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 lives, writes, and acts (community theater) in northern Alaska.
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 5 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.
Read Hank Nuwer’s short review of “And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life” by Charles J. Shields at the Cordova Times, March 27, 2026, And a longer Kurt Vonnegut biography review here with notes on Ginger Strand’s “The Brothers Vonnegut” at https://www.thestatehousefile.com/
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.
Kurt Vonnegut interview
Hank Nuwer interview on writing tips and methods
Freedom to speak one’s conscience vanished in World War One
By Hank Nuwer Today’s column addresses the attitudes of the American public and U.S. newspapers toward the limits of free speech before, during, and after wartime just over a century ago, 1916-1922. There is a reason I took an interest in researching...
A tragic death in Cordova
A fatal mistake By Hank Nuwer - October 18, 2024 Photo by Erik Mclean/ Unsplash Jeanette Corser was a popular student growing up in Cordova. She liked writing and contributed tidbits about school events and life to the Cordova Daily Times. Her parents, Beatrice May...
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...