Melinda Moustakis with Laurie Frankel

Debut novelist Melinda Moustakis visits the store for the release of Homestead, which received rave early reviews, including starred reviews from Publishers Weekly ("Moustakis shines in her debut...This evocative, well-drawn account of Alaska’s American settlers is so convincing it ought to come with a pair of mittens") and Booklist ("This stunning debut novel considers what it truly means to own land."). Local author and friend of the store Laurie Frankel will join Melinda in onstage conversation. Homestead is a frost-bitten debut novel about the turbulent marriage of Lawrence and Marie, two unlikely homesteaders in 1950s Alaska, when the territory was on the brink of statehood. Immersive and deeply atmospheric, attuned to both the intimate and the elemental, this is an unflinching portrait of a marriage, a love letter to the Alaskan landscape, and a nuanced exploration of the homesteading mythology of toughness, ownership, and self-reliance. It is also based, in part, on the experiences of Melinda Moustakis's grandparents and other family members who homesteaded in Alaska in the 1950s. Melinda Moustakis was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, and grew up in California. Her story collection, Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories, won the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Maurice Prize, and was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 selection. Her work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Alaska Quarterly Review, Granta, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere, and has been awarded an O. Henry Prize. She is the recipient of the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the NEA Literature Fellowship, the Kenyon Review Fellowship, and the Rona Jaffe Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. Homestead is her debut novel. Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of four novels, including her most recent One Two Three and This Is How It Always Is. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Publisher’s Weekly, People Magazine, Lit Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald, and other publications. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and been optioned for film and TV. A former college professor, she now writes full-time in Seattle, Washington where she lives with her family and makes good soup.

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