Have Pen, Will Travel
Welcome. Enjoy the adventures & misadventures of author Hank Nuwer with photos by wife Gosia Nuwer. Scroll down to very bottom of this main page for archived stories.
Bio: Hank Nuwer is the 2023 Alaska Columnist of Year and 2021 Ohio SPJ Columnist of the Year. His current books in print are Hazing: Destroying Young Lives, Wrongs of Passage and The Hazing Reader (Indiana University Press).
Hank pens weekly columns for the Cordova (AK) Daily Times and. teaches as an adjunct at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Contact UAF Professor Hank Nuwer at Hjnuwer@Alaska.edu
A leading international expert on hazing in youth and adult groups, Hank Nuwer was honored to be named an “Alaska Champion” by the Alaska Children’s Trust in 2024. He has appeared (or will appear) as an actor in nine plays in Fairbanks in the last 18 months, including Ed in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the labor boss Fatt in the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, musical Strike! and Prince Escalus in Romeo and Juliet, and Kris Kringle in The Miracle on 34th Street.
Nuwer’s database on hazing deaths has been cited by many scholars and included in numerous scholarly publications and doctoral dissertations.
Gosia Nuwer photographs Alaska and its wildlife. She and Hank reside in Fairbanks, Alaska, with 20 acres in remote Alaska. She hold a master’s degree in Economics. She and her family hail from Warsaw Poland, and she is a U.S. citizen.
Hank Nuwer stories
Dr. Frederick A. Cook, Author, Humanitarian and Disgraced Adventurer
By Hank Nuwer When federal prisoner Frederick A. Cook was released from a Leavenworth prison in March of 1930, he had $50 in his billfold, which was, at age 65, his entire life savings. His accomplishments in that long lifetime were considerable. And he once...
China Joe: A One-of-a-Kind Alaska Pioneer.
By Hank Nuwer. From 1881 to 1917, most folks in Juneau referred to a popular baker by his nickname China Joe. He came to Juneau in search of gold dust after a strike on Gold Creek, but he lacked either aptitude or luck. He soon realized that real money was to be...
Freedom to speak one’s conscience vanished in World War One
By Hank Nuwer Today’s column addresses the attitudes of the American public and U.S. newspapers toward the limits of free speech before, during, and after wartime just over a century ago, 1916-1922. There is a reason I took an interest in researching...
A tragic death in Cordova
A fatal mistake By Hank Nuwer - October 18, 2024 Photo by Erik Mclean/ Unsplash Jeanette Corser was a popular student growing up in Cordova. She liked writing and contributed tidbits about school events and life to the Cordova Daily Times. Her parents, Beatrice May...
Do hazing death chapters come back?
From 2000 to 2002, these hazing death fraternity chapters were suspended or prohibited from operating. How many are back in 2025? One sorority lost its chapter. It has not returned. 16 chapters lost their charter. One lost it one more time after coming back.11...
Casey Dog the wonder
Where to start my tale? With my dog’s near-death experience, his intestines neatly sawed in five parts? No, too grim. I want to tell you what made my dog Casey so special, but what to say? I have no heroic rescue to recount. No climactic moment to recall when my...
Wiley Post: From Outlaw to Aviator and Showman of the Skies
by Hank Nuwer At age 22, an Oklahoma boy from a good family went bad. This happened in 1921 when he decided to arrange a highway robbery near his home in Chickasha, Oklahoma. He stashed an obstruction on the road between Ninnekah and Chickasha, forcing...
George Pestriakoff: President Warren G. Harding pardoned him after a murder conviction
By Hank Nuwer The nation’s newspapers carried a two-paragraph story after President Warren G. Harding issued a pardon to an Alaskan murderer on Thanksgiving Day, 1921. The details were scarce. The San Francisco Bulletin said the newly free man was George Pestriakoff,...
Elbert Hubbard: The Man who gave us Madison Avenue and A Message to Garcia
Elbert Hubbard was well known as an author, publisher, lecturer, and furniture manufacturer. But a famous essay and advertising slogans are his most enduring legacy. By Hank Nuwer Many men lust for fame but few find it during a lifetime. Even fewer have their names...