Kurt Caswell is the author of four books of nonfiction, most recently, Laika’s Window: The Legacy of a Soviet Space Dog (2018), which tells the story of the first animal to orbit the Earth. 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. He has published widely in journals and magazines. Caswell was born in Fairbanks, AK, and grew up in the Cascade Range in Oregon. He has worked as a teacher in Hokkaido, Japan, on the Navajo Reservation, and at schools in Arizona, California, and Wyoming. A graduate of both the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College (M.A.), and the Bennington College Writing Seminars (M.F.A.), his work has earned numerous Pushcart nominations, the Lucy Grealy Memorial Scholarship, fellowships at Fishtrap writers’ conference, and MacDowell, and other honors. He is professor of creative writing and literature in the Honors College at Texas Tech University.
Kurt Caswell
Studios
Phi Beta
Kurt Caswell worked in the Phi Beta studio.
Funded by the Phi Beta Fraternity, a national professional fraternity of music and speech founded in 1912, Phi Beta Studio was built between 1929–1931 of granite quarried on the MacDowell grounds. The small studio is a simple in design, but displays a pleasing combination of materials with its granite walls and colorful slate roofing. Inside is…