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is "a brilliant young writer" whose work focuses on people, power and place. At least one friend would beg to differ, and instead insist she's a writer of devastation. An Indian periodical that once cited her said she was a "love and crush journalist."

Photo on 2024-06-27 at 6_edited.jpg

FINALIST 2024 Yale Nonfiction Book Competition

WINNER 2024 Banff Mountain Book Competition Best Article Award

WINNER 2022 Banff Mountain Book Competition Best Article Award

Summit Journal

LA Times

Climbing Magazine

Undark Media

Briarpatch Magazine

Salon

Alpinist Magazine

Noema

Outside Magazine

Rock & Ice

Oregon Humanities

REI

Inyo Register

Capital Daily News

So To Speak Journal

Writers on the Range

Author's Guild Bulletin

Pleiades Magazine

High Country News

Sierra Magazine

In These Times

Jefferey Pine Journal

Fire Season

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Astra is currently writing her first book, a researched memoir about identity formation and truth-telling in the wake of a catastrophic brain injury. In 2024, the manuscript was selected as a finalist in The Yale Review's Nonfiction Book Competition. 

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Two-time winner of the Banff Mountain Book Competition’s ‘Best Article’ award (2022, 2024), her work has also been nominated by publishers for the Society for Environmental Journalist’s ‘Best Feature’ prize, for a National Magazine 'Best Feature' award, and for inclusion in the Best American Essays anthology. Several of her pieces have been included in ‘Best of the Year’ lists.

Currently a contributing editor at Summit Journal, Astra has previously served as the editor-in-chief of the Chrysalis literary and arts journal and as a staff writer at Capital Daily News and the Willamette Collegian.

Astra teaches and facilitates creative nonfiction workshops with Write Around Portland and the Juneau Icefield Research program. She has led writing workshops while ski-traversing Alaska's biggest icefield, in an assisted living facility, on bike rides, to people experiencing dementia, and on the side of a mountain in the Selkirks only accessible by helicopter. She will occasionally also teach in classrooms.

 

A graduate of the Banff Centre’s Mountain and Wilderness Writing residency program, Astra’s work has been supported by a Freeflow Foundation scholarship and an American Alpine Club research award. In 2024, she was an Oregon Humanities Community Storytelling Fellow.

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You can subscribe to her free, infrequent newsletter here.

 

For book-related inquiries, contact Naomi Eisenbeiss at naomi@inkwellmanagement.com. For everything else, you can get in touch by writing her at astralincoln@gmail.com.

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