John Straley

John Straley never saw himself living in Alaska. Now he can't see himself living anywhere else. He knows the weather and wild of the place - what the wind will bring, the give of muskeg underfoot. He has met the characters that fill his books. He owns a lot of raincoats.

The youngest of five children, John Straley was born in 1953. He received a BA in English and a certificate of completion in horse shoeing. He has brown eyes and likes jokes and a wide variety of literature and music. He is the Shamus Award-winning author of The Curious Eat Themselves and The Woman Who Married a Bear and was appointed the Writer Laureate of Alaska in 2006. John Straley lives with his wife, Jan, a prominent whale biologist, in a bright green house on the beach in Sitka, Alaska, where he works as a criminal defense investigator by day and sleeps, writes, and plays with his band, The Big Fat Babies, whenever he can.