UAA faculty member named next Alaska State Writer Laureate

The Alaska State Council on the Arts recently chose Homer writer Nancy Lord as the new Alaska State Writer Laureate. She will serve a two-year term that began in October 2008. She succeeds current State Writer Laureate, John Straley from Sitka. As State Writer Laureate, Lord will represent the Council and the State of Alaska in communities, schools and libraries conducting workshops and readings.

Lord also serves as an adjunct faculty member in UAA's newly redesigned, low-residency Creative Writing and Literary Arts (CWLA) program established in summer 2008.

"Nancy's selection as Alaska State Writer Laureate is a great, and very well-deserved honor," said David Stevenson, CWLA Director. "We're really glad to have her on our faculty and I know she will serve the state as terrifically as she does our graduate writing program."

Listen to Nancy Lord online
Lord read and lectured at the Northern Renaissance Arts & Science Series this summer on the UAA campus. Click here to hear her reading selections from her work. Click here to listen to her talk, "Why I Write."

Lord 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 three literary nonfiction books: Fishcamp: Life on an Alaskan Shore (Island Press, 1997), Green Alaska: Dreams from the Far Coast (Counterpoint Press, 1999), and Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whale's Truths (Counterpoint Press, 2004.) For many years she also wrote and recorded commentaries for NPR's Living on Earth.

For more information about Nancy Lord, visit her website at www.nancylord.alaskawriters.com.