Rock, Water, Wild: An Alaskan Life

NEW!!! from University of Nebraska Press

In Rock, Water, Wild, Lord takes readers along as she journeys among salmon, sea lions, geese, moose, bears, glaciers, and indigenous languages and ultimately into a new understanding, beyond geographical borders, of our intricate and intimate connections to the natural world.

Beluga Days: Tracking the Endangered White Whale
The Mountaineers Books, 2007

Beluga Days is now available in a paperback version from The Mountaineers Books, with a new preface!

Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whale's Truths
Counterpoint Press, 2004

For years, Nancy Lord lived with beluga whales at her fishcamp on Alaska's Cook Inlet.  Then she observed fewer of them, and fewer still, and then summers passing when they were entirely absent.  This literary nonfiction book is the result of a five-year quest to learn what was happening to the whales.

The Man Who Swam with Beavers
Coffee House Press, 2001

In this, Nancy's third collection of short fiction (17 stories), she creates contemporary fables and transformation stories largely inspired by titles and themes belonging to Native Americans, particularly Alaska's Athabaskans.

Green Alaska: Dreams from the Far Coast
Counterpoint Press, 1999

This creative nonfiction book, published on the one hundredth anniversary of the Harriman Alaska Expedition, provides an impressionistic account of that scientific and exploratory  expedition in juxtaposition with Nancy Lord's  own travels in coastal Alaska.

Fishcamp: Life on an Alaskan Shore
Island Press/Shearwater Books, 1997 (hard cover)
Counterpoint Press, 1999 (paperback)

This book of creative nonfiction shares the natural and cultural history of the place on Cook Inlet, Alaska, where Nancy and her partner, Ken Castner, have commercially fished for salmon since 1979.

Darkened Waters: A Review of the History, Science, and Technology Associated with the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill and Cleanup
Homer Society of Natural History/Pratt Museum, 1992

This 60-page large-format publication of the Homer Society of Natural History was written to accompany the Darkened Waters: Profile of an Oil Spill exhibit, an acclaimed educational exhibit created by the Pratt Museum in Homer, Alaska. A traveling version of the exhibit toured museums throughout the country, including the Smithsonian, for a number of years, and a small version of the exhibit is still on display at the Pratt Museum.

Survival
Coffee House Press, 1991

This second book of Nancy’s short fiction (15 stories) was the second-place finalist in the 1986 AWP (Associated Writing Programs) short fiction contest and a finalist in the 1988 Flannery O’Connor short fiction contest before being accepted for publication by Coffee House Press. Many of the stories were written while Nancy was enrolled in Vermont College’s M.F.A. writing program, from which she graduated in 1988. Most of the stories appeared in literary journals before being collected in the book.

The Compass Inside Ourselves
Fireweed Press, 1984

This small book of Nancy’s first stories was published in 1984 by the non-profit Fireweed Press as the result of a statewide short fiction contest sponsored by Fireweed and the Alaska State Council on the Arts and judged by Stanley Elkin.

Essays:

On Rereading Siddhartha

Native Tongues

Two Worlds, One Whale