Shopping for Porcupine

Author's Bio:

Seth Kantner was born and raised in the wilderness of northern Alaska. He attended the University of Alaska and the University of Montana, where he received a BA in journalism. He has worked as a trapper, fisherman, gardener, mechanic, igloo builder, and adjunct professor. His writing and photographs have appeared in Outside, Orion, The New York Times, Prairie Schooner, Alaska, Switch!, Reader’s Digest, and other anthologies and publications. He is a Milkweed National Fiction Prize winner, a Whiting Award recipient. His novel Ordinary Wolves won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award for Fiction. He lives with his wife and daughter in Kotzebue, Alaska.

Quotes:

Praise for Shopping for Porcupine

“Suspense and heartache are matched by wry humor and outrage, and all is infused with Kantner's humility and deep respect for the wild. Crafted with the precision and nerve acquired by living off the land, this is a powerful and important book of remembrance, protest, and warning.” —Booklist (starred review) 

“Whatever mental picture you have of life in rural Alaska, these autobiographical essays will make you see something different. Kantner's pull-no-punches, head-on stories are raw, beautiful, and unnerving.” —Orion

“[Kantner] documents the wisdom of the disappearing Inuit culture his dad revered, and locates its place in modern life. With a sensitive, graceful voice and his own stunning color images, Kantner proves an appealing and talented artist.” —Publishers Weekly

“The stories are spellbinding, the writing magnificent.” —Missoulian

Praise for the 2004 bestseller, Ordinary Wolves

“A magnificently realized story.” —New York Times Book Review

“The first contemporary Alaska novel that seems true. . . . the first one that matters.” —Alaska Magazine

“A rare thing of beauty, a novel alive with detail about a life most of us would never experience.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Once in a great while a novel comes along that can shiver right down your bones and show you the world was always larger than you knew. This is just such an astonishing book: exotic as a dream, acrid and beautiful and honest as life, it sweeps back the material curtain of human contrivance to reveal what lies panting behind it.” —Barbara Kingsolver

“I’ve not read anything that so captures the contrast between the wild world and our ravaging consumer culture. Ordinary Wolves is painful and beautiful.” —Louise Erdrich