
Permafrost Is an Archive
And Other Inheritances from the Alaska-Yukon Borderlands
Corinna Cook(Author)
West Virginia University Press
Published on 24. February 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-1-959000-70-9 (ISBN)
Description
The Yukon Ice Patch Project reveals ancient lives. A road through the boreal forest reads like a map of climate upheaval. Those houses with broken doorknobs--a legacy of government regulation over Indigenous life. Corinna Cook, who was born white on Áak'w Kwáan Tlingit land in Juneau, Alaska, wrestles with the past and future into Canada's Yukon Territory. With writing that blends research and reverie, her essays ask how we might come into right relations with our most difficult, shared histories. How can we carry the past together, in a good way, as the land melts? The answers--elusive as they are--carry global resonance, taking shape through a deeply personal lens combined with careful study of local arts, artifacts, maps, and the land we depend on.
More details
Language
English
Dimensions
Height: 210 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
419 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-959000-70-9 (9781959000709)
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Corinna Cook is the author of the essay collection Leavetakings. Her writing appears in Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and elsewhere. A former Fulbright Fellow, Corinna's writing has also received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rasmuson Foundation, the Alaska State Council on the Arts, and an Alaska Literary Award. Corinna is a graduate of Pomona College and holds a PhD in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri. She teaches nonfiction in Alaska Pacific University's low-residency MFA program in creative writing and lives in Juneau, Alaska.
Content
The Photographer (a prelude)
One: Distance Over Light or The Slower Questions
The Black Spruce
Distance over Light
Sister Essays: The Young and the Old
The Young
The Old
Swan Signs
Two: Government Documents: A Lineage of Blades or The Story of the Day
Atlin
Permafrost Is an Archive
YFN 101: What We Give to One Another
Chooutla: Truth and Reconciliation
Government Documents: A Lineage of Blades
Three: The Kohklux Map or The Trails are Always There
Under the Bridge at Johnson's Crossing
The Kohklux Map
The Ash and the Literature
A Triangle of Sun
Salsa
The End
Acknowledgments
One: Distance Over Light or The Slower Questions
The Black Spruce
Distance over Light
Sister Essays: The Young and the Old
The Young
The Old
Swan Signs
Two: Government Documents: A Lineage of Blades or The Story of the Day
Atlin
Permafrost Is an Archive
YFN 101: What We Give to One Another
Chooutla: Truth and Reconciliation
Government Documents: A Lineage of Blades
Three: The Kohklux Map or The Trails are Always There
Under the Bridge at Johnson's Crossing
The Kohklux Map
The Ash and the Literature
A Triangle of Sun
Salsa
The End
Acknowledgments