Career
Her children"s books include six picture books and two young adult novels. She and young-adult novelist Gail Giles are the co-authors of Number Returns, Book One in a planned series, the Battleband Saga. Her books for adults include Cold Spell and a forthcoming biography of the Klondike gold rush figure Kate Carmack.
She has also authored three travel guides on Alaska, one under a pseudonym, and she has edited a collection of historic photographs.
Vanasse was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Galesburg, Illinois. And Madison, Wisconsin before moving to Iowa, where she graduated from Davenport West High School.
She attended Washington University in Saint Louis and graduated with a Bachelor in Science from Bemidji State University in Minnesota and a Masters in the Humanities from California State University Dominguez Hills. Her picture book titles include Under Alaska"s Midnight Sun (illustrated by Jeremiah Tramell).
Alaska Animal Babies (photographs by Gavriel Jecan). Totem Tale (illustrated by Erik Brooks).
And Amazing Alaska (illustrated by Karen East Lewis).
Secretariat in a Yup"ik village, there is also a Yup"ik language edition of Lucy"s Dance, illustrated by Nancy Slagle. Black Wolf of the Glacier, also illustrated by Nancy Slagle, is based on the true story of Romeo, a well-known wolf that lived near Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska. Number Returns, Book One of the Battleband Saga, is Vanasse’s first co-authored novel with Gail Giles.
Cold Spell, her first work of literary fiction for adults, is part of the University of Alaska Press Alaska Literary Series.
Vanasse and another writer, Andromeda Romano-Lax, founded the 49 Alaska Writing Center.