Sherry Simpson

Alum 2006

Sherry Simpson was hauled to Alaska by her parents when she was seven. Even at that tender age, she had somehow gotten the idea that Alaska was a dreadful, ice-covered gulag of darkness and despair. Only in January, as it turns out. Sometimes December. And November.

At the University of Alaska Fairbanks she discovered that her inability to master math and chemistry meant that she would not become a marine biologist and learn to communicate with dolphins after all. Instead she studied journalism.

She worked at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and the Juneau Empire and wrote columns and features for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska magazine, and the Anchorage Press.

After writing one too many weather articles for the Juneau Empire in which it was either raining, had been raining, or would soon resume raining, she returned to UAF and earned an MFA in creative nonfiction. She teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program at the University of Alaska Anchorage and the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. She’s also on the faculty of the annual Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference in Homer.

Her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in such journals as Orion, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, Sierra, Superstition Review, AQR, Bellingham Review, and in numerous anthologies. She has been working on her bear book for a very long time and thinks she might take up writing haikus for awhile.