Library Lecture Series: Ross Coen and John Haines See more about the lecture series and upcoming speakers here. "All is Well": The Life, Death, and Diary of a Backcountry Pioneer Ross Coen and John Haines About the speakers: John Haines is the first Poet Laureate of Alaska, and the author of many collections of poetry and essays on life in the north. He homesteaded in Richardson, Alaska in the 1950s. He teaches graduate level and honors English classes at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Ross Coen is a historian and regular writer for The Ester Republic. He works at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power at UAF as Rural Energy Specialist, a joint position with the Tanana Chiefs Conference. He has taught conversational English to children and adults in Japan, and served as Climate Change Advisor for the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in Washington, DC.
Photo: Fred Campbell, left, and John Haines, circa 1950s. When a young John Haines began homesteading in the now-deserted town of Richardson, Alaska, in the 1950s, one of his mentors was an old sourdough named Fred Campbell who had lived in the backcountry for five decades. Campbell taught the newcomer the ways of the North—how to hunt, fish, trap, travel, and survive in the wilderness. Haines, an aspiring poet who would later write about Campbell and the other Richardson old-timers in both his poetry and prose, recovered the old man’s diary after his death. Kept by Campbell on the reverse side of Carnation milk labels, the diary offers a window not only into the life of a backcountry pioneer, but to a way of life nearly gone. Join us for an evening of poetry and history, as John Haines reads a selection of his poems about the Richardson old-timers, and Ross Coen reads from Fred Campbell’s diary and provides a historical sketch of a ghost town down the highway. Photo below: Fred Campbell, left, and John Haines, circa 1950s.
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