Bert Bender
Bert Bender is emeritus Professor of American literature at Arizona State University, where he taught from 1971 until 2003. His scholarly books include Sea-Brothers, a history of American sea fiction after Moby-Dick, and two volumes that pioneered the study of Darwin’s influence on American fiction: The Descent of Love: Darwin and the Theory of Sexual Selection in American Fiction, 1871 – 1926, and Evolution and “the Sex Problem”: American Narratives during the Eclipse of Darwinism. Bender was also a commercial fisherman for salmon for thirty summers in Cook Inlet, Alaska, a career described in his memoir, Catching the Ebb: Drift-fishing for a Life in Cook Inlet. One reviewer wrote that Catching the Ebb is “the best book about commercial fishing that I’ve ever read.” Bender lives in Atascadero, California and can be reached at [email protected].