How permission can lead to more authentic truth
Winning permission to enter whaling camp and the promise of honesty
Half a career, one story, four lives saved
Brian Patrick O’Donoghue spent half his career covering one news story, about four young Alaska …
How to detect exaggerations and lies
A journalist pulled out a notebook in a bar in a tiny town in Alaska and started to write down the …
Hopeful shoots grow amid the stumps of dead newspapers
Michael Armstrong dedicated 22 years to the small-town weekly Homer News before he retired. When it …
Why I am holding on to certain secrets
When we were working on his book more than 15 years ago, Vic Fischer told me some stories that he …
Alaska’s new heroes for press freedom
The resignations last week of four small-town journalists in Alaska made me proud and sad. Proud …
Hungry polar bears and a 50-year story
Polar bears came into George Divoky’s camp on a barren Arctic Island last summer and devoured a …
The political gamble behind Lisa Murkowski’s book
Now we find out if the gamble paid off. When I began working with Senator Lisa Murkowski on her new …
Why Lisa Murkowski’s book took 5 years to write
My collaboration with Senator Lisa Murkowski began in her office in the Hart Senate Office Building …
My new book and its long path to existence
It’s a uniquely satisfying feeling, opening a box that delivers a new book you have written. I had …
He taught me the most important writing lesson
I never had a better boss than Tom Gibboney, the publisher at a weekly in an Alaskan fishing village …
She broke through fear to give students a better life
Our world would be better if we honored those applying their genius to humbly help others and paid …
What I learned from a man who was eaten by a bear
What is a good man? That question always makes me think of a story I wrote as a newspaper reporter …
This is not my beautiful life
I’m fascinated by stories of abrupt, drastic life changes. They light up the far corners of what’s …
Here’s a book I want to write
Introducing my idea for a complete and up-to-date Alaska history
My dad’s big gamble and how he told of it
As Charles's father demonstrated, quality matters even for a self-published memoir
Mark Rowland’s legacy of stories well told
The death two weeks ago of my father-in-law, Mark Rowland, got me thinking about where writing …
Truth-telling and the decision to kill
Christine Cunningham explained to me the choice she made between being a vegetarian and a hunter. …
If you must write, you can write
I was ready to go home at the end of my work day when I got a call about a possible mutiny at sea. …