Stories, Journalism & Vonnegut Bio Hank Nuwer
Grab a coffee and enjoy the story clearinghouse of Hank Nuwer with photos of Alaska and its wildlife by Malgorzata (Gosia) Nuwer.
You’ll find that I’ve added some finished and partially finished biography-in-progress of Kurt Vonnegut, “The Man in the Hole.”
Hank Nuwer’s Indiana University Press books on hazing. Podcast in The Culture
Podcast of “Weed in the Garden of Academe” with Hank Nuwer
Scroll down for archived Realalaskadaily stories.Thank you for reading. Got a compliment or gripe? Drop a line to Hjnuwer@Alaska.edu. Gosia and I want to keep this site ad-free. Trying to raise funds for last-minute research on my Kurt Vonnegut biography: “Kurt Vonnegut: The Man in the Hole. A Life of Reinvention.” (“Not authorized, but authentic scholarship”). Your donation would be so helpful: Hank Nuwer, PO Box 73446; Fairbanks, AK 99707-3446.
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...
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: Hank Nuwer, History of Hazing
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...