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.
A Victim Accuses His Killer Before Dying
By Hank Nuwer A miner from Greece lay mortally wounded in the brush at Cordova on September 27, 1914. The victim called to a startled passerby. “I’ll give you five dollars if you help me to the hospital,” he said. The passerby...
Alaskan Coal Mutiny of 1911 (by Hank Nuwer)
If the citizens of Cordova of 1911 were to adopt a slogan, it might be “Take this coal and shove it.” And shove it or, more accurately, shovel it they did—by the ton. The brouhaha began back in 1906. President Teddy Roosevelt’s...
The Vigilantes and the Crooked Sheriff
A Dirty Lawman Gets a Second Chance By Hank Nuwer Blackford County Sheriff Ira M. Barton was 49 when a photo of him with wide, hooded eyes appeared in a Muncie newspaper on December 29, 1931. A headline read “Jailed!” A...
Expatriate Games
Seven to nine years ago, I commuted from the U.S. to Poland to court my now-wife Gosia, and she did the same in reverse, meeting me by turns in Alaska and Indiana. We were good friends for two years before getting hitched, although I assure you that we both were...
Curse you, Lee Marvin (Humor) by Hank Nuwer
Flying the Unfriendly Skies By Hank Nuwer Although I fly frequently, I don’t know any unruly passengers. Except one, I admit. Me. This incident occurred the time I boarded a flight to Minneapolis and buried my nose in an airline magazine. Vaguely, as I read, the...
Kurt Vonnegut’s “Lost Game” HQ (Headquarters) Now on sale
To amuse his children, struggling fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut in 1956 devised a boardgame he called HQ, short for Headquarters. Wait, a pacifist invented a war game? True enough, the reasoning perhaps being that playing at war bore no resemblance to the real thing....
Let there be Light: a Winchester Cornerstone Moment By Hank Nuwer
The year 1889 brought prosperous times to Winchester and Randolph County. It seemed as if the good times never would end. Few imagined the Panic of 1893 and its consequences lasting clear into 1897. But national pride was everywhere in 1889. Inventors went wild with...
Interview with author Hank Nuwer, Hazing Expert,Novelist, Columnist, Writing Conference instructor
April 26, 2023 (updated) Faculty Interviews, MWW E-pistle, News Hank Nuwer is best known for his four young adult and adult books on the topic of hazing in society-including High School Hazing. He teaches journalism at Franklin College, Indiana but speaks on hazing at...
Sons of the Dawn: A Basque Odyssey and Other Videos of Hank Nuwer
See Video at Sons of the Dawn: A Basque Odyssey See Video of Death of A Rookie by Mike Ayalon See video of The Broken Pledge by Hank Nuwer