Today, November 11, 2025, is Ghosts of Distant Trees’ official publication date, which feels like a more fluid milestone than I expected it to. But what it means is that today is the day you can find it on bookstore and library shelves, order it from places I’d prefer you didn’t, and I’ll stop asking you to preorder, and instead encourage you to tell your friends to buy a copy.

But for now, I’ll do neither of those things, and show you this picture of my dog, Ozzy, interrupted by having books put on and near him as he basks in rapidly dimishing subarctic sun. I’m so grateful to everyone who has shared photos of the book with your own pets, on your kitchen tables, on the beach or in the woods, on library shelves. It’s a wild feeling to know the book is out in the world, doing it’s work.* 

This is the first fall in several years I’ve spent at home, and while I’m rarely sad to miss the brown of October, the loss of daylight - about six minutes a day - makes a lot more sense, psychologically, when you’ve seen it through the season. Between late arrival of first snow and the government shutdown, October (among the warmest on record globally) was full of home chores; most poignantly: processing beetle-killed spruce trees for future firewood. So much of the forest around our house was starting to look like the cover art for Ghosts (which, as a reminder, features an original print by Fairbanks artist Sara Tabbert, whose work you should absolutely check out here). Now that cold has settled in (though as we know, that can be precarious), it feels slightly counterintuitive to ramp up towards book events and public life in the quiet season. Still, I’m looking forward to sharing more Ghosts with you in the coming months. I’ve got Alaska events on the calendar in the coming weeks (see below), and keep an eye on my website as more is added. 

And: I made a Ghosts playlist.

The night before my birthday, I couldn’t sleep, and worked on this instrad. Some of these songs are referenced directly in the book, and others found their way in at a slant.

Listen on Tidal or Spotify, as you read or afterwards.

*Zora Neale Hurston, best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, wrote in her 1942 memoir Dust Tracks on a Road that receiving a telegram relaying the acceptance of her first short story for publication felt greater than “finding your first pubic hair.” I think about it at every literary milestone, though I’ve realized I have no working memory of that pubescent experience. Still, it’s a delightful and bold description, and now you can think about it too. 

Upcoming Alaska events

FAIRBANKS, AK, November 19:

You’re invited to the official Ghosts of Distant Trees book launch, the debut memoir-in-essays by Denali-based author Erica Watson and the latest from award-winning Porphyry Press. A brief reading and author conversation between Erica and Fairbanks-based guest author Julianne Warren will be preceded by a short publisher’s intro to McCarthy’s off-grid indie press—the most remote book publisher in North America. Beer, wine, NA options, and cocktails will be for sale along with books, which of course Erica would be happy to sign or inscribe.  

~More details here~

DENALI PARK, AK, November 22:

McKinley Holiday Bazaar, McKinley Community Center, 12-4pm. If you’ve already read Ghosts, this is the event I wrote about in the short essay “Bottle Caps.” I’ll have books for sale, as well as some knit cowls and crafts from the archives, and homemade tortillas. 

FAIRBANKS, AK, November 29:

Solstice Bookshop Local Authors Book Sale, 10am-4pm. Details forthcoming from Solstice Books! 

HEALY, AK, December 3:

Reading and Conversation at Tri-Valley Community Library, 6:30pm. As part of the library’s Visiting Writers series, I’ll share how a lifetime of reading shaped her own book, and how a few favorite books found their way into her writing about Denali. Books will be available for purchase (or check out the library's copy!) 

Alaska Book Week recording

Alaska Book Week is an annual statewide celebration of books, featuring readings, panels, and lectures (and it happens to coincide with my birthday week in early October).

This year, my friend Dawnell Smith, who writes, organizes, serves on the board of the literary organization 49 Writers, and generally makes things happen in Anchorage, joined me in a recorded conversation about Ghosts of Distant Trees, available on YouTube here.

Dawnell asked some excellent questions about the book, each of which could be its own conversation, but one question felt particularly difficult to answer concisely: about the intersection of the far right’s dismantling of federal agencies, including the National Park Service, and the literary conversations around land management and climate change. The day after Dawnell and I spoke, the US government shut down, further destabilizing communities like mine, which are intertwined with if not largely reliant on federal employment and infrastructure. AND: I want to maintain the space to be critical of this infrastructure, the colonial and capitalist assumptions that underpin it, and the values that inform it. Which is to say it’s been a strange time, and it was probably going to be anyway. Which is to say I’m still working on this answer.   

Recommended reading

'A whole new concrete jungle': A typhoon evacuee lands in urban Alaska, by Jeron Joseph, guest contributor to Northern Journal

Following the devastating storm and subsequent evacuation of climate refugees from Western Alaska, independent journalist Nat Herz’s reporting has been among the best I read. Guest contributor Jeron Joseph shared firsthand accounts of his experience in the storm, and then in Anchorage.

Growing up in the flat, watery plain of the Kuskokwim Delta all my life, I had forgotten about how imposing the urban structures and the trees are — because the sky at home is totally open. Maybe folks here think that the sky is pretty open already in some places. But at home, it always felt like a planetarium without an edge. I remember winter nights where I would stargaze and I could see the entire sky, horizon to horizon, and just lie down there admiring the beauty. 

Trees are beautiful. Mountains are beautiful. The city skyline is beautiful. I love admiring it all, but I just miss the beauty I used to see.

The Large Language Muddle, n+1 editors

Resist the call to establish worthless partnerships like the Washington Post’s Ember, an “AI writing coach” designed to churn out Bezos-friendly op-eds. Instead, do what better magazines, newspapers, and journals have managed for centuries. Promote and produce original work of value, work that’s cliché-resistant and unreplicable, work that tries — as Thomas Pynchon wrote in an oracular 1984 essay titled “Is It OK to Be a Luddite?” — “through literary means which are nocturnal and deal in disguise, to deny the machine.”

Fifteen Facts about Zebras, by Lynda Rushing, Brevity Magazine

Following a recent “zebra” diagnosis in my family, I returned to this flash essay/prose poem I taught over the summer. The writer uses a numbered list, alternating between scientific fact and personal experience, to tell a story of diagnosis. I found it useful in considering how objective information can be used to create or narrow distance between the reader and an emotionally charged narrative, and how the writer’s expertise is also a form of intimacy. It was interesting to see what emerged when we wrote scientific list poems together. 

3. A “zebra” is also a term used in medicine to refer to an extremely rare disease. The catchphrase, “when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras” is something both my husband and I learned as med students. It means, think of ordinary diseases first before jumping to an obscure entity—in someone with a fever and muscle aches, rule out the flu instead of malaria or dengue fever.

Video reward: Have you ever seen a book in production? I had not, til this video, and it’s absolutely mesmerizing to watch. Here’s a short production video from the printer of my book becoming a finished object: 

Ghosts of of Distant Trees production video