In 1979 at the age of 19 Suraj Holzwarth became the youngest woman to summit Denali, North America’s highest peak. In this riveting memoir, Suraj shares a spirited account of the 30-day expedition, which began in the Peters Hills, leading through some of Alaska’s most remote wilderness before reaching Denali’s base camp. Eighty pounds of gear on her back, she and her team bushwhacked through mosquito-infested alders, forded raging glacial rivers, navigated quicksand, rocky marines, and crevassed glaciers. The team faced 100 mph winds, sub-zero temperatures, crevasse falls, altitude sickness, and failing equipment.

In this inspiring journey, Suraj shows us how to dream big as a young at a young age, how to engage one’s passion, trust one’s gut, overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and live life to the fullest. Siraj’s strength, art, and determination, as well as her deep love, awe, and wonder for the mountains shine through this remarkable story.

Suraj spent over 25 years climbing and guiding expeditions in the wilds of Alaska and around the world. In 1983 she co-founded the first wilderness program for women in Alaska and led it for 17 years, empowering over 50,000 girls and women. For the last 25 years she has been the executive director of The Whirling Rainbow Foundation, an international cultural and healing arts nonprofit organization. She’s an author, healer, artist, musician, and teacher. At 65, she’s still an avid hiker, backpacker, kayaker, global adventurer, and earth lover. She lives in Homer, Alaska.

Her book Heart Like a Mountain has just been published.

During a 20+ year career in media, 2024/25 Atwood Chair of Journalism Brad Hillwig has explored nearly every aspect of the art and business of storytelling. In a world of rapid news cycles, instant reactions, and evolving technologies, Hillwig shares why the timeless craft of storytelling might be more valuable than ever and offers important lessons for navigating the modern media landscape.

Hillwig is an award-winning filmmaker and communications professional driven by the art of innovative storytelling. In 2021, Brad launched Greatland Studios, a startup production company built around authentic, community-based documentary storytelling. Brad holds an MBA from UAA (2010). Please visit our Website for his complete bio.

Steve Haycox is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UAA where he taught history full-time for 40 years. His honors include the University system’s Edith Bullock Prize for Excellence, an Alaska Governor’s Award in the Humanities, and designation by the Alaska Historical Society twice as Historian of the Year. His books include a history of Alaska titled Alaska: An American Colony and Frigid Embrace, an investigation of the conflict between economic development and environmental protection in Alaska. He writes an occasional op/ed column for the Anchorage Daily News and continues to research and write. He is working on a history of Alaska’s political shift from liberal to conservative.

Barbara Hood’s involvement in communications began when she served as a reporter for the Polar Star student newspaper while an undergraduate at UAF in the 1970s and continued when she served as an editor for an environmental law journal while in law school at the University of California Berkeley.

A commitment to effective communication has remained an important part of both her professional and volunteer endeavors ever since. As a lawyer, she served in the public sector in Alaska for 30 years before retiring as Communications Counsel for the Alaska Court System. As a volunteer, she has served on several advocacy boards and neighborhood groups and has used her interests in both writing and photography to coordinate communications efforts on behalf of local, state and national non-profits. Today, she focuses on maintaining her own writing practice and contributes when she can to local and state publications.

Hood served on the Board of 49 Writers from 2017-2023, including four years as board president and three as volunteer executive director. She credits 49 Writers with inspiring and supporting her own writing interests and continues to volunteer for the organization because of the value she believes it brings to Alaska’s writing community.

Brian Walch provides services to help empower managers to lead themselves, their teams, and their organizations. His 25 year career includes experience with people and systems to support growth from the inside out.

Sherrie, retired now, keeps active by traveling, teaching drivers safety, membership in two book clubs, an investment club, four Toastmasters clubs, and Alaska Professional Communicators, and personally learning how to use ChatGPT.

Brian is the owner of Shiftfocus Coaching and Consulting. He provides services to help empower managers to lead themselves, their teams, and their organizations.

During his 25-year career, he has worked with employees and leaders across HR, IT, Finance, Operations, and the C-suite. He led HR as a partner in a growing national consulting firm and has extensive experience in recruiting, retention, and employee development. In addition to his business experience, he has been the technical lead or project manager for projects that have transformed small businesses, modernized government agencies, and improved enterprise-wide systems and processes.

