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Celebrate the holiday season, connect with other members of the literary community, and enjoy an afternoon with Ned Rozell, author of Walking My Dog, Jane and summer of gravel and steel, a thru-hike of Alaska, 20 years after the first. This year’s Winter Words fundraiser and gathering will be a casual evening gathering featuring door prizes, delicious food and beverages, and a special reading and signing by Ned. Everyone who purchases an admission to Fairbanks Winter Words will receive a copy of summer of gravel and steel, which Ned will be available to sign. Additional copies of the book will also be available for purchase.
Saturday, January 25 4:00-7:00pm At the home of Daryl and Joan Farmer (address to be provided on registration).
Registration is Open!
About Ned Rozell: Ned Rozell likes visiting people and new places, but has spent most of his adulthood hiding out from the Anthropocene in Fairbanks, Alaska. There — where he can park in the first row of the international airport just about every trip — he has tapped out a few million words about Alaska. He has cranked out most of them as a science writer for the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute. Many of those words are about frogs and chickadees.
He has twice hiked the 800-mile gravel road that runs north-to-south next to the trans-Alaska pipeline. The walk took three months both times. His most popular book, Walking my Dog Jane, is about the first hike, in 1997. His 2024 book about the second walk is titled summer of gravel and steel: a thru-hike of Alaska, 20 years after the first.
He was born in Manhattan and grew up in a factory town in upstate New York. A four-year hitch in the Air Force brought him to Alaska for the first time. Ned’s father game him John McPhee’s Coming into the Country for the journey north. Hooked.
He second-guesses the decision to live in the subarctic every November, December and January, but owns a home perched on permafrost in Fairbanks. He shares it with his wife Kristen, daughter Anna, and dogs Cora (pipeline veteran) and Pepe (Chihuahua who wandered way too far north).
So far, after 61 years on the planet, Ned hasn’t earned any cash prizes or prestigious awards for his writing. But his Alaska word-count is way up there. And he receives nice notes from readers. He knows he pretty much lucked out in finding such an interesting, recession-proof writing gig 30 years ago when he answered an ad in the newspaper after a summer as a park ranger in Yukon-Charley Rivers National Park and Preserve.
Cancellation & Refund Policy: If the event or class is cancelled for reasons beyond 49 Writers’s control, all fees will be refunded in full. In the event that an attendee is unable to attend for personal reasons, fees are nonrefundable.
