Carolyn Servid

Allow me to introduce myself.

I created Sitka Willow Consulting | Editing | Design after thirty years of work in the nonprofit sector as co-founder, co-director, and executive director of The Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska. During my tenure, the Island Institute focused its work on the nexus of story, place, and community, and combined nationally-recognized literary programs with keen interests in community sustainability and resilience. I retired from the Island Institute in 2014.

This rich mix honed my skills in the broad arenas of nonprofit management, program planning and execution, and collaborative community initiatives. The Institute's literary focus nurtured my own interests as a writer and fostered my skills as an editor. And in the course of marketing the Institute's programs, I found I had an eye for layout and design and developed talents in those areas.

My collection of narrative essays, Of Landscape and Longing, traces my own connections to story, place, and community through the journey from my upbringing in a coastal village in India to my finding a home at the water's edge in Sitka. Other essays of mine have appeared in a number of journals and essay collections.

My college education played a large part in the career paths I have chosen. I received my Bachelor of Arts degree from The Evergreen State College and became a firm believer in the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to thinking about and understanding the world. I went on to receive a Masters Degree in English from Claremont Graduate School, and taught composition, creative writing, and literature classes at community colleges in Seattle, Bellevue and Sitka before focusing my time and attention on the Island Institute.

In the fall of 2017, after living thirty-seven years in Sitka, I moved with my husband Dorik Mechau to Palisade, Colorado, a small community at the mouth of a canyon shaped by Grand Mesa, the Book Cliffs, and the Colorado River.