Brian uses his experience with people and systems to develop tools and processes that support growth from the inside out. He has developed proprietary frameworks such as the Integrated Life Framework and Integrated Business Framework to support managers and leaders. He provides executive coaching, business coaching, consulting, and public speaking services. 

Sherrie Simmonds retired from Alaska Housing Finance Corporation in 2011, where she served 16 years as Corporate Communications Officer, overseeing all internal and external communications.

Since retirement, Sherrie has enjoyed traveling and participating in church activities and numerous clubs and organizations. She teaches drivers’ safety classes for AARP, is a member of two book clubs, an investment club, and four Toastmasters clubs, along with Alaska Professional Communicators. She has served numerous terms as both president and treasurer of APC.

Sherrie seizes every opportunity to learn new things and was instrumental in keeping APC continuing to meet during Covid when she dove headfirst into learning Zoom.

In light of ChatGPT’s current popularity, she has been learning how we might personally embrace this technology.

SPEAKERS
Melinda Munson and Gretchen Wehmhoff purchased The Skagway News for $20 in early 2020. While preparing to travel to Skagway with Melinda’s family of seven children in February, the Diamond Princess remained docked in Japan with a deadly outbreak of a new virus, COVID-19. Two weeks after taking ownership in March, a pandemic was declared, borders were closed and the cruise ship industry was dead in the water. The new owners published one paper before being closed off from their printer in Whitehorse, Yukon. The lack of cruise ship capital crippled the small town of Skagway whose economy is 90% dependent on tourism.

The tale of the paper is a mirror of the tale of the town of Skagway. Two women took a leap of faith in their journalistic skills and each other to keep The Skagway News alive and their own lives in balance. The Skagway News is surviving, but the challenges have not stopped, including a major rockslide on the largest cruise ship dock in town, which threatens to shut down half the town’s income.

Munson and Wehmhoff have learned about the job, themselves and each other as they make tough decisions in the name of keeping The Skagway News alive.

SPEAKER BIOS
In November 2019, Melinda Munson, a long-term substitute teacher and part-time freelance journalist living in Chugiak, saw an article in the Anchorage Daily News in which Publisher Larry Persily promised to give The Skagway News to the best applicants willing to move to the remote Southeast Alaska town of 800 year-round residents. She talked her dubious colleague, Gretchen Wehmhoff, into applying as a team. Melinda didn’t tell her husband about the application until Persily made contact. Lucky for her, her spouse didn’t ask for a divorce. By March of 2020, Munson, her husband and her seven kids sold their home and drove 800 miles to live in a pricey 1,300 foot rental where they would encounter Covid-19 and rockslides that nearly destroyed the town’s economy – and the paper.

A believer in small town journalism and now 50% owner of a newspaper – a job Melinda didn’t even think to dream up – she is learning how to shop in a rural grocery store (freeze everything) report on local politics without getting embroiled (don’t sign petitions) and be an editor in a place so small, the residents literally know what she is having for dinner.

Gretchen Wehmhoff, a retired journalism teacher, advised the award-winning Chugiak Pegasus for over two decades. She co-owns The Skagway News with Melinda Munson.

Wehmhoff moved to Alaska in 1965 with her family. For the Wehmhoffs, education was an expectation. Both her parents had degrees. Her mother had two and her grandfather and both of her grandmothers also held degrees. Wehmhoff’s entire life was spent surrounded by strong female role models through family, Girl Scouting, work and volunteerism.

Wehmhoff was the public relations director for Susitna Girl Scout Council, did layout for the Anchorage Daily News, then began teaching in 1985, first in Kenai, then with the Anchorage School District.

Upon retirement from teaching, Wehmhoff’s dream was to operate a newspaper that paid young journalists. While teaching, she took students on more than a dozen trips to national journalism conferences, introduced them to local press and journeyed with them through multiple First Amendment battles – successfully.

After retiring in 2009, she freelanced for local newspapers covering news in the Chugiak/Eagle River area. Wehmhoff entered politics, running for the Alaska Legislature and Anchorage Assembly. She was appointed to finish the term of the Chugiak/Eagle River assembly member in 2018-19.

She currently teaches communication courses for the University of Alaska Anchorage.