Prescott's latest book mixes poetry, recipes and traditional knowledge

Wrangell author, poet and Southeast newspaper columnist Vivian Faith Prescott's latest book isn't like any other of her writings. She produced a collection of poetry and recipes after years of work, putting them together into one heart-filling piece.

"My Father's Smokehouse: Stories & Recipes from Fishcamp," is about recipes and her father, Mickey, who turns 82 soon, Prescott said. It's known as a foodoir - a book of personal experiences focused on food. "The hardest thing was writing the recipes, writing them up. I'm a poet," she said.

The book was released this spring by West Margin Press, a California-based publisher.

Prescott said the book is a collection of moments that make her who she is. Filled with stories about family, food and culture, and interwoven with personal recipes and photos, "My Father's Smokehouse" puts the reader in a beautiful island landscape.

Prescott said her newest book goes through two harvesting cycles, and that's the way she wanted it to be captured.

Her book is filled with traditions, memories and stories surrounding Southeast Alaska life, including a family's perseverance, the wisdom of Sámi and Tlingit cultures, and respect for elders and their knowledge of the culture. The smokehouse at the fish camp is named after her father.

Another book, recently released by the Alaska Press Alaska Literary Series, is "Old Woman with Berries in Her Lap," a collection of poetry. " This is a large collection of my poetry," Prescott said. "This is about the North American Sámi diaspora. They're the Indigenous people of Scandinavia."

The Sámi are from a region spanning northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, some of whom came to Alaska in the 19th century as part of a plan to start reindeer herding in the territory. "It's about searching for identity and being separate from your people," Prescott said in an interview this spring with the Juneau Empire. "I've been writing probably about a decade about this topic."

Traditional Sami foods are harvested from land or sea, including fish, game, berries and herbs. The self-taught author hopes to educate all generations about the Sami culture and its important traditions. Prescott, who is a Sami descendant herself, said the poetry collection led to more research.

"I'd say I've been putting the whole thing together the last three to four years. What I had to do was decide how I wanted to organize it," Prescott said in her interview with the Empire. "It's kind of an educational book in a way because I have a lot of notes on, for example, the (Sámi) words for snow. There's a lot of books and articles that I included in there so people could go look up more."

Three generations of Prescott fishers worked the waters of the Inside Passage, and she lives and writes in Tlingit Aani on the land of the Shtax'héen Kwáan in Kaachxaana.áak'w, Wrangell, one of the oldest Tlingit settlements in Southeast.

Prescott is both a student and a teacher of the natural environment, harvesting her richest goodies including spruce tips, berries, sea lettuce and goose tongue and processing salmon, halibut and hooligan. A combination of ingredients makes for the perfect Prescott traditional recipe.

"My whole life I've been harvesting. I grew up in a fishing family," she said. "I moved and established the fish camp with the intent of learning more about harvesting so I could pass it on to my children and grandchildren."

"My Father's Smokehouse" tells one woman's stories of traditional knowledge and passes them down from one generation to the next.

"The main thing I want the audience, especially people in Southeast Alaska, is not to be afraid to experiment with the foods they harvest from the land and the sea, the knowledge of when to harvest, and traditional protocols of respecting the land," Prescott said.

She has several other books she's working on for the future.

"I call myself a prolific writer, I write every day," she said. "The one I'm working around now is a poetry collection about my relationship with salmon - fishing, the loss of salmon, etc." She also is working on "The Tide Book."