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
In March, 2025, Hank Nuwer was accepted for admission into the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, in Creative Nonfiction.
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
Excited about new UAF musical
Thank you to University of Alaska for this nice profile in time four our musical strike in March 2025. https://www.uaf.edu/cla/news/2025/weight-of-power.php he Weight of Power Kade Mendelowitz Hank Nuwer as Harry Fatt (left), Kyle Moore as Joe and Faith Burns as Edna...
The Man Behind the Stutz
by Hank Nuwer Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald won acclaim for two novels. The first was “This Side of Paradise” in 1920. It was a semi-autobiographical novel about a Princeton student who chases fleshly pleasures like the rest of his Lost Generation. The second was the...
From Felon to Hero to Accused Criminal again: Floyd Andrew DeHay, aka Frank Dorbrandt
Daredevil of the Skies, Floyd Andrew DeHay, aka Frank Dorbrandt By Hank Nuwer Alaska’s wide spaces, upper-level win currents, and landing fields in questionable condition made flying in pioneer days before World War Two required pilots with uncommon skill, guts and...
Mildred Keaton: The Nurse of the Arctic
By Hank Nuwer Alaska’s native peoples called her “Big Girl” because she was tall and rugged as a logger. Others, whose lives she saved with grit, heart and sheer determination over more than a half-century, called her an angel or saint. Nurse and...
What They Learned in School That Week By Hank Nuwer
The Cordova Daily Times in 1923 devoted a page to student learning. I selected at random the news for Feb. 10-17. 1923. The information remains interesting more than a century later. For starters, we learn that the faculty had only three teachers. School...
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...