Mary Odden

Mary Odden grew up in eastern Oregon (the dry side but lovely--check out those Steens Mountains). She attended the College of Idaho and worked as a fire lookout and dispatcher. She followed wildfires north to spend most of the last forty years in Alaska: telling smokejumpers where to go, finding true love, digging gardens, playing dance music, listening to stories and exploring remarkable landscapes. She studied writing at the University of Montana and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She worked as a writing teacher and village teen counselor and, for a few busy years, published and edited a small community newspaper — the Copper River Record, distributed in Alaska's Copper River Valley. This was accomplished with big help from husband Jim, significant help from then-teenaged daughter Kari, and grudging help from the family dogs.

Odden’s essays have appeared in About Place Journal, the Georgia Review, Northwest Review, Nimrod, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Under Northern Lights, an anthology of contemporary Alaska art and writing. In 2015, she received a Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Award for her work on the essays gathered in Mostly Water, published 2020 Boreal Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press. She lives in Nelchina, Alaska. Odden and bookcrafter Kari Odden published Upcountry Cranberry: A Treasury of Sour, Savory, and Sweet Wild Lingonberry Recipes in 2023