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Private Search Launched for Missing Professor

May 5, 2009

The search for a missing University of Wyoming professor and poet will continue this week.

Japanese officials announced they are scaling back their search, and a private American search and rescue group, hired by the family of Craig Arnold, has begun its search.
Arnold, 41, was reported missing last week on the Japanese island of Kuchinoerabu after setting out for a hike to explore the volcano on the island. Arnold has been in Japan as part of the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission's Creative Artists Exchange Fellowship to research volcanoes for a book he was planning.

Public safety officials and local residents, with assistance of U.S. helicopters, have been searching the heavily forested island for signs of Arnold since he was reported missing more than a week ago

"I and the UW community are extremely pleased that the Japanese government extended the search for as long as they were able and that the search will continue with the private search team. We hope that Craig is found," UW President Tom Buchanan said.

Members of Arnold's family have contracted with 1SRG, a private search group, to continue looking for the mission professor.

Buchanan says Wyoming's congressional delegation, Sen. Mike Enzi, Sen. John Barrasso and Rep. Cynthia Lummis has been instrumental in ensuring the search continues and is monitoring events through contact with the U.S. Department of State. "Our Congressional delegation was quick to act when we shared the news of Craig's disappearance. We're very grateful for the work they did."

The Wyoming delegation has helped pursue additional search efforts through direct contacts and formal letters of request. It continues to urge the U.S. Embassy in Japan and the U.S. Department of State to use all appropriate means at their disposal to locate Arnold.

Arnold joined the UW faculty in 2004 after earning his Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Utah and a bachelor's degree in English language and literature from Yale University.

Arnold has written two award-winning volumes of poetry: "Shells," chosen by W.S. Merwin for the highly prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1999, and "Made Flesh" (2008). His poetry has been anthologized in several volumes of the Best American Poetry Series, and his poems, articles, and translations from the Spanish have appeared in such publications as The New Republic, Paris Review, Poetry Magazine, Yale Review, and others.

He has earned numerous awards and honors, including a Fulbright Fellowship, the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Alfred Hodder Fellowship in Humanities from Princeton University, an Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

 

Posted on Tuesday, May 05, 2009

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