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Alana VanDerwerker (1950- ) is an author and arts administrator in Waldoboro, Maine who has devoted herself to preserving the history of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, located in Deer Isle, Maine. VanDerwerker served as the initial secretary of board for the Maine Crafts Association, an organization which worked closely with Haystack to promote collaborative programs for artists. VanDerwerker became friends with co-founder and director of Haystack, Frances Sumner Merritt (1913-2000), who asked her to document the school.
Founded in 1950 as a space for more traditional craftsmen to create and teach together, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts would soon include writers, metalworkers, and mixed media artists in its programming. Operational during the summers, visiting artists teach classes and residential artists produce and exhibited artwork on-site. In 2019, after decades of collecting documentation and conducting oral histories about the site and its residents, VanDerwerker published Haystack at Liberty: From Insight to Mountain to Island in a limited edition.