Ann Chandonnet
The oldest of five children, Ann Fox Chandonnet was born in Lowell, Mass., growing up in a the neighboring rural town of Dracut. She attended Lowell State College (as it was then) as an English major/history minor, class of 1964, graduating magna cum laude.
She earned a master’s degree in English at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), and then accepted a position as an English teacher at Kodiak High School in Alaska. After a year on Kodiak Island, she returned to Lowell and became a teaching assistant at Lowell State for three years.
In 1969 she and her husband, Fernand L. Chandonnet, moved to Oakland, Calif., where she learned banking at one bank and then was hired away by a second, First Enterprise Bank, the first Black-owned bank in the city, to be administrative assistant to the President. She also published her first cookbook, The Complete Fruit Cookbook (101 Productions, San Francisco).
The couple adopted their first child, Yves Gaetan, ten days old, in Costa Rica in 1972. Fern was hired by radio station KHAR in Anchorage to be its “morning man” (a combination news reader and comedian) in 1973.
In 1974, they adopted their second son, Alexandre Jules. Ann remained at home for ten years to raise the boys while carving out time for words. She then spent ten years as a reporter for The Anchorage Times, moving in 1999 to Juneau to work for the Juneau Empire.
Among her honors is an award from The Alaska Press Club for a seven-part series, “Disabled by Alcohol Before Birth.” Her long poem “In Velvet” was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Her latest book is a children’s book, Baby Abe: A Lullaby for Lincoln (Circles Press, 2021).