Chatter Marks

Tom Kortbeek and Roos Meerman are the founders of Fillip Studios, a Netherlands-based interdisciplinary design studio whose work sits at the intersection of art, science, technology, and human experience. Together, Tom and Roos have spent more than a decade exploring what happens when artists, designers, engineers and scientists are invited into the same conversation. Their projects explore everyt...

Anchorage Historian David Reamer has spent years digging through archives, newspapers, and forgotten corners, recovering stories that might otherwise disappear. From his early days of sharing historical stories on social media to his long-running Histories of Alaska column in the Anchorage Daily News, he’s documented everything from vanished neighborhoods and local legends to racial covenants, lab...

Ashley Saupe is the host of the Sharp End Podcast, a show built around firsthand accounts of accidents, near misses, survival, and the complicated psychology of risk in the outdoors. But before she started the podcast, she was studying the mistakes of others, reading Accidents in North American Climbing, an annual publication by the American Alpine Club that documents climbing incidents, what went...

Sue Aikens is the warden of Kavik River Camp, a remote, self-sufficient outpost on Alaska’s North Slope. A collection of bunkhouses, fuel tanks, generators and equipment set against a wide, treeless, and unforgiving landscape defined by wind, cold, and distance. Just open ground, shifting weather, and a constant awareness that survival depends on preparation and respect for the elements. Hunters,...

Caroline Van Hemert is a wildlife biologist, writer, and researcher whose work moves between science, story, and the lived experience of wild places. She’s based in Alaska, where she’s spent years studying migratory birds and the shifting ecosystems they move through, paying close attention to how climate change is reshaping patterns that have existed for generations. She’s also the author of “The...

Don Rearden is an author and an educator whose work is rooted in Alaska—its landscapes, its communities, and the complex realities shaping life across the North. His writing—both fiction and nonfiction—blends elements of survival, culture, and environmental change. Whether he’s exploring a pandemic unfolding in the Arctic or a coastal village on the brink of relocation, his work is grounded in liv...

Sam Davenport writes the AK IRL newsletter. It dissects Alaska reality television as entertainment and as a cultural lens that shapes how Alaska is perceived from the Outside — an idea often signaled right from the start in show titles filled with buzzwords like wild, survival, and frontier. As if there’s a checklist for how Alaska gets branded and sold. She writes about the manufactured drama, th...

Julia O’Malley is a journalist, a cook, a baker, and lately she’s been researching and re-creating Cold War cakes. During the Cold War era—roughly the decades between the end of World War II and the early 1990s—cake mix transformed a food once associated with luxury into something democratic, something anyone could make at home. Julia says that those boxed mixes, and the recipes people built aroun...

Jeremie McGowan is an artist, designer, and researcher. Amund Sjolie Sveen is an artist. And together, they created Real. Arctic., an exhibition that examines how the word “Arctic” is used in branding, institutions, geopolitics, and everyday consumer products — and how the use of that word shapes what we think we know about the arctic. Their work blurs the line between critique and commodity, aski...

Paul Koberstein is a journalist, whose recent book, “Canopy of Titans,” explores one of the most overlooked ecosystems on Earth: the Pacific Coastal Temperate Rainforest. Stretching roughly 2,500 miles from just north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge to the western Gulf of Alaska, it’s the largest temperate rainforest on the planet. Fueled by Pacific storms and cool ocean currents, it support...

Emily Sullivan is a writer, a photographer, and a director whose work is grounded in questions of land, community, and responsibility. Throughout her work, she focuses on uplifting Indigenous perspectives — not by speaking for communities, but by listening to what people are already saying and doing. Her first film, Shaped by Land, is currently screening at festivals. It’s a documentary about Gree...

Kevin Lane is the executive chef and co-owner of The Cookery and The Lone Chicharron Taqueria in Seward, and he was recently named as a James Beard Award semifinalist. Reflecting on that recognition, he says it wouldn’t have been possible without his team at The Cookery, or the kitchens and crews from his past that shaped the way he cooks today. Those roots stretch back to California’s Sacramento...

