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Early Warming flier (PDF download, 2 MB)
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About Nancy Lord Nancy Lord, Alaska's Writer Laureate for 2008-10, holds a liberal arts degree from Hampshire College and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Vermont College. In addition to being an independent writer based in Homer, she fished commercially for many years and has, more recently, worked as a naturalist and historian on adventure cruise ships. She is the author of three short fiction collections (most recently The Man Who Swam with Beavers, Coffee House Press, 2001) and five books of literary nonfiction (most recently Early Warming: Crisis and Response in the Climate-Changed North, Counterpoint Press, 2011. She teaches creative writing part-time at the Kachemak Bay Branch of Kenai Peninsula College and in the low-residency graduate writing program at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her awards include fellowships from the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the Rasmuson Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, and residencies at a number of artist communities. The longer version: Nancy Lord grew up in New Hampshire and moved to Homer, Alaska, in 1973 with her partner, Ken Castner. Although neither of them had ever been to Homer before or knew anyone there--they chose the town from a map, based on the size of its dot at the end of a road--Homer turned out to be the right place. It is known today as a vibrant arts community and regularly makes lists of "best" small towns. Like most Alaskans, Nancy has worked at many, mostly seasonal jobs over the years. She has worked in a cannery, for the weather service, as a hotel maid, as owner/manager of a sporting goods store, at a salmon hatchery, as an aide to members of the Alaska Legislature, as a commercial salmon fisherman, as a lecturer on a cruise ship, and as an adjunct and visiting teacher of creative writing. She has also always written — fiction and nonfiction, books and essays and articles, radio commentaries. Most of her published work is drawn from Alaskan material or themes. "It's not that I write about Alaska," she says. "Rather, this place is full of such extraordinary stories and landscapes, I'm most interested in exploring narratives and metaphors to comment in a fresh way upon what we, humans, are doing in, and to, the larger world." Nancy is the author of three short fiction collections: The Compass Inside Ourselves (Fireweed Press, 1984), Survival (Coffee House Press, 1991), and The Man Who Swam with Beavers (Coffee House Press, 2001). She is better known for her five literary nonfiction books: Fishcamp: Life on an Alaskan Shore (Island Press, 1997), Green Alaska: Dreams from the Far Coast (Counterpoint Press, 1999), Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whale’s Truths (Counterpoint Press, 2004 and reprinted in paperback by The Mountaineers Books in 2007), Rock, Water, Wild: An Alaskan Life, (University of Nebraska Press, 2009), and Early Warming: Crisis and Response in the Climate-Changed North (Counterpoint Press, 2011.) For many years (no longer) Nancy also wrote and recorded commentaries for NPR’s Living on Earth. Her stories and essays have appeared in many journals and magazines, including Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, Sierra, North American Review, More, and Fourth Genre. Her work is also well anthologized. A story, "Candace Counts Coup" appeared in the 2003 Pushcart Prize XXVII, and an essay, "I Met a Man Who Has Seen the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and This is What He Told Me," appeared in The Best American Spiritual Essays of 2008. She has received two individual artists fellowships from the Alaska State Council on the Arts, a scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writing Conference, a Rasmuson Fellowship, and numerous fellowships for writing residencies at such places as the MacDowell Colony, Ucross Foundation, and Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers. She was appointed by the Alaska State Council on the Arts to serve as Alaska's Writer Laureate for 2008-10. Educationally, Nancy is a graduate of Hampshire College, where her liberal arts studies emphasized American Studies, and earned an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College. She has taught fiction and nonfiction writing workshops and classes in nature and memoir writing for many years at the Kachemak Bay Campus of Kenai Peninsula College/University of Alaska, and currently also teaches in the low-residency MFA program at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She has been a visiting writer in Alaska schools from Unalaska to Pelican and at colleges and institutes from Maine to Texas. She is a regular faculty participant at the Kachemak Bay Writers Conference in Homer. Nancy's personal interests include working for conservation and community-building causes. She was the 1994 recipient of the Alaska Conservation Foundation's Celia Hunter Award for "exemplary volunteer service to the environmental movement in Alaska" and was a founding member (and past president) of both the Kachemak Bay Conservation Society and the Alaska Marine Conservation Council. She currently serves as chair of the board of directors of the Alaska Conservation Foundation. A tireless library advocate, she chaired the successful capital campaign for a new Homer library, which opened in 2006. She also is extremely fond of long beach walks. |
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Copyright 2004 Nancy Lord.
AlaskaWriter illustrations and site design copyright 2003, 2004
Sonya Senkowsky and AlaskaWriter. All rights reserved.