East Anchorage Book Club with Andrew Gray

Send us Fan Mail Nolan Klouda is the director of the Center for Economic Development at the University of Alaska Anchorage. The Center promotes entrepreneurship, economic development planning, and research that provides potential policy solutions to Alaska mayors, assembly members, and legislators. Nolan was born and raised in Anchorage and left the state 20 years ago with no plan to return. Lucki...

Send us Fan Mail In 2014, just before his 30th birthday, Alaska State Senator Forrest Dunbar made a name for himself when he attempted to unseat Alaska’s long-term lone Congressman Don Young. Although he ultimately failed, with just a shoestring budget Dunbar upended expectations earning 41% of the vote and establishing himself as a force to be reckoned with. We discuss his childhood in rural Alas...

Send us Fan Mail Retired Superior Court Judge Victor Carlson was born in 1935 and raised on a farm in rural Michigan. He realized at an early age three things: 1. That he wanted to be a lawyer 2. That he was gay. 3. That he wanted to live in Alaska. He first arrived in Alaska in 1957 when he was stationed at Adak with the Navy. He settled here in 1962  once he was an attorney. He did not begin liv...

Send us Fan Mail Margo Bellamy was recently elected by her fellow board members to serve as president of the Anchorage School Board for the third time. Ms. Bellamy grew up in Coconut Grove, an African American neighborhood in Miami, Florida. At the end of her 8th grade year in 1964 she was chosen as one of eight Black students to integrate the nearby all white high school. We discuss that experien...

Send us Fan Mail East Anchorage Matters Podcast is the new version of the East Anchorage Book Club podcast now that the host is a legislator in the Alaska House. It includes a legislative update and an interview with an Alaskan of interest. Alaska State Senator Löki Tobin is a life-long Alaskan who was born in Nome and is named after her dad Charles Lewis Tobin, who goes by the nickname "Lew....

Send us Fan Mail Dana Stabenow is one of the most prolific authors living and working in Alaska today. Born in Anchorage in 1952, she grew up in Cordova and Seldovia, and earned her Bachelors degree in Journalism at the University of Alaska in 1973. Unable to make a decent living as a new journalist she took a job with the oil industry in Prudhoe Bay just as construction on the Pipeline was taking...

Send us Fan Mail In the late 1950s the US Atomic Energy Commission initiated Operation Plowshare, which was a research project designed to find peaceful uses for nuclear explosives. Edward Teller, known as the father of the hydrogen bomb, championed the first big project of Operation Plowshare which was to blast a deep sea harbor near Cape Thompson, Alaska, by detonating a series of nuclear bombs...

Send us Fan Mail Rep. Chris Tuck is the AK House Majority Leader. He talks about growing up without a dad, being a Pro-Life Democrat, and his efforts to hold Rep. David Eastman accountable for his membership in the Oath Keepers. We end by finding out why he decided not to run for re-election. Rep. Chris Tuck: "This is still the people's government, and the government needs to serve the p...

Send us Fan Mail West Point graduate and Iraq war veteran Ivan Hodes discusses his background, his military service, and his efforts to have Wasilla Representative David Eastman  invalidated from serving in public office for his association with the Oath Keepers, an organization with ties to the January 6th insurrection of which Representative Eastman remains a life-long member. The trial to estab...

Send us Fan Mail Trans Rights Advocate Matt Pacillo, who recently graduated from the University of Alaska Anchorage,  grew up in the MatSu before moving to Anchorage as a teenager. While attending Dimond High School, he first came out as a lesbian and later as a trans man. We discuss his journey as well as his reaction to the most recent episode of this podcast which featured independent journalis...

Send us Fan Mail Jeff Landfield is  the founder and editor-in-chief of The Alaska Landmine Blog and podcast. In a world where traditional local media is on the verge of extinction, independent bloggers and podcasters have had to fill the void. Since its founding in 2017, The Alaska Landmine has done that with important investigative stories and through close coverage of municipal and state governm...

Send us Fan Mail On the 80th anniversary of the completion of the Alaska-Canada highway, we talk with author Christine McClure , who with her late husband Dennis, wrote two books about the construction of the Al-Can. The first, We Fought the Road was a more general history of the three African-American regiments that were instrumental in the building of that 1600 mile road in just 8 months. Today...

