Purely Alaska showcases "ordinary" people with extraordinary insights amid some of the most magnificent, rugged, wild and exotic places in America's largest yet by far most sparsely populated state. Purely Alaska was not written by outsiders, including not even "outsiders" from urban Alaska. Indeed, these writers share experiences only those who live in rural Alaska can capture as authentically, as unassumingly.

In a state where more than half the population lives in the Anchorage area, life outside the more urban centers (called rural Alaska or the Alaska Bush) embraces a remote, exotic, mostly roadless northern land where most people who travel must fly, or ply often-treacherous waterways in summer, or in winter follow primitive trails over frozen land, lakes, rivers, and even the sea. Purely Alaska showcases a diverse assortment of rural Alaskans who hail from the forbidding shores of the Arctic Ocean to the lush rainforests in Southeast Alaska a thousand miles away.

Join these writers as they detail Inupiaq elder Nellie Woods' years-long ordeal in the 1930s driving a herd of stubborn reindeer across extreme northern Alaska to starving Eskimos in northern Canada Experience up close a young Native man's more contemporary struggle with drug and alcohol addiction. Enjoy the amusing vagaries of Southeast Alaska mushing so soggy the dogs need foot powder. Read the amusing account of mother's attempt to steer her son to college when he'd really rather just be a fisherman like his dad. Learn about the many uses of the common Eskimo expression, "Adii."

Purely Alaska's writers have called rural Alaska home for decades, if not all their lives. Committed to living in their remote communities for many years, these University of Alaska students offer unvarnished truths amid a unique way of life, blending traditional life with today's modern Internet world. Purely Alaska: Voices from the Far North follows the national award-winning Authentic Alaska: Voices of Its Native Writers. This all-new volume features both Native and non-Native writers. Purely Alaska was created by Susan B. Andrews and John Creed, professors of humanities and journalism who have taught for the University of Alaska in Kotzebue since the late 1980s.

Epicenter Press released Purely Alaska in June 2010.