ASP Podcast #22: Sitka writer, Brendan Jones

Brendan Jones

Brendan & family

Tug Adak, Brendan, Rachel & Haley

Rachel & kiddos, Irkustk Siberia

Brendan salmon trolling

Listen to Brendan and Dan with your favorite podcast player, or via Apple Podcasts

Brendan Jones lives in Sitka, Alaska with his wife, three daughters, six chickens, and one dog.  He first came to Sitka as a young man to land what work he could find.  Soon he was writing for the Sitka Sentinel, and has gone on to write for a range of publications including The New York Times, the Smithsonian, GQ, Washington Post, Patagonia and others.  He has recently won the 2022 Green Earth Book Award for Whispering Alaska.  All the while, he balances writing with being a father and spending time in the wilds as a fisher, hunter and outdoorsman. This podcast conversation includes:

  • Early days in Sitka, living in the woods, and getting hired as a reporter for the Sitka Sentinel

  • Traveling west to China and around the world, west to east on little funds before returning to Columbia University

  • Working as a Sitka carpenter, then returning to the East Coast to start a business

  • Back to Sitka, Brendan bought the classic WW II tug, Adak

  • How he met his bride as a Salsa dancing instructor

  • The story of the Adak taking on water, saving it, an intervention and a rebuild in Wrangell

  • With his wife, two daughters, and their dog—a year in Irkutsk, Russia, as a Fulbright scholar, teaching and researching the 19th century Russian-American Company frigate “Neva”

  • The story of how the Neva met it’s end on Kruzof Island

  • A reading from Brendan’s manuscript, "Americans in Siberia"

  • Comments on his Washington Post article, "We Need Alaska’s Tongass National Forest Now More Than Ever". The Tongass as a carbon sequestration forest

  • Comments on Brendan’s New York Times article, "A Canadian Threat to Fishing", on salmon and transboundary mining issues

  • Reflections on raising a family in Sitka and Southeast Alaska

Brendan Jones: https://www.brendanisaacjones.com/

Special thanks to Christian Arthur for original music

Dan Kowalski