Tom Sexton

Tom Sexton (born 1940) is an Alaskan poet and scholar who became Alaska's Poet Laureate.

Childhood and Education

Tom Sexton grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts.

After graduating from Lowell High School in 1958, he spent three years in the army - two of them stationed in Alaska. He then worked odd jobs, before enrolling in Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

He went on to enter Salem State College. He graduated in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree in English, then traveled to the University of Alaska – Fairbanks, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree and was hired to help establish the English Department at the newly opened Anchorage Campus..

Career

From 1970 to 1994, Sexton taught English and creative writing at the University of Alaska – Anchorage where he established the creative writing program and served as English Department chair for several years. He was a founding editor of the Alaska Quarterly Review, leaving the magazine when in retired in 1994. He was appointed Alaska's Poet Laureate in 1995. He is the author of eight books of poetry. His latest is A Clock With No Hands, Adastra 2007, a collection of poems about growing up in Lowell, Massachusetts. Sexton and his wife, Sharyn, spend every other winter in Eastport, Maine.