Peter Dunlap‑Shohl's career traces a remarkable arc, from daily newsroom deadlines to personal, long-form storytelling. For 27 years, he worked for the Anchorage Daily News, drawing editorial and political cartoons. He produced thousands of comics focused on, more often than not, the worst things he could find in Alaska politics and in the pages of the newspaper — the biggest screwup, the clearest...

Charles Stankievech is an artist, a writer, and an academic. He teaches at the University of Toronto, and his art takes him into some of the most remote landscapes on earth. Places like CFS Alert, the northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world. He describes the Arctic as occupying two parallel spaces in our cultural imagination: one built on myth and fantasy, and another grounded in har...

Kikkan Randall is a five-time Olympian and an icon of U.S. cross-country skiing. But before all the medals and podiums, she was a high schooler with dyed hair, face paint, and a nickname that captured her energy: “Kikkanimal.” Her teammates gave it to her as a nod to the edge, spirit, and unity she brought to the team. Cross-country skiers understand that it’s a sport that rewards time spent—refin...

Alev Kelter is a rugby Olympian. She grew up in Eagle River, Alaska, playing varsity boys' hockey because there wasn’t a girls’ team. That drive to compete at the highest level has carried her through a career that spans multiple sports. She played soccer and hockey at the University of Wisconsin, and was part of U.S. national team programs in both sports—earning spots on the U.S. hockey national...

Ben Weissenbach is an environmental journalist and the author of “North to the Future.” It’s a book about Alaska, but also about uncertainty, responsibility, and the quiet, sometimes uncomfortable process of learning how to see. Ben spent time in the Brooks Range and Fairbanks with Roman Dial, a professor of biology and mathematics; Kenji Yoshikawa, a permafrost scientist; and Matt Nolan, a resear...

Luc Mehl is an adventurer, educator, and the author of “The Packraft Handbook.” He’s traveled over 10,000 miles across Alaska using only human power — by foot, ski, paddle, bike, and even ice skate. He’s traversed all of the state’s major mountain ranges, competed in more than a dozen Wilderness Classics, and has become one of the most trusted voices in wilderness risk management. But what makes L...

Tessa Hulls is an author and multi-disciplinary artist, and she recently won the Pulitzer Prize for her graphic memoir, “Feeding Ghosts.” It’s about three generations of women in her family — her grandma, her mom, and herself — and the ways their lives were shaped by political violence, migration, silence and survival. The book moves across continents and decades, weaving together personal history...

Nicholas Galanin is a Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist and activist whose work includes sculpture, installation, music and performance — and it’s always in conversation with history, land and power. He creates art that honors Indigenous traditions and confronts the structures that have sought to erase them; it challenges colonial narratives while inviting reflection on language, identity and the legacy...

Elizabeth Merritt is the founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums at the American Alliance of Museums. It’s her job to track cultural, technological, environmental, political and public health trends — and figure out what they might mean for museums and the communities they serve. She thinks about things like: what role could blockchain play in the art world? Could it allow artist...

Julie Decker is the director and CEO of the Anchorage Museum. But before that she practiced as an artist and ran her own art gallery. Since then she’s fostered a belief in the power of museums to spark action — whether that means picking up a paintbrush, reading a new book, or seeing the world differently. Her connection to the Anchorage Museum runs back to childhood, when it was little more than...

Annesofie Norn is the Head of Communications and Lead Curator at the Museum for the United Nations, or UN Live for short. With a background in placemaking and art practice, she specializes in designing experiences that resonate across borders and mediums. Her work often explores how art and storytelling can serve as powerful tools for social transformation on a global scale. Before joining UN Live...

Mike Radke is the co-founder and executive director of The Ubuntu Lab, a global education nonprofit that teaches people how to navigate cultural differences with curiosity, humility and empathy. Mike approaches the world with a learner’s mindset, believing he almost always has more to learn than to contribute. For him, that belief isn’t abstract, it’s personal, shaped by years of travel, work in p...

Dr. Stefan Brandt is the Director of Futurium in Berlin, a hybrid museum experience and public platform dedicated to exploring the future. With a background in literature, philosophy, cultural studies — and a lifelong interest in music — Dr. Brandt has worked at the intersection of culture, science and civic life. Before leading Futurium, he held senior roles at major cultural institutions across...