Hank Nuwer, Idaho, 1980, exploring the ghost town of Galena, Idaho, while in field interviewing sheepherders on magazine assignments.
Hank Nuwer is an American journalist, author, and biographer whose career has been driven by a fascination with finding hidden and colorful people and history to write about. He writes books, investigative reports on hazing, magazine features, newspaper columns, profiles, essays, book and travel reviews, humor, and fiction.
Nuwer and herder Lucien Millox, sadly later murdered; Wyoming
His writing has appeared in hundreds of newspapers and magazines, carrying him to all fifty states and several countries.. He has interviewed many of the leading literary and cultural figures of his era, including Kurt Vonnegut, Thom Gunn, Louis L’Amour, William Stafford, Nicky Giovanni, Rosemary Rogers, Jim Harrison, Ezekial Mphahlele, Norman Mailer, David Mamet, John Jakes,James Dickey, Harry Crews, and Maurice Sendak. Along the way he’s interviewed sports figures such as Felipe Alou, Terry Francona, Pete Rose, Ron Guidry, Wayman Tisdale, Gene Autry, Kiki Vandeweghe, Carl Lewis, Bill Walsh, Bo Schembechler and many Iditarod mushers.
Whether profiling celebrated writers, chronicling forgotten historical figures, or uncovering long-buried history, Nuwer’s work combines research with a storyteller’s eye for character and telling those stories in vivid scenes.
Nuwer’s topics include biography, history, memoir, true crime, sports, writing, and social issues. Although widely known for his pioneering work exposing and documenting hazing deaths, his writing expands beyond that field. He has written about Jesse Owens, the American West, Alaska history, sports, literature, and eccentric individuals such as a skiptracer, a barn painter, Olympic racewalkers, taxidermists, searchers for buried ships, rodeo clown Leon Coffee, and female loggers (“Don’t call us lumberjills or we’ll bury an axe in your fanny crack!”). In brief, he has captured lives and stories that show readers larger truths about American culture.
Today he writes with the enthusiasm that first sent him into journalism as a teenager with two columns in the Buffalo Evening News. His current major project is a scholarly biography of Kurt Vonnegut, the culmination of years of archival research, interviews, and original scholarship. Alongside that work he publishes historical features, essays, and Cordova Times columns exploring little-known episodes of American life, often Alaska-based.
Nuwer believes his nonfiction should have colorful details and scenes while factchecking as an investigative journalist to ensure the accuracy of the historical record. His writing reflects his search to find people with extraordinary stories and forgotten slices of history. When he can, he injects humor into telling even tragic stories to give his writings a human touch.
Nuwer has appeared as himself in many documentaries, most recently Brian Hurt’s Hazing. Just for the fun of it, he acts in community theater and in University of Alaska films. As a young writer, he interviewed author George Plimpton, and he has written about his own experiences playing baseball in exhibition games, bullriding (disastrously) in a rodeo, skydiving (with record holder Jay Stokes), training with Olympian Al Oerter, and herding sheep on a Nevada trek with Basque sheepherders.
He is married to Gosia Nuwer. She takes photos to accompany many of his stories. They live in Fairbanks, Alaska, and love to explore far-flung Alaska towns.
Hank currently is an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He is in the Ball State University Journalism Hall of Fame. He holds an honorary doctorate from Buffalo State University which hosts his hazing and Hank Nuwer Collections. His earned M.A. degree is from New Mexico Highlands University. His peers have awarded him Best Columnist awards in Indiana, Ohio and Alaska (twice). He is available to speak about his writing experiences, nonfiction writing, essay and memoir writing, literary journalism and writing biographies for adults and young adults.
