On November 16th-18th, UAF hosted their annual PopCon, a festival that celebrates all manner of pop culture, from TV and film, to gaming, comics, and more.

On November 29th, in the early hours of the morning, a moose was spotted on the steps of the Stevens Dorm Hall on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus.

This was my first First Friday anywhere, ever. Although a popular phenomenon across the country, I have always avoided crowds and therefore usually go to museums or art galleries in the early weekday hours. But I’m new to Fairbanks and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to dive into the community.

Friday, October 13th, the UAF English Department hosted the First Year Reading, which celebrates the writing of incoming graduate students in English.

Bus 142, or the Magic Bus, sits in an undisclosed location, guarded and tended by its caretakers, waiting for its permanent home to be ready, waiting to be displayed and to be gazed on by the audience eagerly awaiting its unveiling after the thoughtful and methodical restoration undertaken here at UAF. The bus had a long journey to get here, but it is also true to state that, on its airlift to Fairbanks, it was finally coming home.

The greater portion of people living in Fairbanks do not have a trash or recycling service, which came as a surprise to me. I came from a city where we had a large bin that all of our trash went into and the bin would get picked up by a dump truck once a week. The convenience of trash service makes one not really think too much about where their trash goes, you would just put it at the end of your driveway and within a day it was gone.

“We are just twenty-year-old women sitting here together writing about our past, the future, and what it holds for us.”

Successful art transports you to a waking dream state (without the risks and hangovers of other hallucinogens). The Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra succeeds so well at this transportation that it would take an artist more talented than I to describe it, but I’ll try.

The October 2023 64th Parallel Juried Exhibition at the Bear Art Gallery features a wide variety of work by local Fairbanks artists.