What place does wonder have in such a fractured world as we live in today? What is the purpose of this focus in writing, both personally and in larger cultural contexts? These are the questions that three authors and attendees of the 2024 Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference grappled with during the opening panel on Saturday, May 18 in Kachemak Bay Campus’s Pioneer Hall.

Local poet and conference director Erin Coughlin Hollowell introduced this year’s theme, “Wonder in the Wounded World,” prior to the start of the panel on Saturday morning. She described how the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference has undergone a “gradual evolution” over the past four years.

“Each conference is slightly different than the last, and that’s because the needs of writers are changing, and we’re trying to change to better meet them,” she said. “This year we’re not only learning how to be effective writers and poets, but we’re investigating how writers can impact a world that is difficult — a wounded world, but one that is so full of awe.”

The conference theme was inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who attended the 2023 writers’ conference as keynote speaker. In her introduction, Hollowell referenced Kimmerer’s book, “Braiding Sweetgrass,” in which she wrote, “Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair — not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives to me daily, and I must return the gift.”

Saturday’s opening panel consisted of three authors who joined this year’s conference as faculty members: Sean Hill, Debra Magpie Earling and David George Haskell.

Hill teaches in the University of Montana’s MFA Program and is the author of two poetry collections, “Dangerous Goods,” published in 2014, and “Blood Ties & Brown Liquor,” published in 2008. According to the conference faculty webpage, Hill has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, Stanford University and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Earling, a member of the Bitterroot Salish — one of three tribes of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation in Montana — is currently an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Montana in Missoula, where she teaches fiction and Native American Studies. Her latest book, “The Lost Journals of Sacajewea,” published in May 2023, is a “devastatingly beautiful novel” that challenges prevailing historical narratives of Sacajewea, according to the conference faculty page.

Haskell is a writer and a biologist whose books about forests, people and the sensory richness of life have twice been selected as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, the conference website states. Haskell is also a William R. Kenan Jr. Professor at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Earling opened the panel with a note about a conversation she’d earlier shared with Hill and Haskell, in which they discussed “the small and important things that sustain us as writers.”

“I come from a culture that believes that storytelling will save us,” she said. “In the darkest winters, when there’s cold and when there’s hunger, we continue to live by telling stories. If you could focus on story, if you could move your physical self into a grander ‘self’ of community … it could keep you living.”

She followed with a question to the other panelists about how they experience moments of wonder and channel it into their writing.

Hill responded that he “operates as a writer through attentiveness.”

“I don’t always write about wonder, but I often am noticing those things that are unexpected and that stop me for a moment,” he said.

Haskell said that, for him, wonder is “in that space between the particular and the very big.” He contemplated the question between wonder or beauty, and brokenness or wounds.

“What do we make of a world that is unspeakably beautiful and life giving, but also unfathomably broken?” he said. “Writing helps us find out way through that and I think the process of writing is in a way tapping into some of that sacred wonder.”

Haskell spoke on how writing is a product of interconnectedness, also pointing out that writing can be “part of the problem” of fracture and division.

“Writing about nature (often) places nature outside of humans and places us outside of nature,” he said. “We stand outside and wonder at nature, rather than wondering within. That is a very strong tendency in a lot of … writing about nature and science. That process of ‘othering,’ of standing outside, also happens when people wonder about other cultures and ‘other’ other cultures. Narrative in the English tradition … has been part of the problem of creating injustice and fracture and exploitation.

“So as we think about the role of writing in wonder and brokenness, acknowledging that and thinking carefully about what it would mean for us then to not be part of the problem, to be about healing and justice and belonging — those are very important questions to ask. One answer for me is to lean into particularity.”

In the last half hour of the panel, audience members were invited to ask the faculty speakers questions. One attendee asked whether or not wonder has a place in writing when there is so much sadness in the world, or whether it distracts from “important” issues.

Earling explained how wonder can coexist with sadness through an example of people who are attending a wake or funeral share stories that bring laughter and connectivity.

“We’re all broken in so many ways, but we’re trying to sing in this broken realm, and I think, ‘Does it help if we’re all grieving at the same time? Or does it help if there’s always levity?’ In order to make a song, there has to be the low notes and the high notes,” she said.

Haskell agreed, saying that sorrow will come in the trajectory of life and that when opportunities for joy arise, as long as “it’s a joy that’s not destructive,” we should accept those opportunities.

“In the Judeo-Christian tradition, at least some portions of it, there’s a notion that turning away from that joy is in fact scorning a gift,” he said. “In this context, I think it’s helpful to know that there is going to be suffering and grief, and when those opportunities or ‘undeserved’ moments of joy arrive, we should take them with gratitude and see if we can invite other people into that experience as well.”

Find more information about the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference at writersconf.kpc.alaska.edu/.

(from left to right) Sean Hill, Debra Magpie Earling and David George Haskell lead the opening panel for the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference at Kachemak Bay Campus on Saturday, May 18, 2024 in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)

Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference director Erin Coughlin Hollowell (right) welcomes attendees to the opening panel on Saturday, May 18, 2024 at Kachemak Bay Campus in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)