Interview Q&A with Kristen Millares Young in VOL. 1 Brooklyn

You evoke the landscape of Neah Bay incredibly well here; I’ve never been, but I felt a tactile sense of the place. How did you first become familiar with it? 

Fifteen years ago, I began driving out to Neah Bay, which is just over four hours west of where I live. Like Claudia, I often took the ferry for the sheer beauty of being on a boat, but most Makah tribal members prefer to “drive around” as they call it; after leaving Neah Bay on 112 and taking a left on 101 just west of Port Angeles, they follow that highway eastward before heading south near Dabob Bay, the lower 48’s only fjord, carved by a glacier along whose belly coursed an ancient river whose length became the Hood Canal. But I digress.