Kim Heacox has written eight books, four for National Geographic, five on biography and conservation. Heacox's latest book, The Only Kayak (Lyons, 2005), was a PEN USA Literary Award finalist in creative non-fiction and is now in its sixth printing. He has twice won the Lowell Thomas Award for excellence in travel writing. A former ranger with the U.S. National Park Service, Kim lives in the little town of Gustavus (pop. 400, reachable only by boat or plane), next to Glacier Bay, where he and his wife, Melanie, are building the Glacier Bay Institute. In 1998, Kim was a writer-in-residence at the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, (where he wrote a book on the Antarctic explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton); in 2012 he was a writer-in-residence at Denali National Park, in Interior Alaska.His writing credits include Orion, Audubon, Wilderness, Sierra, National Geographic, GEO and other magazines, plus the literary journals Connotations, Tidal Echoes, and Camas, and op-eds in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, and The Anchorage Daily News. Heacox also works as an inspirational speaker and has spoken to tens of thousands of people (over the past 20 years) for National Geographic, Smithsonian, the National Outdoor Leadership School, U.S. National Park Service, Alaska Conservation Foundation, Lindblad Expeditions, The Nature Conservancy, The Wilderness Society, and many schools and universities. www.kimheacox.com.
