Peggy Shumaker

Peggy Shumaker is the daughter of two deserts: the Sonoran desert around Tucson and the subarctic desert of Interior Alaska. Shumaker was honored by the Rasmuson Foundation as its Distinguished Artist, served as Alaska State Writer Laureate, and received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the author of ten books of poetry, including Cairn (Red Hen Press, 2018), her new and selected. Her lyrical memoir is Just Breathe Normally (Bison Books, 2009). Professor emerita from University of Alaska Fairbanks, Shumaker taught in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA at Pacific Lutheran University. She serves on the advisory board for the Raz-Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prizes and for the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. 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, and contributing editor for Alaska Quarterly Review.