Ghosts of Distant Trees forthcoming from Porphyry Press, November 11, 2025
In Ghosts of Distant Trees, Erica Watson traces the layered ecologies of Denali National Park, Alaska—its vast and shifting landscape, seasonal labor rhythms, and the subtle politics of inhabitation. Through lyric and narrative essays, she explores how built environments like Denali’s single road shape encounters with land, gender, weather, and community. Turning from iconic vistas to gravel, orange peels, and garden beds, Watson asks what it might be like “to get to know a place without immediately thinking of what threatens it.” Haunted by fire and thaw, these essays resist elegy, offering instead a complex meditation on belonging, vulnerability, and the fragile intimacies that persist in a warming world. This is writing attuned to detail, disruption, and the ethics of attention.
Web
“On Alaska Names and Neighborhoods,” Alaska Beacon, January 2025 (opinion)
"Notes on Residency," About Place Journal, June 2024
"At Our Best: A Dream for Alaska Tourism," Forum Magazine, Summer 2023 (link to digital issue)
"Fifteen Stones," Panorama Journal, March 2023
"Nourishing Women's Stories: A Profile of Maura Brenin," Edible Alaska, Spring 2023
"I Hope People Talk About This Storm for a Long Time," Anchorage Daily News, January 2022 (opinion)
"Distress Flag," About Place Journal, May 2021
"The Last Time it Happened That Way," terrain.org, April 2021
"What Serves Us and What's Just Noise in These Pandemic Times," Anchorage Daily News, April 2020 (opinion)
"Home and Wholeness, Quills and Fur," a profile of artist Colleen Firmin Thomas, rasmuson.org, January 2020.
"I'm Never Not Myself," a profile of photographer Charlotte Peterson, rasmuson.org, January 2020
"The Ghosts of Distant Trees, or What to do With the Smell of Smoke, On Fire in AK, July 2019
"A Winter's Worth of Stitches Into A Lifetime of Warmth," a profile of artist Merna Wharton, rasmuson.org, May 2019
"Tugging at Roots: Uncovering Story Through Wildflowers," a profile of artist Karen Stomberg, rasmuson.org, January 2019
"Streetview: Parks Highway, Denali National Park, Alaska," Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, August 2018
"Bursts & Craters, Past & Present," 49 Writers Active Voice, May 2018 (republished by Anchorage Daily News, May 30, 2018)
Review: Critical Norths: Space | Nature | Theory, terrain.org, March 2018
"What We Know," High Desert Journal, January 2018
"Bottle Caps," Tin House Flash Fidelity, May 2017
Review: Building Fires in the Snow: A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction and Poetry, terrain.org, February 2017
"Self-Regulation: Nine Moments in a Life as a Mammal," originally published January 2017*
"Complete, Eaten, and Over," Edible Alaska, September 2016
"Arctic Science, Arctic Classrooms," The Arctic Institute, July 2016
"Caffeine and Community Behind the Counter," Edible Alaska blog, May 2016
49 Writers guest blogging, March 2016 (link to consolidated links)
"Staying Home," in Cirque, summer 2015, page 51
"Notes on Mud and Latin," in the Denali Climate Anthology, National Park Service, summer 2015
"The Postcard Days," on Vela Magazine, September 2014.
"Moths Drink the Tears," a response to Rebecca Solnit's The Faraway Nearby on tropmag.com, September 2013.
"End Words," Cirque Journal, page 7, summer 2012.
Print only
"Warranty," Cutthroat Journal of the Arts, December 2023
"Isolating Certain Words, Alaska Women Speak, Spring 2019
"Reading Nye at Tucson International," Alaska Women Speak, Spring 2017
"Infinitivo," volume 39 issue 1 & 2, Pilgrimage Journal, Fall 2015
"Love, Loss, and Water: A Meditation on a Metaphor," ISLE Journal's winter 2014 special issue on climate change (print only w/o ASLE membership)
"The Great Silent Places," Camas Magazine, summer 2012
Photography
"Gaudiness and Grace," a photo essay, Forum Magazine, Winter 2023
Cover photo, Alaska Women Speak, Winter 2017
*Originally published in ROAR Feminist, which no longer exists; repost on Medium.com, April 2019