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 day of days: My wife Gosia became a USA citizen
You probably imagined I'd cry tears of joy, and I did. Eight years from application to citizenship for my bride. We are so proud of being American and no less proud of our roots in Poland. Just take a bow, Gosia. You took the oath today, and America has one more...
John Carlson: One of a kinder
Farewell to the best of us journos. By Hank Nuwer John Carlson started as a copyboy in the 70s at Muncie’s evening paper. Years later, gruff World War II veterans like Dick Stodghill asked him to bring over a coffee. But jokes aside, at a newspaper with many good...
Found in Translation: the story of Sue Markins and her birth mother
CELINA, OH - A little over a year ago, Sue Markins' phone rang. The caller said she was calling on behalf of her birth family in Japan. Markins, a Walmart pharmacy technician, was flummoxed by the call from an overseas stranger. "I hung right up," she recalls. "In...
Mrs. Lowell Thomas: Marianna Munn was like a Mrs. Marco Polo
Today I write about an Arcanum, Ohio native opposed not only to the start of that last war in Afghanistan, but also the Vietnam War. Her maiden name was Marianna Munn. She was the farmer’s daughter of Eva and John Munn, the latter the longtime head of the school board...
You never forget your first dog
My personality was formed by two different worlds I inhabited before I was 20 when I set out to earn a living as a writer and professor. I lived then in tough Buffalo, New York, neighborhoods during the week and on my two grandparents’ bucolic farms on weekends and...
A liife changing visit
All -- This is a remembrance of my visit to a leper colony. It may change your thinking on leprosy. It changed mine. By Hank Nuwer Some of my best feature stories never appeared in print. That’s because the era from 1976 to 1992 — when I wrote every...
Death of a Fairy-Tale Ending
Sunday, March 5, 2023 Good day, Reader: I was thinking of adding one of the strangest and saddest columns I ever penned. So here it is. I won't say, "Enjoy!" But maybe you'll learn something about groupthink with this tale from the past in Union City, Indiana. As a...
UA Fairbanks Nanooks score at will, 8-0, against never-give-up Lindenwood Lions
I spent the morning hiring freelancers for the Fairbanks Daily Miner's visitor guide, and then put on the coffee and settled into housecleaning. Two loads of laundry were followed by kitchen counter scrubbing, oven cleaning, vacuuming, swabbing all decks and,...
A Post from 2020: How I Met a Lass from Poland and Married Her
My wife Gosia earned her Green Card in October 2019. She gave eight-weeks’ notice at her chief accountant job in Poland and shipped what she could to Indiana. Update: On March 22, she raises her hand for the citizenship oath and comes to Alaska eligible to vote. (She...