W. Scott Olsen is an American writer, teacher and photographer. Since 1987 he has taught in the English Department of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, mostly nonfiction writing, from first year composition to feature writing. He studied at the University of Missouri and received an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. For more than two decades he edited the literary magazine Ascent.
He is the author of a dozen books of nonfiction and travel essays. His eleventh book, A Moment with Strangers: Photographs and Essays at Home and Abroad, was published by North Dakota State University Press in 2016. He has also made a photography book about the streets of Fargo, where he likes to sit and wait for the world to find him rather than chase pictures.
For FRAMES Magazine he writes a monthly column that looks closely at a single photograph, and he has worked on its reviews, interviews and podcasts. His columns were collected in the book Reading Frames. His main interest in photography is nature and landscape, and he has a passion for printmaking.
