I’ve been fortunate to have traveled to ten communities in Coastal Alaska in the last four months as part of my Alaska Reads Tour. It’s been tricky, and at times exhausting, balancing my teaching job with my Alaska Reads commitments but well worth the effort to meet with readers of all ages all over Alaska.
Here’s a write-up from the Wrangell Sentinel of my most recent author visit. Wrangell is a small community is Southeast Alaska accessible only by boat or plane.
A big thank you to the Alaska Center for the Book for choosing my novel Surviving Bear Island as the 2022-23 Alaska Reads Book.
Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019), an Alaska Battle of the Books Selection, Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), the 2022 Alaska Reads Book, a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection, Hostile Territory (Macmillan 2020), an Anchorage Daily News Best Book of 2020, and Follow the River (Move Books 2021), a 2021 Junior Library Guild Selection. You can order all of Paul’s books here.
Today (Tuesday, October 4th, 2022), I’ll be giving a Presentation from 5 to 6 pm. Alaska Time in Homer, Alaska as part of my Alaska Reads Tour.
You can also see this presentation live via zoom. I’ll be talking about my books, how I became a writer, the writing process, doing a bit of reading, and taking questions.
To join via zoom, please email Cinda for the link: cnofziger@ci.homer.ak.us
Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019), an Alaska Battle of the Books Selection, Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), the 2022 Alaska Reads Book, a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection, Hostile Territory (Macmillan 2020), an Anchorage Daily News Best Book of 2020, and Follow the River (Move Books 2021), a 2021 Junior Library Guild Selection. You can order all of Paul’s books here.
A great review of Follow The River came out in both the Anchorage Daily News and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Below are a couple of snippets from the review. You can read the full review here:
–Greci has the skills to show young readers that, despite our conflicts, we all have shared humanity. It’s a much needed message.–David James, Anchorage Daily News
–Young readers are who Greci is targeting. As an educator, he’s aware of the fact that many boys in upper primary grades tend to quit reading altogether….Greci accomplishes this task by keeping the action moving swiftly. Chapters are brief, and most end in cliffhangers that will keep young readers turning pages. Fortunately, with Alaska, Greci has a landscape that can kill people in any number of ways. And from one cliffhanger to the next, Greci manages to rope in quite a few of them. His ability to find unique new dangers with each book is impressive–David James, Anchorage Daily News
The four novels I’ve published in my writing career thus far are all written with the intention of engaging reluctant readers. That said, I sincerely hope that avid readers will enjoy them too. I strive to write page-turners that have depth and complexity, and while the external survival plots move forward, my hope is that the internal journeys of the characters are just as compelling.
Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019) and Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection, Hostile Territory (Macmillan 2020), an Anchorage Daily News Best Book of 2020, and Follow the River (Move Books 2021), a 2021 Junior Library Guild Selection. You can order all of Paul’s books here.
Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015) has been chosen as the Alaska Reads book for 2022.
The official Press Release is below.
Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019) and Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection, Hostile Territory (Macmillan 2020), an Anchorage Daily News Best Book of 2020, and Follow the River (Move Books 2021), a 2021 Junior Library Guild Selection. You can order all of Paul’s books here.
As a full-time special education teacher, doing author visits to schools can pose some challenges. My job doesn’t stop when I’m not in my classroom. Over the years I’ve used part of my Spring Break to do school visits outside of my own school district.
But often, the requests come from within my district or from within my own school. I like to be accessible for local kids who are reading my books so at my school if a teacher is using one or more of my books in their classes I’ll pop in for a question & answer session during my prep period.
When I get an invitation from another school, I’m sometimes able to work out using professional leave to cover the visit. I do a few of these each year, also question & answer sessions for classes that are using my books.
In general, I have found these sessions to be extremely enjoyable because they are so interactive: the students have a lot of ownership over what happens.
Also, Q & A sessions don’t require much preparation on my part so I can drop what I’m doing in my classroom and switch gears without a lot of stress. I ask the teachers and librarians involved to have kids prepare some questions ahead of time as a starting point.
Recently I spent a school day at Tanana Middle School. I met with seven groups of students for question & answer sessions. I met with every student in the building in groups ranging from 25 to 70 students. When it was time for English class, they came to the library.
On this particular day, half the school was participating in a vow of silence for 24 hours. Some students came with whiteboards and wrote their questions out and held them up. Others typed them on an IPAD and they appeared on a big screen.
I was pleasantly surprised at how engaged the “vow-of-silence” students were and at how the room would focus whenever a whiteboard was held up or a question appeared on the big screen. I’m glad I didn’t know ahead of time about the vow-of-silence activity because I would have worried about whether there would be enough student engagement for dynamic conversations and all of my worry would have been for nothing.
Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019) and Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection, Hostile Territory (Macmillan 2020), an Anchorage Daily News Best Book of 2020, and Follow the River (Move Books 2021), a 2021 Junior Library Guild Selection. You can order all of Paul’s books here.
My debut novel, Surviving Bear Island (Move 2015), is a Junior Library Guild Selection and a Scholastic Reading Club Pick. Its sequel, Follow The River (Move 2021) also a Junior Library Guild Selection is my most recent work. I'm also the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019), and Hostile Territory (Macmillan 2020). When I'm not writing I spend lots of time exploring the roadless areas of Alaska on foot and by kayak. I also teach reading and writing. I am represented by Amy Tipton of Signature Literary Agency.
You can contact me at paulgreci(at)yahoo(dot)com
Northwriter 