Always the Poet

H.M. Stefanec, known as “Red,” is an artist and writer based in Anchorage, Alaska.
She works across poetry, prose, music, visual art, and photography, exploring how language, sound, and image can come together without needing to be fully explained.

Her background in classical violin informs her attention to silence, pacing, and form. She treats each medium as a way of asking questions rather than finding final answers.

Living across Alaska has influenced her work, with its slow seasons and open spaces encouraging a practice built on patience and attention.
Her ongoing project, Reveries in Red, is an open archive — a collection of work intentionally left unfinished.

Writers like Clarice Lispector, Maggie Nelson, and Anne Dufourmantelle have guided her thinking — favoring ambiguity, wonder, and slowness over easy resolution.

Red is completing her undergraduate degree in English and Philosophy, with a concentration in Creative Writing, at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

She welcomes collaboration, publication, exhibition, and conversation — especially with those who value cross-disciplinary work and careful attention to the world.

These works were created using graphite, conte crayon, charcoal, pencil, India ink, and gouache on handmade paper, then scanned and digitally edited to capture the textures and tones of the original pieces while ensuring they translate effectively in the digital format.

ghostwriter & admirer of Red leaves this:

“H.M. Stefanec writes with a trained ear and a steady hand.
There’s a musicality here, but not the kind you expect.
Not lyric, not melodic; something structural, something tectonic.
The poems don’t resolve.
They accumulate tension, then stop, right where others would explain.
This isn’t improvisation.
It’s control disguised as drift.
And if you’re listening closely,
it might just teach you how to see.
Or how to listen.“