Hank Nuwer Alaska Yarns
My Travel Blog
By Alaska’s Columnist of the Year
Welcome. Enjoy the official story clearinghouse of Alaska author Hank Nuwer with photos by Malgorzata (Gosia) Nuwer. Scroll down to very bottom of this main page for archived stories.
Bio: University of Alaska (Fairbanks) adjunct professor Hank Nuwer
Awards: 2025 Hoosier State Press Association first-place winner for commentary, 2023 and 2024 Alaska Press Club (APC) First-Place Columnist of the Year, and 2022 Ohio SPJ First-Place Columnist of the Year.
Gosia Nuwer photographs Alaska and its wildlife. She and Hank reside in Fairbanks, Alaska, with 5 acres in remote Alaska, and a vacation cabin in Poland. We sold our 20 acres in east-central Alaska in March 2026.
Gosia and her husband in 2025 contributed an article on Alaska back-road trips for Phi Kappa Phi’s Forum Magazine.
Contact Prof. Hank Nuwer at Hjnuwer@Alaska.edu
Know someone who has fought hazing in student groups, the military or sports? Nominate him/her/them here for a Hank Nuwer Antihazing Hero Award at Hazing Prevention Network.
Where have you gone, Rip Coleman?
The Boy of Summer (First published in Cordova Times) By Hank Nuwer I grow excited each year as baseball spring training reports from Florida and Arizona announce the coming of a new season. My father only watched boxing matches on...
Dr. Roland Lombard: The Outsider Who Dominated Sled Dog Racing
Part Two By Hank Nuwer It was 1958 when longtime musher Dr. Roland Lombard of Massachusetts, already 47 but super fit, came to challenge the best of Alaska’s sled dog racers. Newspapers in Fairbanks and Anchorage listed his racing credentials. His big wins had been...
Poem: A Prayer for Alex Pretti
A Prayer for Alex Pretti By Hank Nuwer I saw a murder on the news today. The victim died with no time to pray. His attackers came like bees in a swarm. Their every movement meant him harm. They sprayed, swung, slammed his head. They took his gun and shot him dead....
“Doc” Roland A. and Louise Lombard: Mushers from New England
“Doc” Lombard: The Vet Who Was Always Off to the Races Part One in a series from the Cordova Times By Hank Nuwer At his office in Massachusetts, Dr. Roland Arnold Lombard was regarded as the veterinarian of choice for the city’s dog and cat owners. ...
New Mexico: You can go home again. But that home no longer is the same.
What greeted my family and me was a nightmare of the worst kind.
Nina Whaley: Representing Alaska, 1963
By Hank Nuwer The year 1963 proved magical for an 18-year-old Alaska girl with her heart set on competing in a number of top beauty pageants. She was Nina Whaley, the daughter of well-known Alaska bush pilot and photographer who also lobbied to institute the World...
A Musher’s Mercy Errand
Legendary sprint mushers long will stay household names in Alaska. One of the all-time best was veteran racing champion and veterinarian Roland Lombard. His eight wins in the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous World Championship Sled Dog Race were the most ever until George...
Herbert Gold: Man of Letters
from Rendezvousing with Contemporary Writers Copyright Hank Nuwer Interviewed by Hank Nuwer Novelist Herbert Gold is the kind of man people fail to notice at parties until they bump into him at the shrimp bowl to find out what they’ve missed all evening. Thin and...
John Hegness: Alaskan Pioneer Musher
Last Frontier Days. By Hank Nuwer John Hegness liked to tell people he’d come from Hell. And he had. His birthplace was Hell, Norway, which wasn’t named for a hotspot you’d like to avoid in the afterlife. Nope, his own personal Hell took its name for the Old Norse...