East Anchorage Book Club with Andrew Gray

Send us Fan Mail Rep. Ted Eischeid is the Alaska state house representative for North Muldoon in Anchorage, and his wife Hedy Eischeid is President of the Anchorage Democrats. Both Ted and Hedy were public school teachers in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where they met. We will hear their stories and how they ended up in Alaska. Much of their episode revolves around union work; Hedy is the current state...

Send us Fan Mail   Dermot Cole is a longtime Fairbanks newspaper reporter, columnist and author who began his career at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in the late 70s while he was still a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He stayed with that paper until 2013 when he became a columnist at the Alaska Dispatch, an online news blog funded by Alice Rogoff , the former CFO of US News &...

Send us Fan Mail James Devens is the director of KCHU public radio which serves the communities around Prince William Sound and Wrangell-St Elias National Park.  At the time he became director five years ago, he was the youngest director of a public radio station in America. Jimmy was elected to Valdez city council in 2020 and re-elected in 2023. He unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2024, but he rem...

Send us Fan Mail Sen. Löki Tobin (D-Anchorage) discusses the resolutions up for a vote today, August 22, 2025, by the Alaska State Medical Board .  The first, listed on the agenda as "Board Statement/New Regulation Project: Late Term Abortion," is a statement drafted by board member and Republican candidate for governor Dr. Matt Heilala that would seek to limit access to abortions later...

Send us Fan Mail Jeff Landfield is the founder and editor of The Alaska Landmine Blog and podcast. Since the Landmine ’s founding in 2017, Jeff, with no formal training in journalism, has written and published investigative new stories often providing close coverage of municipal and state government. He was a state Senate Candidate in 2012 and 2016, and was appointed to the commission on judicial...

Send us Fan Mail Alaska Public Media Reporter Wesley Early moved to Anchorage in 2008 and began his freshman year at Bartlett High School. He stayed in Anchorage for college earning a degree in journalism and public communications at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He started working in public radio his senior year of college and has never left. In 2019 he became the news director at KOTZ, the...

Send us Fan Mail Today in Anchorage the world’s eyes are on us as President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin meet to discuss the fate of Ukraine. Although President Trump has lowered expectations by referring to the summit as a mere “listening exercise,” there is anxiety that illegitimate concessions might be made to Russia that may affect our state, such as access to our rare earth miner...

Send us Fan Mail Author Dan O'Neill has lived in Fairbanks for 50 years. During that time he has published editorials and op-eds in all of Alaska's major newspapers. From 1998 to 2002, he had a weekly column in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner . He compiled his best work from his almost half century of newspaper work into his most recent book, The Impertinent Question: the Words & Adve...

Send us Fan Mail The third part of a legislative audit of the Alaska Office of Children's Services (OCS) was made public on June 30, 2025. In 2018 an omnibus bill was signed into law that completely overhauled the way foster care in Alaska should work. That bill -- House Bill 151 -- passed the Alaska State House and the Alaska State Senate unanimously. The completed audit shows that OCS faile...

Send us Fan Mail James Brooks is a reporter for the Alaska Beacon . James is a longtime Alaska journalist, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News , Juneau Empire , Kodiak Mirror and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner -- although as we will learn today initially more as an editor than as a journalist. He has laid down roots in Juneau where he and his wife and young daughter live, and he w...

Send us Fan Mail Larry Persily is the Anchorage-based owner and publisher of the weekly newspaper the Wrangell Sentinel . Larry and his wife Leslie Murray first purchased that newspaper in 1976 when they moved to Wrangell from Chicago. After almost 50 years as an on-again off-again journalist at various publications such as the Anchorage Times , the Associated Press, the Juneau Empire , & the...

Send us Fan Mail President and publisher of the Anchorage Daily News Ryan Binkley is the oldest son of former state Senator John Binkley (R-Bethel). When John ran for governor in 2006, Ryan, at 27, took over the Binkley family tourism business based in Fairbanks. That business includes the Riverboat Discovery, a gold mining tour, a partnership with a flight seeing company in Girdwood & Juneau,...

