Heather Lende is the author of If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name, a collection of stories about life (and death) in Haines, Alaska. The book is in its sixth printing and is listed in the National Geographic Traveler Ultimate Travel Library. She is currently at work on a second book.

I enjoyed talking with Heather. I hope you enjoy learning a little bit more about this down-to-earth writer.

Kimi: Would you share a little bit of your background?

Heather: I was born and raised on Long Island, just outside of New York City. I went to a Quaker school that my mother taught at and was the principal of, and then Middlebury College, where I met my husband. After school we married and drove to Alaska (he's a forester) and have been here ever since. In college I worked as a sailing instructor, and after college as a waitress and store clerk. Once I had children (about a year later), I stayed home as much as I could, although spent about five years working odd hours at the public radio station in Haines, KHNS, as a country show host and then morning show host and producer. I have also been a tour guide (walking and driving
classic cars in Haines) and an editor for the Rasmuson Foundation's grantee stories website project. I write for the Chilkat Valley News in Haines and have coached the Haines High cross country running teams – both boys and girls – since 1993.

Kimi: How did you get started as a writer?

Heather: While working at the radio station I had to write features and re-write wire stories to make sense. I also began writing short commentaries then. After I left the station I kept it up, writing more for radio than anything else – the old Monitor Radio and then NPR's Morning Edition. That lead to newspaper work locally (the social column, Duly Noted, and obituaries – I still write those), statewide with the Anchorage Daily News, and nationally with the Christian Science Monitor. And that all lead to a book. I would like to learn more about writing and will be part of the new low residency MFA in Creative Writing program at University of Alaska Anchorage.

Kimi: What books or authors have had the biggest impact on you? In what way?

Heather: The last one I read – Richard Ford's, The Lay of the Land – is really in my head right now. The way he takes three ordinary days in New Jersey and fills them with so much, and tells a story that is so true and crazy and heart-wrenching and funny. But really, everyone I've read has had an impact. E.B. White, he writes so well about farm life; Calvin Trillin on food and his family; Ellen Gilchrist – funny and wise. There’s Anne Tyler, Larry McMurtry, John Irving, Anne Lamott, and then the big shots – Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Stegner, Steinbeck. I mean, there's tons. Mainly I like a good story, someone who is smart and funny, and writes about families and people with a strong sense of place. That said, I love May Sarton's Journal of Solitude and James Lee Burke's gritty New Orleans detective novels. Good writing is good writing, I guess, and a good story or likable narrator keeps my attention and makes me wish I could write better.

Kimi: What does a typical day look like for you? (If there is such a thing!)

Heather: Real or pretend? In the pretend world I wake early, walk on the beach, have a healthy breakfast, good coffee with cream, and retire to my neat office and write brilliantly until noon, when I have a lovely lunch – salad type stuff – after which I return to my office to answer mail and such, then quit by three to head outdoors for yard and animal chores, or exercise and then visit an elderly neighbor, volunteer at school, and make a nice dinner for my family. Actually, I don't think I've ever had a day like that.

In the real world, I get up with my family. School mornings are busy, breakfast is a family deal, and then usually dive up to my desk – on the stair landing, a busy place where three dogs tuck under my feet or fight over the dog bed – and work in my pajamas until I get interrupted – that’s usually about an hour or two – from the phone, a visitor, my kids or husband, a neighbor. Or the sudden urge to make soup in the crock pot and clean the mud room. The thing is, usually whatever sidetracks me often makes a better story than what I was working on, so I go with it. I also go to a lot of meetings – library board, hospice board, school committees and community-type stuff. I hike or snowshoe daily – and put wood in the stove, water the chickens, garden in the summer, shovel in the winter, shop and cook – we have family dinners every night, and there are five of us in the house still, and a married daughter nearby. In the summer there are more. I have a nice full life, and often the writing takes place when everyone else is gone. I do most of it in the mornings on weekdays, except when I have a deadline. Then I'm like a crazy person and don't move until I'm done, and sometimes that can be late.

Kimi: Do you have a favorite tool as a writer? How about as an Alaskan?

Heather: I love my computer (a MacBook) and pens that work and the scraps of paper
in my pockets. I don't know how I'd write without it all. Also, email – and the phone. I work far from editors. As an Alaskan, my favorite tools, for lack of a better word, would be my hiking books and snowshoes (MSR's, the new lightweight ascent women's model) and bike. I couldn't write all winter without the breaks outside to think and get the blood flowing; and in the summer cycling and hiking inspire me even more.

Kimi: What do you hope your readers come away with after reading your book or articles?

Heather: I hope they like them. I try to write more like a friend than an author, and would like readers to not even think of me as a writer, but rather just a regular Alaskan sharing her day or life with them. Which is really all I do. I think that's why the stories are popular – there’s a closeness. On a more lofty level, as the world gets so big and impersonal, I'd like my experience in Haines to convince more people of the value of living locally – the dependence on your neighbor, supporting familiar, non-chain stores, growing or catching or even hunting your own food, sending your kids to public school, cheering for the home team on Saturday night instead of watching a game on TV, making dinner, having a potluck instead of going out – that sort of thing. People can make communities happen anywhere, if they choose to. They don't have to move to Haines to do it.

