Mary Odden moved from the rural American west to spend three decades (and counting) in the far north, writing and teaching, chasing wild fires, playing dance music, listening to stories and exploring remarkable landscapes.
Mary Odden\u2019s essays have appeared in The Georgia Review, Northwest Review, Nimrod, the Alaska Quarterly Review, and Under Northern Lights, an anthology of contemporary Alaska art and writing.
She studied writing at the University of Montana and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She has worked as an aviation dispatcher, village teen counselor, writing teacher, and as publisher/editor of a small newspaper in Alaska\u2019s Copper River Valley. In 2015, she received a Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Award for her work on the essays that comprise Mostly Water . She lives with her husband Jim in Nelchina, Alaska.