Desert island bookworm: Editor’s choice

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, April 22, 2026

The prologue to this particular column goes as follows: I am currently in the process of reading my entire journal — begun at age 17 in 1973 and kept up every day since — from beginning to end.

Having just turned 70, this seemed like a reasonable time to look back and reflect on my life. So in this exercise, I am currently mired in my early 20s, and am horrified at what I’m finding back then: Was I really such a pretentious, annoying and directionless young cynic?

By way of contrast, I note that at age 23, Aspen Anderson is already the editor of this newspaper, a noteworthy achievement for someone who graduated from journalism school less than two years ago.

Anderson was born in Laguna Beach, California, the product of two gay fathers, a surrogate mother and an anonymous egg donor.

Her California birth was purely related to the location of the surrogate who bore her; her dads were living in Seattle and brought her home when she was two or three days old. She grew up in the city, but commuted to Vashon High School. “So I have roots here,” she notes.

Anderson attended the University of Washington as a journalism and psychology major. That choice was perhaps inevitable: “I always felt that I was a writer,” she says.

Her time at UW included a program that took her abroad to work as an intern at the Bangkok Post in Thailand, an experience she enjoyed in that craziest of cities, with its endless traffic and incredible street food.

When Anderson arrived in Thailand, same-sex marriage was on the verge of becoming law, awaiting only the king’s signature, she said. “I quickly found myself on the LGBTQ beat,” Anderson said.

She quickly saw that while marriage equality was advancing, many related laws and policies remained unresolved and undercovered. The beat, she said, became the basis for some of her earliest investigative reporting.

One of the moments that stayed with her most from the internship, Anderson said, came when she told a gay reporter in the office that she had been raised by two dads. He began to cry, she said, telling her he had never met someone with a story like hers.

Then, three weeks after graduating, she secured an entry-level position as a reporter with The Everett Herald, where she was assigned the breaking news and cops beat.

She’s certainly moved around. “I feel like I’ve had six jobs in the last few years,” she says. These included a stint with The Beachcomber in 2024 and an internship with the Los Angeles Times last summer. Then, in December last year, she was appointed the new editor of our illustrious island newspaper.

“There is so much I’m learning,” Anderson says, “and so much to cover. I wish I had more staff, and also other people to bounce ideas off. But I’m really happy to be here.” She lives in West Seattle and commutes to the island; as is the case with so many people, she can’t afford Vashon rental prices.

Given how busy she is, I asked her jokingly what she did “in the three minutes a day you’re not working on the paper.” She lists her interests: “Baking, gardening” — she harvested grapes and made wine last summer — “hiking and road trips.” And she reads all the time, much but not all of it related to her job.

“I set different reading goals every year,” she says. “This year my goal is to read 15 books.”

So what would she take to a desert island?

“I’d immediately grab the Bhagavad Gita,” she says without hesitation. “It grounds me, and would keep me sane on the island. There are so many meanings to be gained from it, and I never tire of it.”

Also on the grab-quickly list is “A River Runs Through It,” Norman Maclean’s semi-autobiographical novel. “It’s about fly fishing, but really not at all about that,” she says. “The descriptions are so beautiful, and it gives such a sense of place.” She adds that she has family in Montana, so she can relate to Maclean’s geography.

“I’d also want a dumb beach read,” she says with a smile, meaning a book that doesn’t involve profundity or intense analysis, but rather just a fun read. “No life lessons — a book you can just relax with.” Her choice in this category is the novels of Emily Henry: “They’re so compelling and so magical, all set in tiny little magical towns around the country. If I have to pick just one, it would be ‘A Great Big Beautiful Life.’”

Anderson also chooses Glennon Doyle’s memoir, “Untamed.” Doyle was a Christian woman in a conventional marriage who realized she was gay. “It’s about reconnecting to a more wild version of yourself,” she says.

Finally, she’d take something by the humorist David Sedaris.

What does the future hold for her? For now, she said, she’s focused on making the paper better — or at least on not printing blank pages. Beyond that, she’s not entirely sure. This summer, though, she’s looking forward to a few days spent swimming in the bioluminescence off Orcas Island, with a couple of road trips on the books as well.

The newspaper is a demanding mistress.

Phil Clapham is a retired whale biologist and writer who lives on Maury Island. His novel, “Jack”, a romantic comedy narrated by a dog who lives with a dominatrix, is available on Amazon, under his nom-de-plume, Phillip Boleyn.