Selected Journalism and Essays
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Josie’s Story: From 19th-century Sitka to her escape from the Holocaust
Josie Rudolph’s life story, set in an era of worldwide migration, colonial ambition and the taking of the coastal forests from the Tlingit kwáans, is a new and different take on the familiar tale of modern Alaska’s birth.
—Anchorage Daily News October, 2024
*** “A joy to read, with new discoveries throughout.” Alaska Press Club Award for Best Alaska History story, 2025
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Sanctuary: Alaska and the Holocaust
In 1939, the Alaska territory became a beacon of hope for a handful of Jewish families in rural Germany, desperate to flee the Nazis. Blocking their way were the sentiments of Alaskans.
–Anchorage Daily News 1999
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End-Times Tourism in the Land of the Glaciers
Saying farewell to the planet from a cruise ship in Glacier Bay, Alaska
-New York Times, Nov. 22, 2022
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The New Harpoon: Whale Hunters of the Warming Arctic
Few Americans are as affected by climate change, or as dependent on the fossil-fuel economy.
–The New Yorker, Sept. 12, 2016
*** Selected for Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017
*** Reprinted in The Fragile Earth: Writing from The New Yorker on Climate Change 2020. -
A Christmas Homecoming
Lasting gifts of friendship.
–Rasmuson Foundation 2018
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Trouble in America’s northern resource colony
Greenland might want to consider Alaska’s political gridlock before jumping at President Trump’s get-rich offer.
—The Nation, July/August 2025
*** Written for “These Dis-United States,” a state-by-state breakdown for the magazine’s 160th anniversary issue)
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Moving to Mars: Preparing for the longest, loneliest voyage ever
Explorers trapped in polar ice offer clues for surviving the stress of interplanetary travel.
–The New Yorker, April 20, 2015
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The Invisible People
Two families, 200 years: for the Dena’ina people of Kenai, the legacy of white colonization has never gone away.
–Anchorage Daily News 1991
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What's Become of the Arctic
Do Alaska’s journalists dare to tell the whole story of why the state is melting?
–Columbia Journalism Review, Spring, 2020
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Will We Know Global Warming When We See It?
Hemingway’s Nick Adams found consolation in the burned-over country. It’s no longer that easy.
–Anchorage Daily News 2019
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How the Age of Trump came to the end of the road.
A city council resolution to endorse tolerance triggers a recall election.
(A story that inspired an episode of NPR’s This American Life)
–Alaska Dispatch News 2017
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The Short Happy Life of the George F. Ferris
Homer, Alaska faced its future in the 1970s - an oil town, a fishing town, or something else?
(A lively story from long ago, resurrected as centerpiece for a community conversation in 2023 about growth and change)
-Homer News 1980
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Howard Weaver, the pre-eminent Alaska journalist of his generation
The life and times of the late Anchorage Daily News editor, who told his staff, “Sacred cows make the best hamburger.”
- Anchorage Daily News, Dec. 15, 2023
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Gruff, warm, combustible, shrewd: For 49 years, Don Young’s ideology was ‘Alaska’
The long-form obituary of Alaska’s forever-Congressman: the triumphs and scandals and famous gaffes.
-Anchorage Daily News, March 19, 2022
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The Teacher Who Pointed Us to Alaska
A remembrance of the mountaineer and writer David Roberts, written with Nancy Lord
-Anchorage Daily News 2021
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Defending Wilderness, Sacrificing Refugees
What happens when humanitarian compassion and love of Alaska’s wilderness collide?
-Anchorage Daily News 2022
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Faked Alaska: Our mortifying era of Reality TV
What it’s like to be discovered by the Discovery Channel
–Los Angeles Times 2015
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Now it can be told: William H. Seward's role in Alaska's first political payoff scandal
The congressional bribes that led to the purchase of Alaska from Russia
–Anchorage Daily News 2012