NISBET, Jack 1949-

PERSONAL:

Born May 16, 1949; son of James Douglas (in business) and Kathryn (a homemaker and pilot; maiden name, Gerig) Nisbet; married Claire Beckham (an editor and researcher); children: Emily, James. Education: Stanford University, B.A., 1971.

ADDRESSES:

Home—124 West 34th Ave., Spokane, WA 99203. Agent—Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency, 1201 Broadway, Suite 708, New York, NY 10001.

CAREER:

Writer. Farallon Islands National Wildlife Refuge, winter field assistant, 1975-82; teacher at schools in Georgia and South Carolina, 1986-95; teacher of humanities, natural history, and writing to students and teachers in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia, Canada, 1995-2004; writer, 2004—. Idaho Humanities Council, member of Speaker's Bureau, 1998-2004; Washington Commission for the Humanities, member of Inquiring Minds Speakers Bureau, 2002-06; appeared in special television documentary The Great Divide: The Journeys of David Thompson, British Broadcasting Corp., 2003; Whitworth College, teacher of elder-hostel international classes; consultant to Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture and Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Inland Northwest chapter, Society of Professional Journalists, three awards, 1977 and 1980, for natural history columns, best documentary award, 1998, for Crossroads: Images of the Colville Valley, 1800-1850; book of the year award, Idaho Librarians' Association, Washington State Governor's Honors Award, and Murray Morgan Prize, all 1995, for Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson through Western North America; Silver Medal, environmental category, ForeWord, 2000, for Singing Grass, Burning Sage; Washington State Book award, Washington State Public Library, 2004, for Visible Bones: Journeys across Time in the Columbia River Country.

WRITINGS:

Sky People (short stories), Quartzite Books (Mount Vernon, WA), 1984.

Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson through Western North America, Sasquatch Books (Seattle, WA), 1994.

Purple Flat Top: In Pursuit of a Place (short stories), Sasquatch Books (Seattle, WA), 1996.

Singing Grass, Burning Sage: Discovering Washington's Shrub-Steppe, Graphics Arts Center Press (Portland, OR), 1999.

Visible Bones: Journeys across Time in the Columbia Country, Sasquatch Books (Seattle, WA), 2003.

The Mapmaker's Eye: David Thompson and the Moment of Contact on the Columbia Plateau, Washington State University Press (Pullman, WA), 2005.

Writer and director of Crossroads: Images of the Colville Valley, 1800-1850, (educational video), 1997. Author of weekly natural-history column for Chewelah, WA, Independent, 1973-82. Contributor to periodicals, including Seattle Weekly, Pacific, Oceans, Palouse Journal, Pangolin Papers, Catalyst, Pacific Northwest Inlander, Diggings, North Columbia Monthly, and Columbia.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 1996, Alice Joyce, review of Purple Flat Top: In Pursuit of a Place, p. 1237.

Oregon Historical Quarterly, summer, 2004, William D. Layman, review of Visible Bones: Journeys across Time in the Columbia River Country, p. 323.

Publishers Weekly, September 8, 2003, review of Visible Bones, p. 66.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 10, 1996, Joel Connelly, review of Purple Flat Top, p. C2.

Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA), February 28, 1995, review of Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson through Western North America, p. D1; November 2, 2003, review of Visible Bones, p. F1.