Cold Flashes
As the old adage goes, "if you can't say it in a few pages, you won't in a hundred." The selections in Cold Flashes—very short prose and black-and-white photographs—embody perfectly this transparency, thrift, and restraint. Found here are highly polished micro-narratives, both fiction and nonfiction, and a series of eloquent and artistic halftones that capture their sizeable subjects in a nutshell. By minimizing the exposition, the selections stimulate the imagination to reflect on the rich diversity of people and places that make up Alaska. To be savored piecemeal at coffee shops, on the bus, or while waiting in line, the images and text in Cold Flashes will resonate with both the reader and each other, fusing into something profound yet elusive.
We all know Alaska is a big place, and most of us could spill a lot of ink trying to define it in writing. A more difficult task would be distilling our impressions of the Last Frontier into just a handful of words, a brief account that provides far more insight than its length would indicate. This is the task that editor Michael Engelhard assigned to the writers and photographers he brings together in Cold Flashes. . . . Thus we find Steve Kahn, Mary Cook, and Christine Byl writing of hunting, gathering and the food that we draw from the land. . . . Nita Nettleton recounts the horror of nearly hitting a moose with her pick-up. . . . Kaitlin Wilson’s image of a Yukon Quest dog team barreling under the footbridge in downtown Fairbanks. Engelhard has a good thing going here, and he’s handled it well. Hopefully he’ll do it again.”
Michael Engelhard is a writer and wilderness guide whose work has appeared in Outside and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is also the editor of several anthologies, including Wild Moments.
