Our programs strengthen community through literature, story, and conversation.

Latest Blogs

Our Alaska Stories 2018

The Island Institute program Our Alaska Stories supports Mt Edgecumbe High School students in making films that tell the stories of their home, family, community and way of life. The students work under the guidance of talented local filmmakers Lee House and Alyssa...

Tidelines Journey 2018

Recent stories from the Juneau Empire: Young Alaskan filmmakers show different ways of life around the state Tidelines Journey Residency brings young directors and movies to Juneau

Sitka Sentinel story on Nikki Zielinski

Shannon Haugland wrote this story for the Sitka Sentinel about Island Institute poet-in-residence Nikki Zielinski. The story appeared on Oct 28, 2016.  For centuries fairy tales have been used to introduce and address difficult subjects to children and adults....

About the Island Institute

For almost three decades, the Island Institute’s varied programs have explored social, environmental, and cultural questions of local and global concern. Our work falls into two broad categories: Fostering a Language of Place and Community and Fostering Community Well-Being.

The program that launched the organization—the Sitka Symposium—involved us deeply in language and story—essential tools we use to understand the world and tell each other about it. Threads of relationship between story, place, and community were constants in Symposium discussions. We broadened our interest in these relationships by adding our Resident Fellowsprogram for writers and our literary journal Connotations. With all these literary programs we were interested in fostering a language of place and community.