Anne Hanley, Alaska, State Writer
Anne
Hanley’s plays have been produced in Massachusetts, California and
Alaska. She has worked in public, broadcast and cable television and has
written for the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the
Yale Alumni magazine and many other publications. In 1992, her play
Shotridge won the Alaska Native Plays contest; three of her plays have
earned Panelists’ Choice Awards at the Last Frontier Playwriting
Conference in Valdez; and Ward’s Welding received the Conference’s
major award. She lives in Fairbanks where she is a founding member fo
the Lookging Glass Group Theatre and spearheads the Group’s biweekly
playwriting workshop. Hanley is an associate member of the Dramatists
Guild and has an MFA in film from UCLA.
Appointment: 2002 by State Arts Council, term ends June 2004
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I believe the role of the state writer should be to encourage all kinds
of people to write. Writing is basic to our human nature. It should not
be thought of as the special provenance of writers any more than speech
is only for actors. Writing is one of the best therapies to help us understand
our lives. It is a way into the secret recess of our hearts. It is a way
to help us figure out who we are and what is important to us. Everyone
has something to say; everyone has the right to write. The state writer
should be out convincing everyone from schoolchildren with shiny new lives
to older poeple with richly layered lives to probe their experience through
writing. The state writer ought to model the writing life and have a passion
for spreading the gospel of writing to any and all audiences willing to
listen.
– Anne Hanley
© 2003 Poetry & Politics. All Rights Reserved.
