Hugging This Rock: Poems of Earth & Sky, Love & War (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780996931748)

Cross-country skier, marathon runner, and former F-16 fighter pilot, Eric Chandler is author of the 2013 collection of essays Outside Duluth, and the 2014 military-themed novella Down In It. His fiction, non-fiction, and award-winning poetry have appeared widely both on-line and in print. In 2016, Chandler was the first-prize poetry recipient of the inaugural Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Award administered by the on-line literary journal Line of Advance. He repeated as the poetry winner in 2017. He is a member of the Lake Superior Writers organization, the Outdoor Writers Association of America, and the Military Writers Guild. A 1989 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Chandler retired after a 24-year military flying career with the U.S. Air Force and the Minnesota Air National Guard. He is a veteran with three deployments to Saudi Arabia for Operation Southern Watch; three deployments to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom; and one to Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom. He flew more than 3,000 hours and 145 combat sorties in the F-16. Now a commercial airline pilot, Chandler lives in Duluth, Minnesota with his wife, two children, and a dog named Leo.