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"Nancy Lord's writing is a gift to the intelligence of those of us who wish to understand our human occupation of this Earth--what we have done and are doing, and what we may learn for the betterment of our future." -Poet John Haines Nancy Lord writes from her home base in Homer, Alaska. Her work is informed by a deep connection to the landscape and culture of the place she calls home. As a commercial salmon fisherman for twenty-five years (now retired)and later as a naturalist and historian on adventure cruise ships, she takes a particular interest in coastal Alaska and the sustainability of its resources and communities. Nancy's forthcoming book (January 2011 from Counterpoint Press) is Early Warming: Crisis and Response in the Climate-Changed North. In this new work, she weaves stories of her own experiences in communities of Alaska and Northwest Canada, where the effects of climate change are most immediate, with reports of warming salmon streams, village relocation plans, and “polar bear tourism.” She takes readers deep into regions where the indigenous people who face life-threatening change also demonstrate impressive conservation ethics and adaptive capacities. Still fresh on the shelves is Rock, Water, Wild: An Alaskan Life (University of Nebraska Press, 2009.) As Nancy wrote in the preface, "This book is a collection of writings, mostly from the last decade, that, taken together, present my life along its path of determining who I would be and what I would care about. I've been fortunate not only to have lived a rich life in a small town touted as 'cosmic' and at our summer fishcamp but to have traveled both within and outside Alaska, and the essays reflect my exploration into all those places and what I found in them." Before that, Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whale's Truths (Counterpoint Press, 2004) and, in paperback Beluga Days: Tracking the Endangered White Whale (The Mountaineers Books, 2007) explored issues, events, and personalities surrounding the depleted population of Alaska's Cook Inlet beluga whales. Nancy's search took her to villages of Native hunters, out on the water with biologists, and to Canada's St. Lawrence River, where a similarly isolated beluga population is endangered by industrial contaminants. Nancy later served as an adviser to Jean-Michel Cousteau's beluga film Sea Ghosts, shown on PBS in 2009. In 2010, after the Cook Inlet belugas were finally officially listed as endangered, she began serving as a stakeholder member of the recovery team. Nancy is also a writer of fiction, with a novel in progress, and a teacher of creative writing at both the undergrad and graduate levels. She's a regular participant with the Kachemak Bay Writers' Conference and frequent guest blogger at www.49writers.blogspot.com.
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Copyright 2004 Nancy Lord.
AlaskaWriter illustrations and site design copyright 2003, 2004
Sonya Senkowsky and AlaskaWriter. All rights reserved.