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About the Author
Who is Laurel Bill?
 Third-generation Alaskan Laurel Downing Bill is author of the recently released “Aunt Phil’s Trunk” series. Volume 1, which includes about 300 historical photographs, ends around 1898 and features early shamans, rugged explorers and adventurous pioneers trekking around the Great Land.
Volume 2, filled with more than 350 old photos, tells more tales of Alaska’s colorful past, including its first lawmen, postmen and mountaineers.
She now is working on future volumes that will carry the series up to present-day Alaska.
The series developed after Laurel inherited newspaper clips, research and rare Alaska history books from her Alaska historian aunt, Phyllis Downing Carlson, who died in 1993. It started as a weekly newspaper column in The Anchorage Chronicle in July 2002. The column soon became one of the most popular features in the paper.
Volumes 1, 2 and 3, released in 2006, 2007 and 2008, are flying off shelves of both major and independent bookstores, as well as gift shops, across Alaska.
Born in Fairbanks in 1951, Laurel moved to Juneau in 1959 after her father, Richard Downing, became the state’s first commissioner of public works.
Eight years later, she began traveling when her father took a job with a company building roads and bridges around the world. She spent time in Cameroon and Liberia, in West Africa, Tanzania in East Africa, and Indonesia, Hong Kong and Singapore.
She graduated from an American high school in Mallorca, Spain, in 1969 and then attended one year of college in Leysin, Switzerland.
Laurel returned to Alaska in 1970, where she eventually met her husband, Don, in Fairbanks. In 1974, the couple moved to King Salmon – a small village about 360 air miles southwest of Anchorage. There they raised their two children, Kim and Ryan, in the remote community while Don worked as area biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commercial Fisheries Division and Laurel worked her way up to assistant general manager for the Bristol Bay Telephone Cooperative Inc.
After 24 years, they retired into Anchorage. That’s when Laurel decided to go back to college. She graduated from the University of Alaska with a degree in journalism in 2003.
During her college career, she took an internship as a copy editor with Alaska Newspapers Inc. In July 2002, when the company started a weekly newspaper called The Anchorage Chronicle, she became one of its main reporters – and birthed the column, “Aunt Phil’s Trunk.”
Other award-winning articles include “Life or Meth,” a Chronicle story that highlighted methamphetamine cooks, users and undercover cops. It earned sixth place in the nation in a William Randolph Hearst Foundation competition in 2004.
“Condo Catastrophes,” a four-week series appearing in the Chronicle. It covered the shady side of the building industry in Anchorage and won first place from the Alaska Press Club in 2005.
“Blue Parka Bandit,” printed in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner, told about a gold-rush era highwayman in Alaska’s Interior and earned her second-place honors from the Alaska Press Club in 2006.
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