Kurt Caswell is the author of five books of nonfiction, most recently, Iceland Summer: Travels Along the Ring Road, with 35 full-color illustrations by artist Julia Oldham. Winner of a Foreword Indie Silver Medal for science writing, Laika’s Window: The Legacy of a Soviet Space Dog, tells the story of the first animal to orbit the Earth, the Soviet space dog Laika, who flew on Sputnik II in 1957. An Inside Passage won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. He is co-editor with James Perrin Warren of Going to See: 30 Writers on Nature, Inspiration, and the World of Barry Lopez . Caswell’s essays, stories and reviews have appeared in American Literary Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Ninth Letter, Orion, Prairie Schooner, River Teeth, Terrain.org, and other publications. He is a graduate of both the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College (MA), and the Bennington College Writing Seminars (MFA). He is professor in the Honors College at Texas Tech University, where he teaches writing, literature, and an intensive study abroad course while walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
kurtcaswell.com
The 2025 Visiting Writers Program is generously supported by The Rona Jaffe Foundation.