Porphyry Press & Solstice Books present: GHOSTS LAUNCH
You’re invited to the official Ghosts of Distant Trees book launch, the debut memoir-in-essays by Denali-based author Erica Watson and the latest from award-winning Porphyry Press. A brief reading and author conversation between Erica and Fairbanks-based guest author Julianne Warren will be preceded by a short publisher’s intro to McCarthy’s off-grid indie press—the most remote book publisher in North America. Beer, wine, NA options, and cocktails will be for sale along with books, which of course Erica would be happy to sign or inscribe.
Ghosts of Distant Trees traces the layered ecologies of Denali National Park, Alaska—its vast and shifting landscape, seasonal labor rhythms, and subtle politics. Haunted by fire and thaw, these essays resist elegy, offering instead a complex meditation on belonging, vulnerability, and the fragile intimacies that persist in a warming world.
Erica Watson is an essayist, writing instructor, knitter, and occasional community organizer living on the boundary of Denali National Park. Her experiences in conservation advocacy, tourism, and environmental education inform her writing, which has appeared in Terrain.org and About Place Journal, among others. She is a graduate of the University of Alaska Anchorage MFA program, and a recipient of an Alaska Literary Award.
Julianne Warren is a writer, educator, and activist in Fairbanks with a PhD in ecology and an MFA in creative writing. She listens for how land and story meet. She wrote "Alaska" Is Not a Blank Space: Unsettling Aldo Leopold's Odyssey (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey: Rediscovering the Author of A Sand County Almanac (2nd ed., Island Press, 2016). Other works appear in edited volumes and magazines, most recently in Arcadia and Chapter House Journal.
Porphyry Press is the award-winning indie book publisher based near McCarthy, Alaska, in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Titles include Cold Mountain Path by Tom Kizzia, Compass Lines by John Messick, Raised by Ferns by Erica Watson, and the forthcoming memoir-in-essays Raised by Ferns by the poet Maya Jewell Zeller, and Mary Odden’s novel, Sky Wheels.
Solstice Books is Fairbanks' woman-owned-and-run, independent bookstore in the heart of downtown. The store adjoins Gather.
Gather is a curated community social space in Fairbanks, and an art gallery + coworking lounge + wet or dry event venue.
Wednesday, November 19, 2025 · Gather, 714 3rd Ave, Fairbanks, Alaska · free
doors at 5:30 PM · program at 6:00 PM · questions: jeremy@porphyry.press
You’re invited to the Ghosts of Distant Trees book launch in Fairbanks, Alaska on Nov. 19, 2025