Seth Kantner was born and raised in the wilderness of northern Alaska. He attended the University of Alaska and the University of Montana, where he received a BA in journalism. He has worked as a trapper, fisherman, gardener, mechanic, igloo builder, and adjunct professor. His writing and photographs have appeared in Outside, Orion, The New York Times, Prairie Schooner, Alaska, Switch!, Reader's Digest, and other anthologies and publications. He is a Milkweed National Fiction Prize winner, a Whiting Award recipient. His novel Ordinary Wolves won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award for Fiction. Shopping for Porcupine was named Book of the Year by the University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University. He lives with his wife and daughter in Kotzebue, Alaska.