During the pandemic, Leigh Newman’s Alaska upbringing really kicked into high gear. At one point, she made preparations in case there was a complete social breakdown in NYC, where she now lives. “I have a house in rural Connecticut that’s my pretend Alaska. I have chickens. If I’m disconnected from society, I can go shoot birds,” she says with a laugh. “I had 6 months of food, water, lifejackets and gatorade. Then, I bought a raft. And I thought, ‘Someone is going to fight me for this raft.’ I was prepared to launch it from Carroll Gardens into the Gowanus Canal. I said to my kids, ‘Tell no one we have this raft.’”She pays tribute to her home state in her collection of short stories, “Nobody Gets Out Alive” (Scribner), a Kirkus-starred collection of tales of remote wilderness, railroad camps, broken marriages, Alaskan suburbs — and yes, moose dogs, which are exactly what they sound like: hot dogs made of moose. (Her 2013 memoir about growing up in Alaska, “Still Points North” was a finalist for the National Book Critic Circle’s John Leonard Prize.)
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