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
Do hazing death chapters come back?
From 2000 to 2002, these hazing death fraternity chapters were suspended or prohibited from operating. How many are back in 2025? One sorority lost its chapter. It has not returned. 16 chapters lost their charter. One lost it one more time after coming back.11...
Casey Dog the wonder
Where to start my tale? With my dog’s near-death experience, his intestines neatly sawed in five parts? No, too grim. I want to tell you what made my dog Casey so special, but what to say? I have no heroic rescue to recount. No climactic moment to recall when my...
Wiley Post: From Outlaw to Aviator and Showman of the Skies
by Hank Nuwer At age 22, an Oklahoma boy from a good family went bad. This happened in 1921 when he decided to arrange a highway robbery near his home in Chickasha, Oklahoma. He stashed an obstruction on the road between Ninnekah and Chickasha, forcing...
George Pestriakoff: President Warren G. Harding pardoned him after a murder conviction
By Hank Nuwer The nation’s newspapers carried a two-paragraph story after President Warren G. Harding issued a pardon to an Alaskan murderer on Thanksgiving Day, 1921. The details were scarce. The San Francisco Bulletin said the newly free man was George Pestriakoff,...
Elbert Hubbard: The Man who gave us Madison Avenue and A Message to Garcia
Elbert Hubbard was well known as an author, publisher, lecturer, and furniture manufacturer. But a famous essay and advertising slogans are his most enduring legacy. By Hank Nuwer Many men lust for fame but few find it during a lifetime. Even fewer have their names...
Alaska’s Sid Charles: Back When Newsmakers Were Characters
By Hank Nuwer When Ketchikan Daily News publisher Sid D. Charles died in 1959, he had just taken a few weeks off for illness. Prior to that, he was a working stiff in newspapers from a youth nearly to his last trademark briar pipe puff at age 88. He hailed...
How they celebrated New Year’s in rural Alaska
The First Masquerade Balls By Hank Nuwer Masquerade Balls were about the most popular social event of the year in pioneer Cordova. Guests braved winds, snows, and icy trails to gather for food, drink and comradeship. The first ball was put on in 1912 by the Eagles...
This Story Passed for News in 1951
Humor by Hank Nuwer Now I know that the subject of transplanting fish and game into area where they previously never existed is a serious topic. It’s discussed in university wildlife management classes, Alaska Department of Fish and Wildlife...
Death of a Cordova Merchant and Banker
by Hank Nuwer Samuel Blum in his time was one of the wealthiest Alaskan pioneers, making his money primarily as a mercantile store owner, banker and investor. A devout Jew, he earned statewide respect as a philanthropist. Born and educated in San Francisco, Blum...