Wrangell Sentinel -

By the time this paper hits the stores, I’ll be on a plane to my family home in Salt Lake City for the holidays. But unlike last year, I won’t be coming back to Wrangell in January. Instead, I’ll be making a leap from the oldest continuously published newspaper in Alaska to the oldest continuously published periodical in the United States — Harper’s Magazine, in New York City.

According to Marilynne Robinson, one of my favorite authors, “a character or a place is inexhaustible and will always reward further attention.” For the past year and a half, my job as a Sentinel reporte...