Here’s how the story begins:

ANCHORAGE — There have been times in Alaska’s history when people have had deep anxiety about foreign threats. The state was bombed and two of its islands were occupied by the Japanese in World War II. And it is, after all, the closest anyone can get to Russia and still be on American soil.

But nobody here seems all that worried right now.

With North Korea’s test of an intercontinental ballistic missile last week, the news has been filled with speculation that a nuclear warhead could reach the Last Frontier and that Anchorage could be the most realistic U.S. target for destruction. But people here have been talking about the possibility of missile strikes for decades, and Alaskans tend to focus on more tangible hazards, like avalanches covering the highway, bear maulings at campgrounds, boating accidents and earthquakes.

“I’m worried about moose, not missiles,” quipped Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz. “Bears, not bombs.”

Read the rest of the story here.

And, hilariously, the story wound up on Colbert, watch it here.

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Then, over the weekend, I had a story of my own published in the Post that helped to provide context about Alaska law, mental health care and veteran’s culture here. To report that story, photographer Ash Adams and I spent several days talking to vets and visiting a VFW and an American Legion Hall, which was truly a pleasure.

The Washington Post story begins:

ANCHORAGE — Monday night was lasagna night inside the strip-mall storefront of VFW Post 9981. Clemson was still behind Alabama on the big screens as regulars trickled in. At the bar, Joe Federmann considered how Esteban Santiago fell through the social safety net Alaska has for veterans.

A young combat vet, Santiago lived for several years in this town of 300,000 before he boarded the plane that took him to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where the FBI says he shot five strangers at the baggage claim. Santiago showed signs of serious mental illness and a propensity for violence the year before the trip, investigators say. Federmann wondered whether he had signed up to get mental health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs. There is good help available for vets, he said, but they have to take it.

“The thing about it is, a lot of veterans don’t feel they want to seek that help because they think they don’t need it,” Federmann said.

It has been more than 40 years since Federmann, 71, saw a man killed by a rocket in Vietnam, but the memory is still searing, he said. When he came back from the war, he and his family moved to Alaska. He found peace in the vast wild landscapes, the fishing and a community of veterans who understood him, he said. He also had good care at VA. When he dies, he would like his ashes spread over an Alaska mountain range, he said.

There are more vets per capita in Alaska than any other state. One out of every three people is either military or a dependent, according to Verdie Bowen, director of veterans affairs for the state. Alaska offers vets opportunities in oil fields, health care, mining, aviation, military contract work and the federal workforce. In a place where bears eat out of trash cans and moose rut in cul-de-sacs, nobody makes a big deal about owning guns. And Alaskans tend to value self-reliance and practicality, Bowen said.

“A lot of the veterans come up here; they want to be on their own,” he said. “A lot of veterans are of an independent mind-set.”

Read the rest here.

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Julia O’Malley, a third-generation Alaskan, is a freelance journalist, teacher, editor and cook who lives in Anchorage. Her work in newsrooms, classrooms and kitchens explores Alaska’s cultures, politics, climate and food.

She is currently a Writer-in-Residence at Anchorage Museum, researching Alaskans’ relationship to salmon at a time of historic, climate-related volatility. She teaches culinary arts and journalism at University of Alaska, Anchorage. She also develops recipes and writes a newsletter about Alaska food. 

Her book about Alaska’s foodways, “The Whale and The Cupcake: Stories of Subsistence, Longing, and Community in Alaska,” created in collaboration with the Anchorage Museum and published by University of Washington Press, came out in December 2019. (Order it here!) (Listen to it on Audible here!) Her work has been anthologized in “Made of Salmon,” “America’s Best Food Writing 2018,” “Writing on the Edge,” and “How to Survive.” 

Julia received a James Beard Award in 2024 for a story about the cultural implications of the climate-related crash of snow crab on Saint Paul Island, a place where Russian colonists and the federal government coerced Indigenous people into hunting seal for furs well into the 20th Century. She also received a James Beard Award in 2018 for a story about a young whale hunter, Chris Apassingok, who was cyber-bullied by environmentalists after he took a whale in the village of Gambell.

Julia has worked as an editor at Alaska Public Media and as a reporter, columnist and editor at the Anchorage Daily News. She’s written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, High Country News, The Nation, The Guardian, National Geographic News and Eater,  among other publications. (Find her all her latest work here.) She writes recipes for the Anchorage Daily News and Edible Alaska. She also teaches and organizes independent workshops around Alaska on memoir and food journalism. She is board president of the Alaska Press Club.

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Other publications and experience:

Julia was the visiting Atwood Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska Anchorage from 2015-2017, where she taught food writing, social media, community reporting and digital journalism.

Julia wrote a twice-weekly metro column about Alaska life and politics for the Anchorage Daily News from 2009 to 2014. Her work has been recognized with some of country’s most prestigious feature-writing prizes.

In 2014, she won a Berger Award from Columbia Journalism School for a series of stories, “The things that happen: two boys and cancer” about the spiritual worlds of two teenage boys, best friends, one of them Lao and one of them Hmong, who were diagnosed with cancer at the same time. (Click here for her Journalism Day speech at Columbia). 

In 2011, her series on opiate addiction in Anchorage, “Hooked: One Addict’s Story,” which she worked on with photographer Marc Lester, won the Darrell Sifford Memorial Prize from the Missouri School of Journalism, a Blethen Award, first place in the Society of Professional Journalists Pacific Northwest Excellence in Journalism contest for social issues reporting. That same year, her columns won first place for general commentary from the Society for Features Journalists.

In 2008, a body of her work won the Scripps-Howard Foundation’s Ernie Pyle award for the best human-interest writing in America.

She is a graduate of Smith College and the mother of two boys.

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