About featured Writer Laureate Peggy Shumaker

Peggy Shumaker is the daughter of two deserts—the Sonoran desert where she grew up and the subarctic desert of interior Alaska where she lives now.  Shumaker was honored by the Rasmuson Foundation as its Distinguished Artist.  She served as Alaska State Writer Laureate. She received a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.  Shumaker is the author of eight books of poetry, including Cairn, her new and selected volume. Her lyrical memoir is Just Breathe Normally. Professor emerita from University of Alaska Fairbanks, Shumaker teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA at PLU. She serves on the Advisory Board for Storyknife, and on the board of the Alaska Arts and Culture Foundation. Shumaker is editor of the Boreal Books series (an imprint of Red Hen Press), editor of the Alaska Literary Series at University of Alaska Press, poetry editor of Persimmon Tree, and contributing editor for Alaska Quarterly Review.

For more information on Shumaker’s background, please see her website, which is also the source of this short bio.

It might interest our readers to know that Peggy Shumaker collaborated with Willawaw’s first cover artist, Kesler Woodward. His images and her words are documented in the book, Blaze.