About Bradford D. Smith

Early Years in Atlin

The author was born in Juneau, Alaska, in 1965. From the age of two he lived in Atlin, British Columbia Canada, a historic gold mining town nestled deep in the wilderness. Isolated and forgotten, in 1967 the population was estimated at two hundred. It was a town without a sewer or water system, and most households burned wood for heat. People ate moose meat and lake trout and grew their own vegetables. He led life with an independent and creative spirit. Without T.V., radio or video games, his imagination was fertile and his curiosity intense.

He grew up an only child amongst a household of huskies and Malamutes, and at times he thought they were his siblings. He trapped by dog team with his dad and hunted grouse and picked berries with his mom. He fished and snared rabbits and searched abandoned gold mines with his friends. Like many of his peers, he was sawing and splitting the winter’s wood supply at a young age. He could run a small team of dogs at nine. He fought his first forest fire at sixteen. He worked in construction in Tuktoyuktuk, NWT, Canada, on the shore of the Beaufort Sea, as a teenager. He long lined for Halibut and cod in the Gulf of Alaska as a young man. He worked seismograph exploration at temperatures below minus sixty degrees on the Arctic Ocean in Alaska. Later he helped build high rise condos across Seattle’s skyline and eventually returned to work in the north, particularly Alaska’s North Coast.

Influences

From his mother he got his appreciation for the arts, from his father he learned the art of building. His mother was an avid historian, an award-winning writer, a painter, a sculptor and craftsman. His father, an artist in his own right, was a builder and general contractor who left his mark from Alaska to the US Virgin Islands.

The author approaches writing through the eye of a common man who has led an uncommon life. He yearns to tell stories and to entertain the reader. He knows what he enjoys in a story and strives to replicate it through his own voice. He feels that humans innately want to bring happiness and joy to others and there’s no better way than story telling.

He came to writing later in life, concentrating on his career and raising two sons early on. When more free time became available, he turned to writing in earnest, completing two books and a full feature movie script that he and his film partner, Director Kendall Merry, hope to make in the future, under the name of their company MerrySmith Film Works.

Other Projects

The author splits his time between working in Arctic Alaska and his home in Northern British Columbia, Canada, where he lives with his wife and their dogs.

As well as the books, he has written and co-produced a short film that was accepted into the Anchorage International Film Festival, where it was enthusiastically received in its category.