Alaska Literary Award, 2024
Denali National Park, Dene lands
Erica Watson is an essayist living on the boundary of Denali National Park, on traditional Dene lands, with her partner and dog. Her work centers the intersection of human and nonhuman worlds, community, and climate change, and aims to complicate the narratives around US conservation and land management. She has worked in environmental advocacy, education, and tourism, all of which inform her writing.
Erica earned her MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of Alaska Anchorage, where she was a recipient of the Jason Wenger Award for Excellence in Writing. She was a 2016 Fishtrap Fellow, and a 2022 Storyknife Writers Retreat resident, and has received support from the National Park Service, The Northern Center, and Denali Education Center. Her work has appeared in terrain.org, About Place Journal, Panorama Journal, and several Alaska publications. Her first essay collection, Ghosts of Distant Trees, is forthcoming in 2025 from Porphyry Press.