Kay Fanning’s Alaska Story: Memoir of a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Newspaper Publisher on America’s Northern Frontier

Kay Fanning’s Alaska Story is an inspirational memoir of how Kay built the Anchorage Daily News into a bastion of progressive leadership. She did it with grace and integrity, always placing public interests above special interests. In 1965, Kay loaded her three children into a station wagon and headed north for a fresh start in Alaska. She took a job at the Anchorage Daily News, eventually purchasing the struggling newspaper with her new husband, Larry Fanning. Just as they were gaining steam, however, Larry died of a heart attack. Kay became editor and publisher, turning the Daily News into Alaska’s largest newspaper. She and her newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for coverage of corruption in Alaska’s powerful Teamsters Union. In 1983, Kay headed East to become editor of the Christian Science Monitor. She began working on this memoir, but she died before it was finished. Katherine Field Stephen, her daughter, finished the book by inviting eight of Kay Fanning’s friends and associates to contribute stories of how Kay helped define Alaska’s issues and shape its future.