.

This open mic-style event has no preselected storytellers and will instead allow on-the-spot entries from the audience members at all locations. Stories should be no longer than 10 minutes, have happened to the storytellers and be true stories from Alaska.

Admission is free but seating in Fairbanks is limited. The Noel Wien Library is located at 1251 Cowles St. in Fairbanks.

The Alaska OWL Project is a statewide Internet access program. OWL provides bandwidth support to remote Alaska libraries and provides videoconferencing services allowing rural Alaskans to participate in and observe a host of online activities, in addition to digital literacy training for library workers. "Dark Winter Nights" is one of many scheduled events on this elaborate and unique Alaska networking program.

"Dark Winter Nights" was created by UAF journalism Professor Robert Prince, who was frustrated with depictions of Alaska on reality TV shows. “Many reality TV programs have created a caricature of Alaska," he said. "I figured if people wanted to know what life in Alaska is really like, it should be Alaskans bringing them those true stories.”

Prince created his own documentary radio program and podcast with the goal of sharing authentic stories from Alaska with the rest of the world. The live event is intended to recruit more storytellers and build awareness of the radio program and podcast. The radio program airs the third Saturday of each month at 7 p.m. on KUAC-FM 89.9. The podcast is available on iTunes or through the "Dark Winter Nights" website.

"Dark Winter Nights" is always looking for storytellers for events, so if you have a great story about living in Alaska, contact Prince at 907-474-6249, rob.prince@alaska.edu or visit www.darkwinternights.com.

The Journalism Department is housed within in the UAF College of Liberal Arts. The College of Liberal Arts, the largest of UAF’s academic units, is comprised of 20 different academic departments representing the arts, humanities, social sciences and language disciplines.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Robert Prince, 907-474-6249, rob.prince@alaska.edu; Naomi Horne, nehorne@alaska.edu, 907-474-6464

ON THE WEB: www.darkwinternights.com; www.uaf.edu/cla ; http://library.alaska.gov/dev/owl.html