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 20 acres in remote Alaska, and a vacation cabin in Poland.
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.
The River of Death by Hank Nuwer
Hollywood came to Cordova in 1927. The filmmakers planned to make an action thriller. The movie ended up a tragedy for three men on set. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s “The Trail of ‘98” was directed by Clarence Brown. The movie loosely was drawn from the novel about Alaska...
“Dispatches from the Pacific: The World War II Reporting of Robert L. Sherrod” by Ray E. Boomhower
Last Frontier Days War in the Aleutians and More: Robert L. Sherrod’s Correspondence By Hank Nuwer Historian Ray E. Boomhower’s detailed book, “Dispatches from the Pacific: The World War II Reporting of Robert L. Sherrod” (Indiana University Press,...
Never forget, always honor 9/11
Giving Face to Loss By Hank Nuwer “Stay the hell out of New York.” The message blipped onto my laptop screen, sent by a New York journalist acquaintance of mine who was covering the biggest story of his life. If words on a screen could be heard, these would have been...
Hollywood Knights by Hank Nuwer
“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” --The Eagles In 1982, on writing business, I drove to Hollywood, and the old neighborhood north of Sunset where I once lived. A mutual acquaintance...
A fatal act of brotherly love by Hank Nuwer
100 years ago this month: Raymond E. Morris, 18 (born Feb. 26, 1906), tried to intervene when a mob of hazers picked on his little brother, Benjamin, 14. "Bennie" resisted the then-"traditional" hair scalping of high school first-year-students. Hazer William Duff, 17,...
Troy Levi Puckett: Cup of Coffee in the Bigs
My column today profiles a Winchester member of the Cup of Coffee Club. That club consists of baseball players who participated in a single major league game. Troy Levi Puckett was a descendent of close-knit kin who held a family reunion each year in Randolph County....
Dorothy Rowe and her Love Test: 1/3 of the triangle was doomed
Dorothy Rowe, was the author of children’s books in the 1920s. She set her stories in China and Japan, including a best seller, “The Rabbit Lantern.” She taught children in Nanking, China, working with her missionary parents, when she met and married Benjamin March in...
Zachariah T. (Z. T.) Lewis: Banker and Criminal
Do the Crime, Do the Time By Hank Nuwer About the time Butch Cassidy and his gang robbed banks for fun and profit out West, Ohio also had its own dirty, lowdown bank robber. Only difference, instead of stickups, Zachariah T. (Z. T.) Lewis of...
Timothy K. Rodeheffer: Merciless Monster Murderer
Timothy K. Rodeheffer. by Hank Nuwer On February 21, 1998, a 19-year-old gentle soul named Lynn Top from North Star, Ohio, walked for exercise on a less-traveled road off Ohio 49. A student at Wright State University’s Lake Campus in Celina, she had thick, abundant...