Michael Engelhard

Trained as an anthropologist with a degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Michael Engelhard worked for twenty-five years as a wilderness guide and outdoor instructor in Alaska and on the Colorado Plateau. The editor of four anthologies of outdoor writings and author of Ice Bear, a cultural history of the polar bear, he has won three Alaska Press Club Awards, and a Rasmuson Individual Artist Award. Recent books include the National Outdoor Book Award-winning memoir Arctic Traverse, as well as What the River Knows: Essays from the Heart of Alaska, and the Grand Canyon essay collection No Walk in the Park. His work has also appeared in publications like Outside, Sierra, Backpacker, National Parks, Audubon, Utne Reader, and Times Literary Supplement, with more than a hundred articles in Alaska magazine.

"Every now and then a writer emerges who has both an intimate and hard-won experience of the wilderness and the prose skills to share what they found there, seemingly without loss along the wires. For my money, Michael Engelhard is one of this rare breed.” — David Knowles, publisher of EarthLines