How Books Brought Alys Culhane Into the Heart of Her Community
8/24/2026 | 2m 22sVideo has Closed Captions
Alys Culhane is the founder of Bright Lights Book Project.
Alys Culhane used to spend most of her time working at her homestead nestled between the Chugach and Talkeetna mountains. The writer and educator never took an active role in the Palmer community until she founded Bright Lights Book Project. Now she can’t imagine a life without those relationships. The nonprofit distributes books, stocks community bookshelves and runs youth reading programs.
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Every Little Bit is a local public television program presented by AK
made possible with support by Rasmuson Foundation
How Books Brought Alys Culhane Into the Heart of Her Community
8/24/2026 | 2m 22sVideo has Closed Captions
Alys Culhane used to spend most of her time working at her homestead nestled between the Chugach and Talkeetna mountains. The writer and educator never took an active role in the Palmer community until she founded Bright Lights Book Project. Now she can’t imagine a life without those relationships. The nonprofit distributes books, stocks community bookshelves and runs youth reading programs.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Hi, I'm Alys Culhane and I live in Palmer, Alaska, and I'm the founder of the Bright Lights Book Project.
We distribute books locally, statewide, nationally, internationally.
Now we have books going to Kenya last year alone, we distributed 70,000 adult and children's books.
We have over 50 bookcases in the the Mat-Su Valley.
We have them here mainly in Palmer.
before I started this, I was, pretty introspective and introverted this is turned me into a person who's more extroverted, interested in people, interested in the community.
the people in the Matsu Valley are quintessential Alaskans.
and people tend to gravitate towards nonprofit work.
And all of a sudden occurred to me, why not have a program in the park where I'd gone individually and read to kids?
Summer in the park started last January.
We started out with plants, insects, Doctor Seuss, dinosaurs.
We're going to do transportation.
And we'll we'll probably finish with farm animals.
One thing reading does is it widened your worldview.
you develop a political, social, other kinds of acumen that evolve out of of reading all the time.
I'm a person who has been changed by this, this project.
I know that this has a positive effect on on others.
And it's going to make Palmer a more stronger, vibrant community.
This episode of Every Little Bit is made possible with support by Rasmussen Foundation and a grant from Mat-su Health Foundation.
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Every Little Bit is a local public television program presented by AK
made possible with support by Rasmuson Foundation