Moon Song publishes in just under a month — October 7th to be exact! I hope you enjoy this peek into the book-making process. If you’re interested, I’ve put a link in my bio if you’d like to preorder. Thanks! 🌙
At last, it’s a full moon book birthday for Moon Song! It flew into the world today in the glow of 2025’s first supermoon – Dís Tlein or Big Moon in Lingít – also known as the Harvest Moon. And after last week’s magical streak of northern lights, the timing has felt rather welcoming.
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Moon Song is an ode to the light and the dark and the song they sing together. It’s about the magic of winter as a time of rest, celebration, storytelling, dreaming. It’s about exploring the things in life that make us uncomfortable, for it’s often those very things that deserve a closer look or listen. And at the end of the day (or night!), it’s simply an adventure in starlight and shadow.
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It’s been an almost three year journey from first manuscript draft to final published book, and I’m grateful to publisher @littlebrownyoungreaders and editor extraordinaire @susanrichreads for helping me get to the finish line! I’m so excited for Moon Song to finally be out in the world. I hope you find magic and comfort in its pages. Gunalchéesh and happy reading, friends! ✨
From sketch to story, watch how each detail finds its place. 🫐
Caldecott Medal–winning illustrator Michaela Goade (@michaelagoade ), a Tlingit artist from Southeast Alaska, creates watercolor work grounded in connection to land, culture and the seasonal rhythms that shape daily life. Her illustrations carry forward stories rooted in place, built through careful observation and a deep sense of relationship.
In “Song of the Seasons,” opening May 1 at the Anchorage Museum, those same rhythms come into focus, inviting you to slow down, notice what each season brings and consider what it asks of us.
See the process and experience the story.
🎥: Process videos showing details from Berry Song (2021) and Moon Song (2024). Videos courtesy of Michaela Goade.
Happy Halloweeeeeen! May it be both spooky and sweet 🎃
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Photo and art from our Hallowedding a couple years ago — always a fun throwback 👻 Now off to go trick-or-treating!
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Photo by @sydneyakagi
The northern lights have been dancing around these parts the last couple of nights! ✨ But alas, I’ve been too much of a sleepyhead to catch them in their full glory and snagged these beautiful pics from my friend Lauren @ren13nicole in the meantime. So in honor of gis’óok, the northern lights, those magnificent whirling, twirling colors way up high, here’s a shot from the studio this summer when I was conjuring up magical nights just like these. Fingers crossed I can find them in real life soon (it’s looking to be calm and clear again tonight)!
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Illustration from Moon Song, publishing so soon on 10/7!
Slowly building out the Song of the Seasons series! When I was working on Berry Song in 2020-2021, I had no idea that I’d get to continue building out that berry-filled world. It’s been a fun challenge navigating the twists and turns of making a series. What will I change? What will I keep? How on earth did I paint these characters again?? Moon Song, the winter book coming soon, is definitely different from Berry Song (it’s a different season after all!). But they share the same heart, the same family, and of course the same land.💙 I’m hard at work writing the autumn story now (salmon!), and am already dreaming up spring (herring!). Can’t wait to share it all with you!
An autumn equinox by the sea — rain-drenched, salt-soaked, and windblown. And today! Today there was even thunder and lightning which was terribly exciting. Autumn here is tempestuous, temperamental, 90% humidity, and my absolute favorite. May your rain gear always be dry and your gutters unclogged. Stay cozy, friends! 🍂
The Roadless Rule is again at risk. The beautiful and important Tongass National Forest is again at risk. The Roadless Rule protects this special place from extractive-focused roadbuilding and industrial timber harvest, protecting communities, wildlife, watersheds, ecosystems. The Tongass is an enormous carbon sink that protects us all, whether you live in this region or not. Please check out my friends over at @sitkawild for more info and to submit a comment with the link in their bio. The Trump Administration only gave us a few weeks to voice our opinions — COMMENTS ARE DUE BY SEPTEMBER 19 — three days from now! So please help spread the word!
Playing around with golden summer memory: saltwater days and buggy nights, salmon scales stuck to your skin like glitter and berry stained fingers and adventures preserved in stacks of jars ready for the winter. Colors and smells and laughter and stories worth remembering ❤️
An illustration I created for @nytimes for their article “The Man in the Sky: A Traveler Waits in the Stars for Those Willing to Learn How to Look” by Joshua Sokol. I received the inquiry exactly one week ago, and it ran in today’s Times! I don’t often work in the editorial world, mostly because it moves far too fast for my slowpoke ways, so I was very happy it worked out this time around. I got to learn how to paint the Milky Way and caribou and a more northern landscape than I’m used to, plus I got to deepen my understanding of Indigenous astronomy (Northern Dene peoples of Alaska and Canada specifically) and imagine wandering around a beautiful, vast, far north night. Check out the article if you can! 🌙✨
I’m playing around with the idea of creating a collection of these lil’ original seascape paintings for sale. Perhaps in time for solstice if I can manage it?! They’re endlessly fun to paint between the different sunrise/sunset colors and metallic sun details, not to mention the delight of working on deliciously textured handmade watercolor paper!
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Let me know if you’d be interested in something like this (so I have an excuse to make it happen) and if so, shout out your favorite sunrise/sunset color palettes. ✨ Thx!
