Hank Nuwer Alaska Yarns
My Travel Blog
Hey there, readers
Welcome. Grab a coffee and enjoy the story clearinghouse of two-time Alaska Press Club Suzan Nightingale Best Columnist Hank Nuwer with occasional photos by Malgorzata (Gosia) Nuwer. Scroll down for archived Realalaskadaily stories.
Hank Nuwer: University of Alaska (Fairbanks) adjunct professor Hank Nuwer lives, writes, and acts in northern Alaska. Hank Nuwer Bio. Alaska Hank Nuwer News.
Gosia Nuwer photographs Alaska and its wildlife. She and Hank reside in Fairbanks, Alaska, with 5 acres in remote Alaska and a vacation cabin in Poland.
Gosia and her husband Hank recently were profiled by CNN and People magazine.The “Gosiaandhank” team collaborated on an article about Alaskan road trips for Phi Kappa Phi’s Forum Magazine.
Hank recently reviewed a biography of Kurt Vonnegut by Charles J. Shields
Order direct Hank Nuwer’s Indiana University Press books on hazing
Podcast of “Weed in the Garden of Academe” by journalist Ian Mandt with interviewee Hank Nuwer
Nuwer interviewed by NPR’s Audie Cornish
Podcast in The Culture
John Hegness: Alaskan Pioneer Musher
Last Frontier Days. By Hank Nuwer John Hegness liked to tell people he’d come from Hell. And he had. His birthplace was Hell, Norway, which wasn’t named for a hotspot you’d like to avoid in the afterlife. Nope, his own personal Hell took its name for the Old Norse...
Ray Wise Mala: Front & Back of the Camera
Last Frontier Days By Hank Nuwer Right from the start, a man rarely had more strikes against him than did Ray Wise Mala. For starters, he was born Ray Wise in the mining town of Candle on the Seward Peninsula. That’s about 140 miles northwest of Nome. Snow drifts in...
Video
Video Link Nov 13, 2025 Hank Nuwer is an adjunct professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and discusses the history of hazing
An Alaska Tragedy Narrowly Averted
The Show Must Go on This Weekend and Next
By Hank Nuwer Tension was high last weekend when the Fairbanks Drama Association presented playwright Frederick Knott’s classic “Dial `M’ for Murder. The tension wasn’t just onstage from the attempted murder of Margot Wendice, unfaithful wife to the...
Part Three: Alaska Legends Attain Fame
Last Frontier Tales Overnight Success? Not Hardly By Hank Nuwer “Overnight success” for Alaska artist Fred Machetanz and his author wife Sara took a “mere” 15 years of struggle and penny-pinching. Ever after Fred’s 1962 one-artist show at an...
Dial M for Murder opens in Fairbanks on Oct. 24, 2025
Hank Nuwer as the Chief Inspector in Dial M for Murder, Fairbanks Drama Association, Alaska. The director is Bill Wright.
Elegy for my late Ball State University student Darla Stafford
One of the hardest-working, nicest students I ever taught at Ball State University (1985-1989) was a national spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service during the anthrax mail scare aftermath in 2001. Her name was Darla Stafford. When I guest-taught a class for her in...
Part Two: 1947-1962: 15 Years of Struggle for Team Machetanz
Our story thus far: Made a widow in a World War Two dirigible accident that killed her young Airman husband, Sara Burleson Dunn came to Alaska for a postwar vacation. In 1947 she wed Unalakleet children’s book author Frederick (Fred) Machetanz. By Hank Nuwer Fred and...