Tom Sexton was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, and first came to Alaska with the Army after graduating from Lowell High in 1958. After earning his bachelor’s degree in English from what is now Salem State College, Tom returned to Alaska and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. He was hired to help establish the English Department at the newly opened Anchorage campus, and from 1970 to 1994 at UAA, where he established the creative writing program, served as English Department chair for several years, and co-founded the highly respected Alaska Quarterly Review. He was the Poet Laureate of Alaska from 1995 through 2000. The subjects of his ten books of poetry range from Alaska and nature to Chinese poets, to his hometown of Lowell. Tom and his wife Sharyn have lived in Alaska since 1970, though before the pandemic they had begun living part-time on the coast of Maine.