Mary Odden

Mary Odden studied writing at the University of Montana and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, earning an MFA at UAF with a concentration in creative-nonfiction. Since arriving in Alaska from eastern Oregon in 1977, she’s had a special interest in oral stories from rural Alaska – interviewing and transcribing for many kinds of projects and articles. Mary taught writing and communications classes for the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, McGrath, and Glennallen, and worked as a village teen counselor in Yukon River Villages in the early 2000s. Landing back in the Copper Basin in 2004 after a couple of decades of seasonal fire-fighting around the state, she took over the Copper Valley newspaper from its Kenny Lake founder and owner, Sam Lightwood. Sam’s wife Marian had told him either his forty cows or the paper were going to exit their homestead, a serious threat. Mary and husband Jim said they’d do five years, which they did, from 2005 to 2010, when Matt Lorenz stepped up to the plate. Mary and Jim are grateful to have helped keep the paper running. Matt’s successor, John Tierney, and his able cohorts, have made the Copper River Record into an even better paper and resource, casting a wide geographic and subject-matter net around the basin from McCarthy to Paxson. Community journalism rocks!

Mary’s creative work has appeared in Cirque, Alaska Magazine, the Georgia Review, Alaska Quarterly Review and other journals. Odden’s book of memoir/essays, Mostly Water: Reflections Rural and North, was published in June 2020 by Boreal Books/Red Hen Press. Odden received an Alaska Literary Award from the Alaska Arts and Culture Foundation in 2020.

At present, beyond endless homesteadish work and chores at home in Nelchina, plus helping Jim keep track of his heating business, Mary teaches community writing classes and offers editing and publication assistance to other writers for their projects of memoir and biography. Her own current works-in-progress are some non-fiction articles and essays for magazines, and a book-length fiction about confusticating histories and persistent wonders in a rural Alaska town “out west.” You can visit Mary’s sometimes updated website at maryodden.com for her activities and blog-thoughts.