Lende, Heather 1959–

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Lende, Heather 1959–

PERSONAL: Born 1959; married; husband's name, Chip; children: five. Hobbies and other interests: Coaching the high school cross-country running team; volunteering on local radio station KHNS, running, cycling, hiking, snowshoeing, boating.

ADDRESSES: Home—Haines, AK. Office—Pyramid Island Press, P.O. Box 936, Haines, AK 99827. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Chilkat Valley News, Haines, AK, obituary writer; Anchorage Daily News, Anchorage, AK, columnist. Member of Haines public school board, public library board, and hospice board.

MEMBER: Klondike Trail of '98 Road Relay (women's running team), Lady Gu-Divas.

AWARDS, HONORS: Suzan Nightingale McKay Best Columnist Award, Alaska Press Club, 2002; Citizen of the Year, Haines Chamber of Commerce, 2004.

WRITINGS:

If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name: News from Small-Town Alaska, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), 2005.

Also contributor to Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio's Morning Edition.

SIDELIGHTS: As an active volunteer in her local school and library, Heather Lende is a familiar figure in the small town of Haines, Alaska. As an obituary writer for the local newspaper, a columnist for the Anchorage Daily News, and a frequent commentator on National Public Radio, she is also a chronicler conveying something of the lives and outlooks of her neighbors to a wider audience. Lende has drawn on this background in If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name: News from Small-Town Alaska, "an autobiographical love letter to this isolated community," according to Entertainment Weekly reviewer Gilbert Cruz. Each chapter is centered around a particular obituary, and one of the book's themes is the closeness of death from mud slides, small-plane crashes, and the sea that provides a living to many of the town's residents. Each obituary is also a celebration of a life, and Lende provides a colorful picture of the town's residents, from the aging hippie who launches many civic drives to the high school principal who doubles as a Roy Orbison impersonator and the Presbyterian minister who sports a number of elaborate tattoos. She also brings out larger points, such as the deeply personal nature of local issues and the dangers and pleasures of living so close to nature. After reading the book, "the reader has a good idea of what it's like to live among the varied citizens … of Haines, in the shadow of a glacier," concluded Booklist contributor Rebecca Maksel.

Lende told CA: "I began writing because I found myself full of stories at the dinner table every night that seemed worth sharing beyond my friends and family. I also live in a remarkable Alaskan town, full of interesting people and surrounded by spectafular wilderness. I think it is important to write about small towns and real people—life and death and families—as well as the value of time spent outdoors in wild places. My columns and commentaries are short by design and deadline driven. The book was fun because I had more time and more words to work with.

"When I do my columns I procrastinate at my desk most of the day, then make myself finish a passable draft before going to bed around ten. Then I toss and turn and wake up about three a.m. and get busy, rewriting, tuning, cutting, and sometimes starting all over again. By nine a.m. I figure I'll be fired, that I have nothing to say that is worth printing in a newspaper, and panic sets in. I have until noon to finish it. That is when I do my best work. I have never missed a deadline, and the only week I didn't write a column was the time I was run over by a truck and almost died. I wrote the next one from the hospital. I'm proud of that.

"While I live in a remote place without much feedback or contact with other writers and the literary or media world, I read all the time—newspapers online as well as magazines, novels, poems and nonfiction. Favorites include Anne LaMott, Ellen Gilchrist, Ivan Doig, John Erving, E.B. White, Larry McMurtry, Calvin Trillin, Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, Anna Quindlen, Annie Dillard, P.D. James, James Lee Burke, Jane Kenyon, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Tom McGuane, and fellow Alaskan John Straley. I also listen to A Prairie Home Companion each week and a lot of country music, which I suspect colors my writing.

"The most surprising thing I've learned as a writer is that no matter what I write about, if there is a pet in the story—a dog, cat, bunny, or even a chicken, everyone loves it even if it is not very good.

"I hope that when someone puts down something I have written they feel like they've just read a letter from an old friend in Alaska."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 2005, Rebecca Maksel, review of If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name: News from Small-Town Alaska, p. 1261.

Entertainment Weekly, May 27, 2005, Gilbert Cruz, review of If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name, p. 149.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2005, review of If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name, p. 275.

Library Journal, April 1, 2005, Melissa Stearns, review of If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name, p. 116; April 15, 2005, Rebecca Miller, "Heather Lende: Q&A," p. 108.

People, June 13, 2005, review of If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name, p. 52.

Publishers Weekly, April 18, 2005, review of If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name, p. 54.

USA Today, May 26, 2005, Bob Minzesheimer, review of If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name, p. D6.