Doogan, Mike

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Doogan, Mike

PERSONAL: Born in AK. Education: University of San Francisco, B.A.; University of Alaska, Anchorage, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES: Home— Anchorage, AK.

CAREER: Writer and journalist. Anchorage Daily News, Anchorage, AK, metro columnist, 1985-2004. Variously worked as a teamster, janitor, baggage handler, and a legislative aide.

AWARDS, HONORS: Robert L. Fish Award for short fiction.

WRITINGS

(Editor) How to Speak Alaskan, illustrated by Jamie Smith, Epicenter Press (Fairbanks, AK), 1993.

Fashion Means Your Fur Hat Is Dead: A Guide to Good Manners and Social Survival in Alaska, illustrated by Dee Boyles, Epicenter Press (Fairbanks, AK), 1996.

Doogan: The Best of the Newspaper Columnist Alaskans Love to Hate, edited by Michael Carey, Epicenter Press (Kenmore, WA), 2003.

Lost Angel: A Nik Kane Alaska Mystery, Putnam (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: Mike Doogan is an Alaskan-born journalist who has spent most of his life in the arctic state. Although he worked various jobs, including being a teamster, janitor, baggage handler, and a legislative aide, Doogan is a local celebrity for his nineteen-year period with the Anchorage Daily News, particularly in his role as the metro columnist. During his fourteen years as “the columnist Alaskans love to hate,” Doogan wrote his take on Alaska and the world around it, oftentimes at political odds with the majority of the periodical’s readership.

In 2006 Doogan published his first novel, Lost Angel: A Nik Kane Alaska Mystery, a mystery that introduces ex-detective Nik Kane. Having recently been released from prison after a wrongful conviction, the now-divorced cop starts his own private detective agency and takes a case about a girl who went missing from a religious cult in central Alaska. A critic writing in Publishers Weekly called the prose “engaging” and “lucid.” In a Kirkus Reviews article, a critic noted that “this series kickoff provides a righteously appealing hero and terrific local color.” Writing on the Book-Loons Web site, Tim Davis agreed that the characters were “finely conceived.” He concluded by calling the book “a fascinating, well-written, explosive tale of deceit and danger.”