Kurt Caswell was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, and grew up in the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. Before coming to Texas Tech, he worked as a teacher in Hokkaido, Japan, on the Navajo Reservation, and at schools in Arizona, California, and Wyoming. He holds an M.A. in English from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College, and an M.F.A. in Literature and Creative Writing from Bennington College, where he was recipient of the Lucy Grealy Memorial Scholarship.

Caswell is the author of five books of nonfiction, most recently, Iceland Summer: Travels Along the Ring Road (2023), which includes thirty-five full-color illustrations by artist Julia Oldham. Laika's Window: The Legacy of a Soviet Space Dog (2018), which tells the story of the first animal to orbit the Earth, won a Foreword Indie Silver Medal for science writing. His other books are: Getting to Grey Owl: Journeys on Four Continents (2015);In the Sun's House: My Year Teaching on the Navajo Reservation (2009); and An Inside Passage (2009), which won the 2008 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize, and a Texas Tech University President's Book Award. His essays, stories, and reviews have appeared in American Literary Review, High Country News, Los Angeles Review of Books, Ninth Letter, Orion, River Teeth, and other publications. His work has earned numerous Pushcart nominations, fellowships at Fishtrap writers' conference and the MacDowell Colony, and other honors.

Caswell teaches writing and literature, and leads a study abroad course in which students walk some 200 miles of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain.

For more information go to: www.kurtcaswell.com