Some exciting news! 

Author of Just Breathe Normally, Peggy Shumaker, was announced as the new Alaska State Writer Laureate 2010-2012 by The Alaska State Council on the Arts. As State Writer Laureate, Shumaker will represent the Council and the State of Alaska in communities, conducting workshops and readings as well as connecting Alaskan writers with each other and with the outside world. She succeeds former poet laureate Nancy Lord, who is the author of Rock, Water, Wild (University of Nebraska Press, 2009).

 
In Just Breathe Normally, a traumatic cycling accident causes Shumaker to search for meaning within extremity. The book can be defined by a moving memoir of childhood and family that testifies to the power of collective empathy in the transformations that make and remake us throughout our lives.

  
Kirkus Reviews said “Shumaker displays a rare gift. . . . [H]er scattered memories come together to form a riveting and exceptionally touching story. . . . An entrancing meditation on absolution and memory.”

 
So congrats to Peggy on being the new Alaska State Writer Laureate!