Send us Fan Mail Alaska Climate Scientist Dr. Brian Brettschneider discusses his background, how he ended up in Anchorage, and the 4th National climate assessment from 2018; he is currently helping edit the Fifth National Climate Assessment which has not yet been published. We also discuss his very popular Twitter account (almost 37,000 followers) and whether or not he plans to stay on the platfor...

Send us Fan Mail Kevin Berry is an environmental economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He is well-known for his tweets and for his frequent op-eds in the Anchorage Daily News. We discuss a variety of issues regarding the Alaska economy.

Send us Fan Mail Award-winning Fairbanks author Dan O’Neill's 2004 Book The Last Giant of Beringia: The Mystery of the Bering Land Bridge not only tells the story of the historic land bridge that connected Siberia to Alaska, but also of the scientists, in particular geologist Dave Hopkins, who worked so hard to synthesize the evidence that has led to our current understanding.  During periods...

Send us Fan Mail Lifelong Democrat Pat Chesbro moved to Palmer, Alaska, in 1974. She taught at Palmer High School for 15 years before becoming principal for nine more. She eventually became the superintendent of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District. She came out of retirement to join the Education Department at the University of Alaska Anchorage. After placing third out of nineteen candid...

Send us Fan Mail Fairbanks Author Dan O’Neill has been enamored with the upper Yukon between Dawson City and Circle for decades. In 2006 he published his travel memoir entitled: A Land Gone Lonesome: An Inland Voyage Along the Yukon River . The book was awarded the Outstanding Alaskana Award by the Alaska Library Association, was named an “Editor’s Choice” by The New York Times , and was selected...

Send us Fan Mail City planners have to be experts on a wide variety of issues; yet, because they are not elected officials, their well-informed advice is not always followed. Victor Fischer, a previous podcast guest, was Anchorage's first city planner in the 1950s. So much of the city was a blank slate then that it's easier to imagine the utility of the planner: this goes here, this can&...

Send us Fan Mail Carolyn "Care" Clift was the Libertarian Party of Alaska's candidate for governor in  2014, their lieutenant governor candidate in 2018, and AK senate candidate in 2020. She is the current chair of the Libertarian Party of Alaska's Platform Committee, and today we discuss that document. Although Libertarians seem like a fringe party, they have thoroughly taken...

Send us Fan Mail Wigi Tozzi's first experience as a campaign manager was for a North Star Borough Assembly candidate in 1994. Since then he has managed many campaigns at the local and statewide level. He discusses the value of volunteers and gives specific advice for how they can have the most impact on a campaign. He pays particular attention to social media. 

Send us Fan Mail The 1500 mile Alaska-Canada Highway from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Delta Junction, Alaska, was initially constructed in 8 months in 1942. The story of the difficult conditions experienced by the 10,000 Army soldiers and 6,000 contractors is a compelling one, but the experience of the 3600 African-American soldiers who were segregated and exposed to even more challenges is...

Send us Fan Mail Heather Lende, the Alaska State Writer Laureate for 2021, is the author of a number of best-selling memoirs about her life in Haines. Her most recent book is 2020’s Of Bears and Ballots: an Alaskan Adventure in Small-Town Politics , which tells the story of her time serving on the Haines Borough Assembly, where shortly after her election, a recall petition was launched against her...

Send us Fan Mail KL Marshall, while working on her PhD in Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, became enthralled with the influence of oil money on Christian Fundamentalism in Alaska. She moved to the MatSu Valley to research her 2020 book, Faith & Oil: How the Alaska Pipeline  Shaped America’s Religious Right. Her doctoral thesis was on Jerry Falwell who started the Moral Majority that he...

Send us Fan Mail Michael Wolverton did not come from a family of attorneys or judges; his parents were educators and that was what he planned to do. However, while doing his student teaching, he realized it wasn't the right path. He went to the University of Minnesota Law School and after a stint in the Peace Corp found himself in Alaska. Like so many, he had only planned to stay for a year,...

Send us Fan Mail Jason Grenn is the executive director of Alaskans for Better Elections, an organization that lobbied for Ranked Choice Voting in Alaska and, now that we have it, is working to educate the electorate about it. After years as a registered Republican, he changed his registration to Independent just prior to running for the Alaska House of Representatives where he served from 2016-201...