June 19, 2014 — Ask Amanda Compton why she is documenting the experiences of Southeast Alaska fisheries workers, and you’d best carve out some time for her answer.
Compton, a local journalist and cofounder of Juneau’s popular Mudrooms event, is passionate about the fishing industry, the art of storytelling, and her fellow Alaskans. All three come together in her current project, a radio program funded by a Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Grant.
“I guess I just have this inherent fascination with uncovering a tangle, whether it’s figuring out an industry or how something works — and then telling other people about it,” Compton said. “I want to figure out how these fisheries and parts of these fisheries work, and to tell the story through the lens of someone in particular — through this family that lives at a hatchery, through this guy that runs a boat that has people jumping off to dive for sea cucumbers, through this woman who runs a tender, through this skipper that plays the ukulele. That’s going to make it more approachable and that’s going to make it more interesting to people and make my job more fun — and harder too. To me, harder is more fun.”
Compton received her grant from the Rasmuson Foundation in mid-May and has a year to work on the project. The radio program she intends to create will be broken into eight to 10 five-minute segments focused on different components of Alaska’s fisheries. Together these elements will make up an audio portrait of the industry, filtered through the voices of the individuals who work in it, and through Compton’s narration as an observer.
Compton said the fishing industry is the perfect place to gather Alaskans’ stories.
“Just the nature of the fishery draws some of the most interesting, odd, quirky, charismatic people,” she said, “They’re the ones that make you excited to be alive. And they shake up your barometer on human individuality.”
A month in, Compton is already hip-deep in stories, forging friendships and accumulating knowledge as she goes.
Read the full story at the Juneau Empire