Kimi: An Alaskan author once told my husband that he didn't always tell the whole truth about the village he was writing about. That is, he purposefully left out the ugly side of the village - the pervasive drunkenness and domestic violence and just plain stupidity of many of the residents. He said he did this for two reasons: first, he wanted people to read his book, and second, he still owned a house in the village. What's your perspective on how much of the "whole story" should be told?

Heather: I have had that criticism – that I don't write about the seamier side of things. I write from my perspective, and truthfully, I am an optimist, half-full glass kind of gal. I don't ignore problems, but I have found that when there is one, plenty of people are ready to point it out and I don't need to add my voice. At the same time I work for better schools, hot lunch, support early child education and hospice. Stuff that matters to people here that struggle, stuff that helps – and I write about that. I coach kids and teach them how to lead healthy lives – perhaps better ones than their families have. I think the whole story should be told, but recognize that my whole story may not be someone else's, and that sometimes, especially when you write a column in the newspaper, some things about your community, just like some things about your family, are best kept out of print. I have also found that once you wait a bit and there is some resolution, that writing about hard issues is easier – and appropriate. I live in Haines, these are my people, and there are times, as my mother liked to point out, when discretion is the better part of valor.

Kimi: Is there anything in particular that you think makes Haines unique?

Heather: Sure – everything, just like any place else! Obviously our scenery, the rivers, mountains and sea. The solid Tlingit population full of tradition and culture. The working fisherman and carpenters. The artists (more per capita than any small town in the U.S.) and facilities – a nice school, clinic, library and pool. Not to mention our recently crowned 3A state champion boys basketball team – what a great thing! We are all so proud – I’m a huge fan.

Kimi: Many small towns/villages struggle to survive - jobs opportunities may be limited, the youth migrate to urban centers, the cost of goods is high. Are these issues in Haines?

Heather: The Country and City Mouse is an old story, and it repeats itself over and over again, in Haines as well as anywhere. Part of it is human nature – or at least American nature. We are a moving kind of people. I came from New York, my children may go to L.A. But yes, there is a concern, a big one, about creating jobs for young people here. The issue in Haines is unique because we are growing, not shrinking, but we are changing into a more expensive – even prosperous in many ways – place (property, homes, rent, healthcare, transportation, food, fuel) that even the good paying local jobs (state, school, borough) can't pay for alone. Our new residents are retirees or folks not dependent on the locally economy for a living and seasonal homeowners. My two oldest children are back after college. One is married and working in our lumberyard; her husband works for Fish and Game. The other is living at home, getting a masters in education and hoping to teach here. They both want to stay, but it would be much harder for them to get started without having us already established here, and hopefully it will work out for them. On the other hand, we, and many of our friends, sacrificed better paying jobs or career-type jobs, to live here. But it is harder than it used to be to live well here, and our kids may not want to or be able to do it. I wish there was an easy answer, but I'm not sure you can have a quiet, small town without much outside influence and all the things we love about Haines and have a young prosperous one too. It is a tricky balance, but I do think most folks here would not mind a little more action in the winter, and a more stable economy, especially if it means their grandchildren would be next door. And Haines still is much better off than many small towns – in Alaska and the rest of the country. It is a great place, so hopefully we'll grow enough to sustain ourselves another 125 years.

Kimi: In one chapter of If You Lived Here you mentioned that you would not be a good nature writer because despite loving the outdoors, your attention is always drawn to the human aspect of the landscape/environment. Yet like a good nature writer, you have the ability to observe the minutiae and gather them together into large themes and find truths. Does this come naturally to you or is it something that you consciously work at?

Heather: Thank you for saying that – I hope it is true. I suppose some is natural and some learned. I pay attention, I look for meaning and connections in small, everyday things. I am rooted in this place and am an avid outdoorswoman. I'm completely tuned to the environment, from tide changes and daylight hours to the weather and wildlife migrations. I garden, I hunt, I fish. But I also think that writing, especially for publication, should be more than just a word picture. It should explain some things about the way we live and why – what it all means. It should make a human connection, so I work at that part.

Kimi: I understand your upcoming book revolves around the theme of faith. Can you talk a little about the book as well as the role of faith in your own life?

Heather: I'm an Episcopalian, on the vestry or board of my church. I pray often and I believe in what I learned in Sunday school, pretty much, that God is great and good, and wherever love is, He is too. And it sustains me, big time, but I don't talk about it much, or ever really, and I am not a preachy type. I'm one of those folks who would rather pray with my feet. My new book is about Haines again, but the theme is faith – not just the religious kind, but the things we believe that we can't prove. Like winter makes us better people or eating local game makes us more responsible and healthier. So they are
stories about my friends and neighbors that illustrate faith in many different things. The other thread of the theme is how my own faith helped me get through a terrible accident and my mother's death. The titles of the chapters all come from the Book of Common Prayer, just to nudge the reader a bit, although many don't mention God.

Kimi: I really appreciate you taking the time to do this.

Heather: Thanks for asking me so much. I hope I haven't said way more than you want to hear.