East Anchorage Book Club with Andrew Gray
The East Anchorage Book Club is an interview podcast where Alaskan leaders discuss politics and community issues.
Episodes
JJ Harrier is the 2025 chair of the Anchorage Pride Parade. After a childhood in Girdwood, he traveled around the lower 48 and Europe trying to find himself ultimately ending up homeless on the streets of Portland in his early 30s. His mother got him into rehab in Alaska and from there his life took a different direction. JJ is the former Vice President of Marketing for the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, the former D...
Alaska State House Representative for Downtown Anchorage Zack Fields explains the budget reconciliation bill recently passed in the US House by a single vote. That bill is now in the US Senate, where if it is not substantially amended, it would adversely affect Alaska in many ways. One is cutting funding for SNAP – which is the federal food stamp program. About 70,000 Alaskans receive SNAP benefits. The bill would al...
Tessa Hulls is the 2025 Pulitzer prize winner for her graphic memoir Feeding Ghosts. Tessa is only the second graphic novelist to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize, the first being Art Speigleman for Maus in 1992. Tessa was kitchen staff for this past legislative session in Juneau. She worked in the legislative lounge every day making legislators' breakfasts and lunches. No one knew she was an author and certainly no ...
Alaska State House Representative for South Anchorage, Girdwood & Whittier Ky Holland was born and raised in Anchorage. He is the eldest son of Federal Judge Russ Holland who was the judge in the case against Exxon after the Exxon Valdez Oil spill. Ky left Alaska for college in Oregon and stayed away for over a decade. Returning in the late 90s, he continued his work as a mechanical engineer, but expanded into aca...
Alaska State House Representative for West Anchorage Carolyn Hall got an internship with the Boston Red Sox during her senior year of college in New Hampshire. This led to her dream job working for the team as a videographer during their World Series win in 2004. In 2008 she branched into TV journalism getting her first job with a small local market: KTUU in Anchorage. She covered the Iditarod, Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. ...
Former Alaska State Senator and Iraq war veteran Josh Revak was born and raised in Minnesota. While serving in the Army in the early 2000s, a mortar blast in Iraq blew a quarter-sized hole through the back of his foot. He then got his first job in politics back in Minnesota working on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. Then, while visiting the Alaska family of a fellow soldier who had been killed in Iraq, ...
Deko Harbi, Shannon Smith, and Tali Stone are former Alaska foster youth. All three recently visited the Capitol in Juneau as part of a trip organized by Facing Foster Care in Alaska. Facing Foster Care in Alaska is a nonprofit organization that provides foster youth and alumni opportunities to share their lived experience about life in foster care to raise community awareness and promote improvements in the system. T...
Alaska State House Representative Kevin McCabe of Big Lake landed in Kodiak with the Coast Guard in 1981. He raised his three sons there before he began work as a pilot. That work took him to East Anchorage and eventually to Big Lake. He and his wife Linn entered politics as supporters of Sarah Palin for governor in the mid-2000s. During his initial political awakening he adhered to a version of purity politics that h...
Mindy O’Neall is the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly Chair and the Executive Director of the Cold Climate Housing Research Center. CCHRC is a non-profit organization located near the Univerity of Alaska Fairbanks that for the past 25 years has advanced building solutions for healthier, more resilient homes in cold climates. Prior to her current roles, Mindy was the director of the coordinated campaign for the Al...
Rep. Andrew Gray is the usual host of this podcast, but in this episode he is the guest. He is interviewed by his Legislative Aide Kyle Johansen at the request of his other legislative aide Claire Bredar in honor of her birthday. Gray was first elected to the Alaska State House in 2022 to represent the U-Med district. Outside the legislature, he is a physician assistant at an Anchorage Urgent Care.
Legislative Lobbyist Reed Stoops moved to Alaska in 1971 after his youth on the East Coast. He worked as a Committee Aide to Kay Poland in the State Senate and then took a job in the Department of Natural Resources in Gov. Jay Hammond's Administration. During Gov. Bill Sheffield's Administration, he began legislative lobbying, and in 2000, he co-founded the Juneau Community Foundation. The Juneau Community F...
Alaska State House Representative Jubilee Underwood of Wasilla lost the August 2024 primary to the incumbent Representative David Eastman. Few folks thought that she had a chance of winning that race, but come November, Underwood defeated Eastman. She is now here in Juneau forging a new path for her community. Prior to running for the House she served three years on the MatSu School Board, the last as President. We ta...
Michael Rovito is the deputy director of the Alaska Power Association (APA). The Alaska Power Association is the statewide trade association that represents the electric utilities that supply power to more than a half-million Alaskans. As part of his duties with APA, Michael hosts a podcast called, "Alaska Powerline," which talks about issues facing Alaska’s electric utilities. He trained as a journalist and...
Alaska State Senator Rob Yundt was born and raised in Wasilla and stumbled into wrestling as a 7th grader. Little did he know that wrestling would change his life ultimately leading to a career as a professional Mixed Martial Arts fighter with a professional record of 9 wins and five losses – his UFC match against Ricardo Almeida in 2008 (which is available on YouTube) was a pay-per-view event streamed live from the M...
Alaska State Senator Matt Claman first laid eyes on Alaska while working as a cook for a mining company the summer before his senior year of college. After law school, he made his way back to Alaska settling in Anchorage. In the mid 2000s he was elected to the Anchorage Assembly and was elevated to Chair at the start of his second year. This meant that when Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich was elected US Senator, Matt Cla...
Dr. Brock Wilson is the newest faculty at UAA’s Institute of Social And Economic Research (ISER). Brock recently earned his PhD in Economics from the University of Oregon where his primary area of study was labor economics. His most important published work is on pension generosity and its effect on hiring and keeping workers. It was his time spent as a wildland firefighter in Oregon that initially got him interested ...
Alaska State House Representative Bill Elam of Kenai and Nikiski served for almost six years on the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly before running for the open House seat created when former Rep. Ben Carpenter ran for the Alaska State Senate. It wasn’t an easy race: Carpenter endorsed Elam’s opponent, and Elam lost the August primary, although just barely. We talk about all of that and more.
Representative Frank Tomaszewski of Fairbanks got his start in local politics opposing a plan by North Star Borough Mayor Luke Hopkins to build a parking lot near Frank’s home. He ran for the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly in 2019 and served until 2022. He then ran against Luke Hopkins' son Grier Hopkins who was serving in the Alaska State House, and Frank defeated him. Frank and I were freshmen together i...
Anchorage Attorney Pat Galvin grew up in southern California and hoped to be a sports agent. He never intended to be an attorney, to live in Alaska, nor work in state government. But as a relatively young lawyer he got a job in Governor Tony Knowles'’s administration as the Director of Governmental Coordination in the Office of the Governor before moving into the Department of Natural Resources. He stayed at DNR ...
Sarah Vance spent her early life in north Texas and Oklahoma before moving to Homer, Alaska, at age 10. She had not paid much attention to politics until a 2017 Homer City Council resolution to make Homer a sanctuary city for immigrants. Sarah helped mobilize against the resolution and led a recall election against the three city councilmembers who had brought forth the resolution. In 2018 she challenged longtime incu...
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