Playwrights may be honored in the future. Of course, Alaska regularly attracts Outside writers ready to try their hand at demystifying the state. Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild sold far better than most homegrown books. Several Alaska writers expressed chagrin at Krakauer's success. As Nancy Lord said, ''There's certainly a place for the Outside writer being a fresh set of eyes.
Audiences have a handful of prolific authors to thank.
Starting in the early 1990s, mystery authors Sue Henry and Dana Stabenow made blood and snow seem the most obvious of pairings. Stabenow, perennially selected by Anchorage readers as a favorite author, has published 14 books in a decade, among them Hunter's Moon , Breakup and Fire and Ice . Her first mystery, Murder on the Iditarod Trail , will be reissued this winter with a new cover. Beneath the Ashes, a Mat-Su arson mystery, will appear next summer. Apparently fearless of competition, they are gregarious boosters of the mystery genre.