Libby B Bushell is an author and wildlife guide, specializing in the Coastal Alaskan Brown Bear and the Emperor Penguin of Antarctica. Between guiding seasons, she writes about nature and people: same, same.
Libby B’s essay, “Homage to a Halibut Eye” won the international Moth Nature Writing Prize in 2023, published in the Irish Times. Her recent essay, “Antarctic Hope” is featured in issue 167 of Backcountry Magazine, published in March, 2026. Read “The Augustine Dream,” published in issue 161 of Backcountry.
Libby is the founder of HoWL, a wilderness expedition camp for kids based out of Homer, Alaska. She serves on HoWL’s board of directors.
Her first novel, Salty, is set on the glaciers and mountains of Alaska, Canada, Montana and Wyoming. Its main character, Cat Wilder is the disgraced founder of The Glacial Conglomerate, or G-Con as her brother calls the organization. Cat is recently divorced and swiping right on everyone. It’s 2016, shortly before the elections but Erin, a crass Alaskan mountain guide, doesn’t care about politics. She’s thrown her phone away to be free of the horrors of society, to live whimsical in the wilderness, with her hot new Tinder fling, Conrad. But murders lurk in the mountains around them. As Cat speeds down the Alcan Highway in a desperate bid to save her job, the glaciers, and her love life, she runs into Erin and Conrad and eventually the Tinder Killer in this raucous and grief-stricken psychological thriller. The world is madness, and so is Salty.
Salty is currently out for query. Say hi.
-April, 2026