An insider's look into an Alaska newsroom, but the author swears it's fiction

A former Alaska TV journalist, David Bernknopf, is turning his Anchorage newsroom years into a novel—and it's part love letter, part culture shock. In this interview, the author of Two Years on Another Planet explains why Alaska felt "like another planet," how the book blends real moments into fictional characters, and what he misses most. Bernknopf also gets candid about the hardest story to cover—homelessness in subzero temperatures—and why the struggle for answers, accountability, and basic human dignity still sticks with them long after leaving the state.