Nick Jans is well-known for his nonfiction writing about Alaska, but a grant he recently received from the Rasmuson Foundation may help establish him as a fiction writer as well.

Jans was awarded a $12,000 Individual Artist fellowship in order to pursue his goal of writing a novel.

"I've had two different novels swirling around inside of me for 10 years," he said. "This Rasmuson grant is going to allow me to take time off from some of the regular writing that I do for pay."

Exploring a new genre is just the kind of thing that Rasmuson grants are intended for, Jans said, allowing artists to "recharge themselves creatively" by giving them time away from the demands of daily life.

"I'm incredibly grateful to (the foundation) for the support they've shown." he said.

Jans writes about 20-plus magazine articles a year for a variety of publications, including Alaska magazine, for which he is a contributing editor, and Alaska Airlines magazine, and is a member of USA Today's board of contributors. His books include "Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell's Fatal Obsession with Alaskan Bears," "A Place Beyond: Finding Home in Arctic Alaska" and "The Last Light Breaking: Living Among Alaska's Inupiat Eskimos." His writing focuses on natural history and adventure, often incorporating his personal experiences into the mix.

"The writing was a way of explaining to myself, trying to order my own experiences and make sense of them," he said.

"I really want to show people parts of Alaska they may not see," he added.

A Juneau resident since 1999, Jans lived for many years in Ambler, and still goes back every year. He attended the University of Washington's graduate school in creative writing, thinking he would work on his poetry. Upon being accepted, he was surprised to hear that he'd gotten in on the strength of the few pages of fiction he'd sent in - and not, he was told rather bluntly, because of his poetry.

Jans, who had his first poem published in Rolling Stone magazine while in his late 20s, didn't agree with this harsh assessment but buckled down to writing fiction and soon flourished, winning the school's top prize for fiction. He was even offered a publishing deal for his stories, which he declined.

"I didn't quite understand how to control voice, and point of view," he said. "I want whatever I have out there to be as good as it possibly can be, and I wasn't there."

The novel Jans wants to write is set in a fictional Eskimo village, in a place called Heads for its rocky outcroppings (like those on Easter Island). He said he will draw heavily on his personal experiences in writing the book.

"Almost everything that's going to be in there ... is going to be well within the realm of things that I saw myself in 20 years of living in villages."

The characters also will be drawn from reality, but only loosely. Jans said many will be composites of several people, combined with other fictional characteristics.

Moving in this new direction is nerve-wracking, Jans said, but in a good way.

"I'm scared and daunted, and I think that's a good sign," he said. "I've always scared myself into doing things. I've always been deathly afraid of failure."

His literary tastes run the gamut from Hunter S. Thompson and Kurt Vonnegut to T.S. Eliot and Mark Twain, although he said he often is drawn to particular books rather than authors. Some of his favorites include Tim O'Brien's "The Things they Carried" and Cormac McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses." Shakespeare also inspires him.

"Shakespeare is all about simple stuff. Two young people fall in love, a guy gets jealous of his wife," he said. "He's endured so long because he is so fundamental in his understanding of human stories - and there are only so many stories."

Jans will be releasing "Glacier Wolf: True Stories of Life in Southeast Alaska" in three weeks, and will host a sidewalk signing June 25 at 1 p.m. at Hearthside Books downtown.