Nancy Lord

Creative Writing and Literary Arts

Fiction

 afnjl@uaa.alaska.edu

Nancy Lord, a long-time resident of Homer, Alaska, holds a liberal arts degree from Hampshire College and an M.F.A. from Vermont College. In addition to being an independent writer, 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) and three books of literary nonfiction (most recently Beluga Days.) Her work also regularly appears in journals, magazines, and anthologies. She teaches part-time at the Kachemak Bay Branch of Kenai Peninsula College, University of Alaska Anchorage, and has also taught in the M.F.A. programs at the University of Alaska Anchorage and Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She has won numerous honors and fellowships, including grants from the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the Rasmuson Foundation, and a Pushcart Prize. She is an active conservationist and enjoys beach combing, berry picking, and bird and wildlife watching. Lord was appointed in 2008 as the Alaska Writer Laureate and will serve in that capacity until October 2010.

Early Warming, 2011

In Early Warming, Alaskan Writer Laureate, Nancy Lord, takes a cutting-edge look at how communities in the North—where global warming is amplified and climate-change effects are most immediate—are responding with desperation and creativity. This beautifully written and measured narrative takes us deep into regions where the indigenous people who face life-threatening change also demonstrate impressive conservation ethics and adaptive capacities.

Rock Water Wild, 2009

Beluga Days, 2007

A wonderful evocation of the wilderness of coastal Alaska and the Native communities that still eat whale meat and depend on local foods. It is also a foray into the fascinating labyrinth of Alaskan culture, history, and politics, as the complex relationships in this unique state coalesce in a mad theater around a crisis--the decline of the beluga whales in Cook Inlet, an isolated and genetically distinct population.

The Man Who Swam with Beavers, 2001

Inspired by the Native Alaskan myths and legends of her adopted state, Nancy Lord explores the persistent human need for contact with nature in the quietly ironic fables set that make upThe Man Who Swam with Beavers.

Fishcamp: Life on an Alaskan Shore, 2000

Nancy Lord celebrates a great good place-Cook Inlet, Alaska, where she and her partner have made a life together for more than twenty years.. With poetic cadence and magical tone, Lord writes of her life from June to August, days filled with the mending of nets, the muscle-wrenching labor of the catch, the exquisite pleasure of an improvised hot-tub, and the often subtle beauty of the inlet's flora and fauna.

Green Alaska, 2000

A modern-day retracing of the 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition. Almost one hundred years after the original voyage Nancy Lord follows in Harriman's steps, seeking to understand this century's attitudes toward nature, landscape, and culture.