Hank Nuwer Alaska Yarns

My Travel Blog

Welcome, Guests 

 

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 collaborated on an article about Alaskan road trips for Phi Kappa Phi’s Forum Magazine.

Hank reviewed “And So It Goes,” a biography of Kurt Vonnegut by Charles J. Shields

Link to 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

Link to the Cordova Times

Podcast in The Culture

 

A Musher’s Mercy Errand

A Musher’s Mercy Errand

Legendary sprint mushers long will stay household names in Alaska. One of the all-time best was veteran racing champion and veterinarian Roland Lombard. His eight wins in the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous World Championship Sled Dog Race were the most ever until George...

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Herbert Gold: Man of Letters     

from Rendezvousing with Contemporary Writers Copyright Hank Nuwer Interviewed by Hank Nuwer Novelist Herbert Gold is the kind of man people fail to notice at parties until they bump into him at the shrimp bowl to find out what they’ve missed all evening. Thin and...

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John Hegness: Alaskan Pioneer Musher

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...

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Ray Wise Mala: Front & Back of the Camera

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...

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Video

Video

Video Link Nov 13, 2025 Hank Nuwer is an adjunct professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and discusses the history of hazing

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The Show Must Go on This Weekend and Next

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...

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Part Three: Alaska Legends Attain Fame

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...

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