Heather Lende, whose memoirs chronicle life in Haines, is named Alaska State Writer Laureate Author: Anchorage Daily News
Print article Author Heather Lende, who gained national recognition for memoirs of her life in Haines, has been selected to be Alaska State Writer Laureate for 2021-2023. Lende’s best-selling 2006 debut, “If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name: News from Small-Town Alaska,” chronicled her life in Haines and work writing obituaries for The Chilkat Valley News, her local newspaper. Lende followed that with “Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs” (2011) and “Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons from a Small-Town Obituary Writer” (2015).
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Anchorage resident repays kindness to Haines disaster relief
December 24, 2020
Wally Smith, 83, a retired industrial arts teacher in Anchorage, donated $1,000 to local disaster relief efforts this month because he “had a kindness to repay to those who were kind to me” during a trip to Haines in 1964.
At the time, Smith was on his way to the Haines ferry terminal bound for the Lower 48 where he would attend graduate school in Colorado. While driving through Canada, a fellow teacher had mechanical problems with his pickup truck. Smith stopped to help repair the truck’s broken axle and, in the process, sustained a head injury.
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Today we talk with Heather Lende about her new book Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaskan Adventure in Small-Town Politics.
Heather Lende was one of the thousands of women inspired to take a more active role in politics during the past few years. Though her entire campaign for assembly member in Haines, Alaska, cost less than $1,000, she won! But tiny, breathtakingly beautiful Haines a place accessible from the nearest city, Juneau, only by boat or plane isn’t the sleepy town that it appears to be: from a bitter debate about the expansion of the fishing boat harbor to the matter of how to stop bears from rifling through garbage on Main Street to the recall campaign that targeted three assembly members, including Lende, we witness the nitty-gritty of passing legislation, the lofty ideals of our republic, and how the polarizing national politics of our era play out in one small town.