Gary Paulsen

Biography

Gary Paulsen (1939-2021) lived large portions of the life he wrote about. He ran the Iditarod sled dog race — twice — and wrote about it in Woodsong. He grew up in poverty with unstable parents, was essentially self-raised, and found the wilderness as a genuine refuge from domestic chaos. He was not writing about wilderness survival as fantasy or adventure but from embedded experience. Hatchet was written after Paulsen spent time in the Minnesota wilderness deliberately testing the survival techniques he wanted to describe. The wrong berries, the fire-starting failures, the fool's birds — all were personally verified before they appeared on the page.

Gary Paulsen at a glance