Alumni authors crowd the shelves
Photo by Mareca Guthrie
Linda Schandelmeier answers a reader’s question during a book-signing event in the Wood Center multilevel lounge.
Photo by Mareca Guthrie
Linda Schandelmeier attends a reception during the book festival at the Rasmuson Library.
Linda Schandelmeier
Linda Schandelmeier has been honored for her poetry with a variety of awards, fellowships and prizes, including the Fejes Award. Her poems have served as the basis for a number of song cycles, one of which was performed in Carnegie Hall. Not bad for a science major.
Although she earned a bachelor of science degree in biological sciences from UAF and an education certificate 20 years later, her writing career came about mostly by association with writers. While an undergraduate, Schandelmeier was intrigued by a writer’s workshop her boyfriend was attending. She listened in and was inspired to begin writing poetry.
"Eventually I went on to win the UAF-sponsored Midnight Sun Poetry Prize, and I continue to be a member of a local writing group," Schandelmeier said.
Teaching is Schandelmeier’s mainstay these days, and she’s won recognition there, too, including the Presidential Award for Excellence in Elementary Science Teaching, and a BP Teachers of Excellence nomination.
Listening Hard Among the Birches, her first book of poetry, draws on her love of nature with a scientist’s eye for detail.