Erica Watson’s writing explores ideas of community, self, political action, and climate change at the intersection of the human and nonhuman worlds, and draws from experience living in lifelong intimacy with designated public lands. She works primarily in personal essay form, and is deeply informed by poetry, literary journalism, and political organizing.
She aims to write in a space that is both timely and documentarian, to access universal themes through the hyper-local and the microcosmic.
Erica Watson: writer, editor, & instructor
Erica Watson grew up primarily in the Southwestern US, in a National Park Service family. While studying poetry, Spanish, and women’s studies at the University of Arizona, she started spending summers doing seasonal work at Denali National Park. She has lived year round on the park’s boundary, on traditional Ahtna lands, since 2010.
She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of Alaska Anchorage in 2014, where she was a recipient of the Jason Wenger Award for Excellence in Writing. Erica was a 2016 Fishtrap Fellow, and a 2022 Storyknife resident. She has received support from the National Park Service, the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, and Denali Education Center.
Erica has published essays, articles, and opinion pieces in national and regional Alaska journals, and is at work on her first collection of essays. Click here to see publication history.
Erica’s teaching experience includes generative workshops for writers of all levels, as well as topical classes for intermediate/experienced writers.