The first book of Melinda Moustakis, “Bear Down Bear North,” was published last year, an achievement that spotlighted her selection as winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and earned her recognition as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35” honorees, given to five of the top young fiction writers in the country.
Moustakis, 29, owes her good year to “Bear,” a collection of intertwined short stories that follows several generations of a homesteading family on the Kenai Peninsula. She spent years assembling the book while she attended graduate school at Western Michigan University, cobbling together previously published stories into a tightly woven tale.
Moustakis’ mentor at WMU, National Book Award winner Jaimy Gordon, described the rugged tale as “downright ancient Greek.” Moustakis describes “Bear” in more down-to-earth terms.
Moustakis said her unvarnished look at those characters is rooted in the tales of her own family. She was raised mostly in California, but her grandparents homesteaded at Point MacKenzie and her parents grew up in Anchorage. She lived in Fairbanks until about age 5, while her father studied petroleum engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Even after she left the state, Moustakis said the myths and realities of her family’s Alaska upbringing were a steady theme. Her connection grew stronger in recent years, when she’d spend her summers fishing the Kenai with her uncle, Sonny Traxinger.
When she completed “Bear,” Moustakis took an audacious next step — she submitted it for the Flannery O’Connor Award. Widely considered the highest honor for short stories, the award from the University of Georgia Press has typically been given to recognized authors in the middle of their careers.
To Moustakis’ surprise, the book made a big impression. Since it was published in September as a Flannery O’Connor winner, “Bear” has won widespread acclaim and earned Moustakis a reputation as a writer to watch.
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