Seth Kantner is a commercial fisherman, writer and wildlife photographer. He was born and raised in a sod igloo in the wilderness of northern Alaska and his art reflects his love for this land and the animals who live on it, and his belief in the importance of wildness left wild. Kantner was schooled at home and on the land, and attended the University of Alaska and later the University of Montana where hereceived a BA, with honors, in Journalism. He's worked as a fisherman, trapper, gardener, mechanic, igloo builder and adjunct professor. His writings and photographs have appeared in Outside, Alaska Geographic, the New York Times, Prairie Schooner, and in other magazines, literary journals and anthologies. He's a former columnist for the Anchorage Daily News and Orion magazine. In 2004 his debut novel, Ordinary Wolves, was released to literary acclaim. Publisher's Weekly called it "a tour de force." The Los Angeles Times named the book "a rare thing of beauty." 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. Since that time, he has had to incorporate national book tours and other publicity into a life previously focused on the land, sea, and daily weather conditions and movements of animals. Kantner was nominated in 2006 for the position of Alaska State Writer Laureate, which he turned down to pursue work on his 2009 memoir, Shopping for Porcupine. He continues to live in Northwest Alaska today, spending much of his year out in the wilderness. Swallowed by the Great Land, a collection ofessays, was released by Mountaineers Books in September 2015. To hear Kantner in a 2004 interview for NPR’s Morning Edition, go to: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4247395