Heather Lende

Prize-winning author of If you Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name

Note to Book Clubs

If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name continues to be popular with book clubs across the country and around the world. Heather has visited some, and interacted with many more via e-mail or speaker phone, if you'd like her to answer your book club's questions, please contact her, she's more than happy to.

"Part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott...NPR Commentator Heather Lende...subtly reminds readers to embrace each day, each opportunity, each life that touches our own and to note the beauty of it all.

-- Los Angeles Times
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Latest News:

If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name is in its seventh printing. Heather is working on a second book, about life in Haines and faith-- what we believe in but can't prove-- also for Algonquin Books.

Heather has won another Alaska Press Club award for her long running Anchorage Daily News column. The judge wrote: "Lovely, charming columns that show a real sense of place and community, and a sense of one's place in the world, and in life. A nice respite for readers."

Read Heather's recent interview at BellaOnline, The Voice of Women, with Kimi Ross.

Heather recently gave an interview to Deb Vanesse at her Alaskan authors blog, click to read it.

If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name was a finalist for the 2006 Willa Literary Award and was listed in the National Geographic Traveler Magazine Ultimate Travel Library selection.

If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name is now available at most bookstores. Check with booksense.com to find the store nearest you and to learn more about good books and independent booksellers.

EVEN IN ALASKA, THE ELECTION IS NOT ABOUT SARAH PALIN

I'm tired of the distraction of Sarah Palin, and embarrassed at the way Alaska is being presented to the world. I have been trying to write something funny for two weeks, and there's so much material, but I can't because I'm scared to death about what it could mean if we actually elected John McCain just because he has Miss Wasilla on his arm.(There's that, and it is hunting season and we got a moose last week. I have helped field dress one, too.)

I know that's snippy. I'm sorry. Let's be serious.

We are adults. We care. And yes, I have hope that everyone is a lot smarter than all of this. You've met the family. You've toured Wasilla. You've read the papers. You know about all the God and guns and crazy creationist talk, the flip-flopping on the Bridge to Nowhere and making up the Alaska oil production numbers stuff. You must know this election isn't about lipstick or snow machines, and by now, that it isn't about Sarah Palin at all.

It is about ending eight years of what my friend and Haines mayor, Fred Shields calls "the Bush crime family" rule. It is about real serious stuff, like opening up government again, stopping a terrible war, dealing with climate change (yes, we can feel it here) creating a sustainable energy policy, affordable healthcare, better schools, fixing the economy and even small-town values, which I can speak to. (In Alaska, Wasilla is not a small town. It's a suburban shopping mall kind of place, an hour's drive on a freeway to Anchorage.)

In Haines, (pop.2400, 90 air or sea miles from Juneau) our council and Mayor Shields declared we wouldn't support the Patriot Act (remember that- and phone tapping and no-fly lists?) The library board took matters one-step further, and stopped saving old lending records, so if the FBI ever asks what books I've read, they'll only see the ones I have out currently. That's Alaskan small-town values at work.

I watch helplessly as my children's college funds plummet just when I need them, while the big banks and the gamblers responsible for the financial mess want less, rather than more regulation, and say it will all even out in a few years. So much for families trying to send their kids to college now.

I am stunned that there's no federal money to pay for the requirements of No Child Left Behind in the Haines public school, but they can find billions overnight to bailout corporate crooks. Here in Haines, if you can't pay back your loan, our only bank won't advance you the money.

We own a lumberyard with seven employees. All the stores in Haines are locally owned. But across America independent grocery stores, hardware stores, bookstores and shoe stores-- places just like ours--are gone or vanishing fast, in part because we pay our employees enough to live on and costly health insurance. Sarah Palin is proud to be a Wal-Mart shopper and was on hand as governor to open the Wasilla Wal-Mart. When did the very business that is responsible for boarded up Main Streets from Arkansas to Alaska become the symbol of small-town American values, much less Alaskan ones? When was the last time you saw a Christmas card with a photo of a shopping mall anchored by a Wal-Mart on the front? We buy our guns, socks, and butter at the Olerud's grocery and sporting goods store. It's a real small-town family place.

One last thing--I know plenty of single young moms with darling babies. It happens here more than most places, I suspect. I support their choice, but want to be sure it remains a choice.

That's why I'm voting for Barack Obama and Joe Biden and so are most of my Alaskan women friends.

I wish I could have said all this in a funny way, but it really is no joke. And truthfully, it has nothing to do with Sarah Palin at all, and everything to do with the last eight years. I want a brand new team in Washington, not the same old one with a new cheerleader, even if she is our Alaskan cheerleader.

Feel free to do anything with all or parts of this note that will get Barack Obama elected.

Heather Lende Haines, Alaska Sept.18, 2008

• Anchorage Daily News Columns
• Chilkat Valley News
• Haines Borough Public Library
• Haines Community Website

Made In Alaska

Heather Lende, Recipient of the 2006 AKLA Alaskana Award

The Alaskana award was established in the early 1994 by the Alaska Library Association to honor outstanding adult fiction and nonfiction works about Alaska.

If you have questions about Haines or are planning a trip, please visit the Haines Visitor Center website.

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