Seth Kantner

Seth Kantner

Seth Kantner was named one of the nation's top ten emerging writers.

Seth Kantner is a writer and photographer who was born and raised in northern Alaska in the bush 200 miles from the nearest village of any significant size. He grew up white in an environment that is almost totally Native Alaskan. Kantner worked as a trapper, fisherman, gardener, mechanic, igloo builder and adjunct professor. His photography and writing reflect his love for the land, and the animals that live on it and his belief in the importance of wildness left wild. Kantner’s 2004 debut novel, Ordinary Wolves, was released to acclaim. The novel won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and Kantner received a Whiting Award naming him one of the nation’s top ten emerging writers. Publisher’s Weekly said this about Ordinary Wolves: “This riveting first novel sets a new standard, offering a profound and beautiful account of a boy’s account to reconcile his Alaskan wilderness experience with modern society…A tour de force and may be the best treatment of the Northwest and its people since Jack London’s works.” Kantner is currently a columnist for the Anchorage Daily News and writes a bi-monthly dispatch on climate change in the Arctic for Orion magazine. His second book, Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic Alaska, was published in April 2008.

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