Leigh Newman grew up in Alaska looking, fishing and residing off the land. In her new guide, she needed to shake up stereotypes of Alaskans.
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Through the pandemic, Leigh Newman’s Alaska upbringing actually kicked into excessive gear. At one level, she made preparations in case there was an entire social breakdown in NYC, the place she now lives.
“I've a home in rural Connecticut that’s my fake Alaska. I've chickens. If I’m disconnected from society, I can go shoot birds,” she says with fun. “I had 6 months of meals, water, lifejackets and gatorade. Then, I purchased a raft. And I believed, ‘Somebody goes to combat me for this raft.’ I used to be ready to launch it from Carroll Gardens into the Gowanus Canal. I mentioned to my youngsters, ‘Inform nobody we now have this raft.’”
She pays tribute to her residence state in her assortment of quick tales, “No one Will get Out Alive” (Scribner), a Kirkus-starred assortment of tales of distant wilderness, railroad camps, damaged marriages, Alaskan suburbs — and sure, moose canine, that are precisely what they sound like: sizzling canine made from moose. (Her 2013 memoir about rising up in Alaska, “Nonetheless Factors North” was a finalist for the Nationwide Ebook Critic Circle’s John Leonard Prize.)
“I'm robust,” she acknowledges. “I grew up looking my very own meals and flying airplanes. My dad handled me like one of many guys. I had my very own pistol. You need to know how you can do a number of issues.” It’s obligatory in a spot the place preparation can imply the distinction between life and loss of life.
“When stuff catches on hearth, there’s no hearth division. I’ve misplaced a buddy to a black bear that they bumped into on a hike. You at all times hear these tales. In Alaska, you may’t assume that you've extra energy than mom nature. Pondering you recognize all of it is when individuals die.”
Whereas she has lived in New York on and off since 1993 — ten years had been spent as a journey author, throughout which era she was steadily away — she absolutely settled in 2004, when she grew to become pregnant and moved to Brooklyn.
Whereas the town is actually a change from her residence state, it’s not as totally different as you would possibly assume.
“NYC and Alaska are each survival cultures,” she says. “Individuals communicate plainly and, on the identical time, are conscious somebody would possibly damage them in the event that they communicate too plainly. Individuals are very open and welcome. [Alaska] is a frontier tradition and stuffed with character and eccentricity — and in some ways, so is New York.”
“On TV, individuals from Alaska are sometimes toothless and driving ice roads,” she says. “In actuality, the intelligence of most Alaskans is fairly excessive. Lots of people got here to Alaska to make it; they’re very entrepreneurial, perhaps social misfits. [In the book], I needed to point out a facet of Alaska that didn't present individuals residing in Alaska within the bush, below a tarp — however individuals doing actual jobs. An accountant who’s additionally a bush pilot. Being a lawyer, however climbing mountains on the weekend. I needed to point out the tight bonds of the group. I wrote it as a result of I like it.”
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