“Looks like northeasterly winds fifteen knots with scattered clouds and light rain,” the Alaska Airlines pilot announces (or something like this) when you land at the Kodiak Airport. You drive into town with waterfalls and scree slopes on your left, the seaport on your right, and a magpie dashing along beside you. Maybe you’ve come …
Amy Kane, who owns the bookstore in Haines, the tiny Alaska town where I live, tells everyone that my books, especially the most recent one, Of Bears and Ballots, published June 30, 2020, saved her business during the pandemic, but really, The Bookstore saved me. “Bottom line is without that book we wouldn’t be here,” …
On Monday afternoon, a roomful of booksellers from around the Pacific Northwest gathered to hear a panel of their peers, members of the PNBA Book Awards Committee, present for the 2020 Book Awards Preview. Over 400 books have been nominated for the award. To be eligible, a book must have been published between October 1, …
The Library of Congress National Book Festival is an annual literary event that brings together best-selling authors and thousands of book fans for author talks, panel discussions, book signings and other activities. Over its long history, the National Book Festival has become one of the pre-eminent literary events in the United States. Attendees can interact …
The headline to a review I wrote of this book when it came out in 2004 read, “Caribou Hair Everywhere,” and I can’t think of three words that better describe it. Raised by a father who moved from the Midwest to a sod igloo in remote, northwest Alaska, young Cutuk grows toward an inevitable choice …
This is a perfect book to read this winter. Ivey alternates between the journal entries of Colonel Allen Forrester while he explores uncharted territory in Alaska and the diary of his pregnant wife Sophie, who is stuck at the military barracks until he returns. I was enthralled with the vivid descriptions of the Alaskan landscape, …
When my first novel, The Snow Child, was published, people often asked me if I had done a lot of research during the writing process. In truth, I hadn’t. I discovered several retellings of the Russian Snegurotchka fairy tale, and at one point I interviewed an elderly man who had grown up in Alaska and …
The 2017 Pacific Northwest Book Awards Winners have been announced! A panel of nine booksellers from the region chose the winners from 325 nominations of books written by authors from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, or British Columbia. Here are the winners, with brief descriptions by the Award Committee: Thunder Boy, Jr. by Sherman Alexie (Seattle, WA) Alexie’s first …
If the land and people of Alaska beckon you, stop and take a close look at this memoir. Already read one of Kantner’s books? Then you know the treat you’re in with this one. If you haven’t, this one is a great one to begin with. Living above the Artic Circle, Kantner keeps the stories …
Kim Heacox has been awarded the the National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature (Fiction) for his novel, Jimmy Bluefeather. Heacox, a nature writer and photographer, was haunted for over a decade by a character that now lives in Jimmy Bluefeather. Old Keb “spoke to him”—wise and witty—about adventures, love, growing old, and reconciliation. A labor …
