Nan Hanway is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has appeared in The Florida Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Willow Review, Washington Square, Southern Indiana Review, and in many other journals. She taught Latin American literature and culture at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota before leaving academia and moving to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where she writes full-time and researches the best methods for committing various crimes.
Welcome to my site:
Dear Reader: As a former academic, I believe in doing research. To write about ghost hunting, I spent the night at a haunted hotel. And In order to study jewelry theft, I asked my then-teenage kid to help me case the Tiffany’s in Minneapolis and the Cartier store in Chicago, acting out scenes from my novel. Over the years, we’ve also discussed the best ways to murder people. Griffin has never committed any crimes, mind you, but they have pointed out that this is not an approved parenting technique.
Other facts: I’m married to my high school sweetheart, Cecil. He’s a lawyer and gives great advice for writing. However, watching legal dramas with him is like watching medical dramas with a doctor. (Warning: The legal process that takes place in two minutes in Suits might take months in real life.) For many years we lived with an extremely opinionated corgi who ran the household with the strength of her personality and the fuzziness of her big ears. She’s gone but I’m convinced her ghost still patrols the front windows. And finally, although I’m landlocked here in the Ozarks, I spend as much as time as possible on a sailboat on Lake Superior—my dream is to live on the boat someday.
Photo by Craig VanDerSchaegen