September 2026 Director's Journal

“There is a lot to organize at this time of year,” confides Sitka Youth Program Director Leeauna Perry, pausing over her work in Junko Iijima’s Jewelry with Textured Surface workshop. “Scheduling monthly K-8 Create visits with each school, ordering supplies, coordinating our team of Art Instructors…it’s so important for me to have time and space to get into a creative mindset too.”

As she works, Leeauna is thinking about the thousands of students preparing to return to classrooms along the Oregon coast.

“Being on the other side of the art table connects me with a student perspective,” she explains. The immersive quality of Sitka’s adult workshops informs both her youth program design and her own teaching.

“I want our kiddos to experience this same kind of creative freedom when K-8 Create comes to their classrooms this fall. Time for art gives them a chance to step away from daily school and life pressures and just be, to let their creativity and minds wander. That’s what I’m getting to do here.”

Upstairs in Sitka’s Hale Reference Library, Literary Arts Fellow Adam Swanson is preparing for another kind of beginning. He is back on campus to help unbox the latest installment of new books before residency season begins in October.

“This book is amazing. It’s geology, it’s ecology, it’s memoir, it’s criticism…it’s everything!”

As Adam lifts out each new title, his love of books is contagious. The collection is eclectic and evocative, spanning fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry, alongside new thinking in the natural sciences and art histories told through voices too often excluded from the written record. 

“I’m so excited about this one…oh, and this book completely undid me…and oh! They boxed all the children’s literature together,” he exclaims, lifting out a stack of picture books. He opens one and begins reading aloud.

“I think these are going to get a lot of use, and not just by kids,” he predicts.

Adam often tunes in for Sitka’s resident talks, listening as artists, writers, musicians, scientists and interdisciplinary practitioners reflect on their work and time at Cascade Head. Those conversations help shape what he chooses for the library.

“I’m always thinking about what residents will be delighted to find on the shelves, about what will speak to them,” he says.

There is something elegantly reciprocal in this. Residents bring their curiosity and creative practices to Sitka. Their presence, in turn, shapes the books waiting for those who come next. The library becomes a quiet conversation across disciplines and residency seasons, offering another way to enter the reflective time and space at the heart of the Sitka experience.

This fall, 150 new titles curated by Adam will be added to the collection. They will be waiting when Sitka welcomes more than 50 resident practitioners in small cohorts between October and May.

Sometimes, we get to see where that protected time and creative attention can lead.

“Morgan Thomas was just longlisted for the National Book Award for fiction!” Program Director Maria Elting announces with delight upon learning that Morgan’s debut novel, Mad Eden, has just received the honor.

Morgan is a recent Sitka resident and was our spring 2026 keynote speaker. Their news reflects something we witness again and again: creative work and careers begun, deepened or reimagined during a residency continue traveling long after someone leaves campus.

From new art projects taking shape in coastal schools to new books arriving on library shelves, new residents preparing for their journeys to Cascade Head and past residents reaching new readers, there are green tips visible across Sitka’s evergreen programming canopy this fall.

You can meet the 2026–27 resident cohort through the biographies on Sitka’s website. For those on our mailing list, the Fall + Winter Guide is arriving in mailboxes now. We will also have copies at the Sitka Art Invitational, when the Sitka community gathers at Oregon Contemporary in Portland from October 16–18. This year’s exhibition includes 30 artists bringing their work to the Invitational for the first time.

Whether you join us in Portland, tune in for an upcoming resident talk or simply take inspiration from Sitka community members highlighted in this newsletter, I hope you will find some time and space of your own this fall: to make, to read, to reflect, and to let your mind wander toward whatever wants to grow next.