Send us Fan Mail Open Enrollment is an education priority of  Gov. Dunleavy  that would allow any Alaska student to enroll in any Alaska school. To better understand the consequences of this proposal, Sen. Bill Wielechowski , the rules chair in the Alaska State Senate, and Rep. Rebecca Himschoot , the co-chair of the House Education committee appear in this brief bonus episode.

Send us Fan Mail Nathaniel Herz is a freelance reporter who’s spent over a decade working in Alaska, including stints at the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Public Media. A few years ago he started his own newsletter " Northern Journal, " where he is supported by individual subscribers and grant funding to do his own projects in collaboration with various media organizations like ProPubl...

Send us Fan Mail Sen. Bill Wielechowski (D-Anchorage) is chair of the rules committee in the Alaska State Senate. He discusses the upcoming legislative special session called by Governor Mike Dunleav y to begin at 10 am, on Saturday, August 2. Sen Wielechowski explains the way special sessions generally work, why this one is different, and discusses frankly the political gamesmanship given that ov...

Send us Fan Mail   Gabe Rottman is the Vice President of Policy for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press . A practicing attorney with a focus on the novel issues at the intersection of press freedom, newsgathering, and technology, Gabe is the perfect person to discuss the media environment in America today and what resources are available to journalists who, through the course of just...

Send us Fan Mail Former editor of the Anchorage Daily News Pat Dougherty worked at that paper for 34 years. Born in 1950 as the eldest son of an Air Force pilot father, Pat never found a long term home till he landed in Anchorage in 1975 to take a job as a sports reporter at the Anchorage Times . Once transferring over to the ADN in 1980, he worked his way up the ranks and was the editor of the se...

Send us Fan Mail This interview was originally published in March of 2023. Anchorage born Representative Genevieve Mina talks about growing up as part of a unique family business and how those experiences helped her when challenged with her own childhood trauma.  She also touches on forging her own professional path against cultural norms.  

Send us Fan Mail This episode originally aired in March of 2023. Will Stapp tells of his childhood being raised by his grandparents, going to war in Iraq and moving to Alaska to raise a family and ultimately become a member of the Alaska House of Representatives.

Send us Fan Mail Journalist Tom Hewitt is the former opinions editor of the Anchorage Daily News from 2018 to 2024. He previously was editorial page editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and news director of KTVF and KXDF in Fairbanks. He is currently special assistant to Fairbanks North Star Borough Mayor Grier Hopkins .  This interview is part of a series regarding the media landscape in Alas...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Mara Kimmel is the Executive Director of the ACLU of Alaska and former first lady of Anchorage. Prior to taking the helm of the ACLU of Alaska , She had a long career in Alaska public policy focused on rights and justice in northern communities. She has served on the faculty at the Seattle University School of Law, the University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific Universi...

Send us Fan Mail Rose O’Hara-Jolley is the Alaska State Director for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates. Planned Parenthood is a network of 600 health clinics across the country -- Alaska has two (one in Fairbanks and one in Anchorage) --  that provide reproductive and sexual health care including birth control, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, cancer screenings, well-woman...

Send us Fan Mail   JJ Harrier  is the 2025 chair of the Anchorage Pride Parade. After a childhood in Girdwood, he traveled around the lower 48 and Europe trying to find himself ultimately ending up homeless on the streets of Portland in his early 30s. His mother got him into rehab in Alaska and from there his life took a different direction. JJ is the former Vice President of Marketing for the Anc...

Send us Fan Mail Alaska State House Representative for Downtown Anchorage Zack Fields explains the budget reconciliation bill recently passed in the US House by a single vote. That bill is now in the US Senate, where if it is not substantially amended, it would adversely affect Alaska in many ways. One is cutting funding for SNAP – which is the federal food stamp program.  About 70,000 Alaskans re...

Send us Fan Mail Tessa Hulls is the 2025 Pulitzer prize winner for her graphic  memoir Feeding Ghosts. Tessa is only the second graphic novelist to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize, the first being Art Speigleman for Maus in 1992. Tessa was kitchen staff for this past legislative session in Juneau. She worked in the legislative lounge every day making legislators' breakfasts and lunches. No one kn...