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The Speakers Bureau is a directory of arctic researchers and experts that are available to visit organizations, communities or schools to give presentations. The directory contains names, addresses, science specialties, and presentation experience.
We encourage organizations and communities applying to the Arctic Visiting Speakers Series to use the Speakers Bureau to select a visiting speaker. If a particular subject or speaker is not listed, please contact Judy Fahnestock at avs [at] arcus [dot] org, for suggested speakers.
Charles Wohlforth
About:
Charles Wohlforth is a life-long Alaska resident and prize-winning author of numerous books about Alaska. His work includes writing about science and the environment, politics and history, travel, and as-told-to biography. A popular lecturer, he has spoken all over the United States and overseas. Wohlforth lives with his wife, Barbara, and their four children. They reside in Anchorage during the winter, where they are avid cross-country skiers, and in summer on a remote Kachemak Bay shore reachable only by boat.
Wohlforth, 47, graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1986 before returning to Alaska to work six years as a newspaper reporter, including covering the Exxon Valdez oil spill for the Anchorage Daily News. He became a full-time freelance writer in 1993, publishing articles in The New Republic, Outside, Discover and other periodicals, and writing ten books. He also served two 3-year terms on the Anchorage Assembly.
In 2004, Farrar, Straus & