Aurora Hardy Author

Windswept: Chitina Alaska Childhood and Windswept: Tales for Children
Written by Aurora Hardy and illustrated by Pyrce Raphael
Stories of growing up in the Alaska wilderness, a frontier life without electricity or telephone told from two viewpoints: the author’s and the wild animals she met.
 
Alaska Native author Aurora Hardy shares a compilation of stories of her childhood adventures
on the bluffs of the Copper River beneath the gaze of the Chugach Mountains near Chitina,
Alaska. Her childhood home was lovingly called Windswept for the winds that buffeted the bluffs.
Living too far from a public school, she was home schooled and spent countless hours reading
books sent from the State Library in Juneau and developing her creative mind. Her stories, from
dancing mice to the carols of wolves at Christmas, will captivate readers young and old.
Aurora Hardy has also written a children’s collection of fictional stories based on the wild animals
of her childhood. Windswept: Tales for Children is told from the perspective of Little Bear,
Brown Mouse, and Moose, the tales of their encounters with the Curious Girl will captivate
young readers.
 
Aurora’s writing career began at the age of eleven when her poems were published in local
Alaskan newspapers. Ramona’s Gift was published in paperback in 2006 after winning the Rural
Alaska Storytelling Contest in 2003 and the Tall Mountain Award in 2004.
 
Illustrator and author’s son, Pyrce Raphael, has received awards from the US Department of
Agriculture and Nintendo. His interpretation of these family stories he grew up hearing bring the
books to life.
 
Aurora now lives in Southcentral Alaska where she enjoys writing and living in the beauty of
Alaska.