Erica’s first essay collection, Ghosts of Distant Trees, is forthcoming from Porphyry Press, an Alaska-based small press, in late 2025.

​Combining narrative and lyrical essays, this collection weaves together a coming of age story and a reckoning with a warming world. When Erica Watson arrives at Denali National Park, Alaska as a college student, she encounters an expansive, dynamic landscape and a community shaped by the seasonal fluctuations of a tourism economy and subarctic latitude. As years pass and the place becomes home, her examinations of the natural world, labor, politics, gender, sexuality, and belonging gain nuance and complexity. Threaded with unsettling observations as forests burn and permafrost thaws, Ghosts of Distant Trees lands at a place of acceptance and unease, eyes open to the realities of rapid change.

Web

"Notes on Residency," About Place Journal, June 2024

"At Our Best: A Dream for Alaska Tourism," Forum Magazine, Summer 2023 (link to digital issue)

"Fifteen Stones," Panorama Journal, March 2023

"Nourishing Women's Stories: A Profile of Maura Brenin," Edible Alaska, Spring 2023

"Distress Flag," About Place Journal, May 2021

"The Last Time it Happened That Way," terrain.org, April 2021.

"Home and Wholeness, Quills and Fur," a profile of artist Colleen Firmin Thomas, rasmuson.org, January 2020.

"I'm Never Not Myself," a profile of photographer Charlotte Peterson, rasmuson.org, January 2020

"The Ghosts of Distant Trees, or What to do With the Smell of Smoke, On Fire in AK, July 2019

"A Winter's Worth of Stitches Into A Lifetime of Warmth," a profile of artist Merna Wharton, rasmuson.org, May 2019

"Tugging at Roots: Uncovering Story Through Wildflowers," a profile of artist Karen Stomberg, rasmuson.org, January 2019

"Streetview: Parks Highway, Denali National Park, Alaska," Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, August 2018

"Bursts & Craters, Past & Present," 49 Writers Active Voice, May 2018 (republished by Anchorage Daily News, May 30, 2018)

Review: Critical Norths: Space | Nature | Theory, terrain.org, March 2018

"What We Know," High Desert Journal, January 2018

"Bottle Caps," Tin House Flash Fidelity, May 2017

Review: Building Fires in the Snow: A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction and Poetry, terrain.org, February 2017

"Self-Regulation: Nine Moments in a Life as a Mammal," originally published January 2017*

"Complete, Eaten, and Over," Edible Alaska, September 2016

"Arctic Science, Arctic Classrooms," The Arctic Institute, July 2016

"Caffeine and Community Behind the Counter," Edible Alaska blog, May 2016

49 Writers guest blogging, March 2016 (link to consolidated links)

"Staying Home," in Cirque, summer 2015, page 51

"Notes on Mud and Latin," in the Denali Climate Anthology, National Park Service, summer 2015

"The Postcard Days," on Vela Magazine, September 2014.

"Moths Drink the Tears," a response to Rebecca Solnit's The Faraway Nearby on tropmag.com, September 2013.

"End Words," Cirque Journal, page 7, summer 2012.

Print only

"Warranty," Cutthroat Journal of the Arts, December 2023

"Isolating Certain Words, Alaska Women Speak, Spring 2019

"Reading Nye at Tucson International," Alaska Women Speak, Spring 2017

"Infinitivo," volume 39 issue 1 & 2, Pilgrimage Journal, Fall 2015

"Love, Loss, and Water: A Meditation on a Metaphor," ISLE Journal's winter 2014 special issue on climate change (print only w/o ASLE membership)

"The Great Silent Places," Camas Magazine, summer 2012

Opinion

"I Hope People Talk About This Storm for a Long Time," Anchorage Daily News, January 2022

"What Serves Us and What's Just Noise in These Pandemic Times," Anchorage Daily News, April 2020

Photography

"Gaudiness and Grace," a photo essay, Forum Magazine, Winter 2023

Cover photo, Alaska Women Speak, Winter 2017

*Originally published in ROAR Feminist, which no longer exists; repost on Medium.com, April 2019