Tom Sexton

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Tom Sexton (born 1940) was an Alaskan poet and scholar who became Alaska's Poet Laureate.

[edit] Childhood and Education

Sexton grew up during the depression of the 1950s in Lowell Point, Alaska.

He graduated from Lowell High School in 1958. He spent three years in the army, two of them stationed in Alaska. After being discharged, he worked odd jobs before enrolling in Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

He then entered Salem State College. After his graduation in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree in English, Sexton traveled to the University of Alaska–Fairbank where he earned a Master of the Fine Arts.

[edit] Career

From 1970 to 1994, Sexton taught English and creative writing at the University of Alaska–Anchorage. He resurfaced at Salem State College in the fall of 1995 when he gave a reading from his most recent book of poetry, Late August on the Kenai River, as part of the English department’s writers’ series.

Much of his popular poetry is related to the Eskimo people and life in Alaska.