In my twenties, after studying Russian at Middlebury College, I worked as a translator aboard a Soviet fish processor off the northwest of the United States in a joint venture fishery with the Americans and Soviets. Later I was a scientific fishery observer aboard Korean processors in the waters off Alaska for the National Marine Fisheries Service.
In the next decade I designed and planted gardens on Fishers Island, New York, working with the esteemed landscape artists Pepe Maynard and Peter Cummings.
I spent 10 months in the Inupiaq village of Wainwright, Alaska in the last 1980s researching native subsistence hunting habits, particularly of bowhead whales. I spent a lot of time on the Arctic ice.
Then life imploded and I had to recreate myself. Buying Bank Square Books in 2006 was the best thing I ever have done for myself. (Besides having two great kids, now adults, and getting remarried.
Recently I sold the bookstore to two employees so I am free to discover what my next chapter may be. I am a writer, a reader, an explorer and one who keeps looking for the next adventure. The Arctic has always drawn me in to her splendor of sparseness, of sound, in the movement of the ice.
I’m currently working on a memoir about these experiences and more.
Annie Philbrick 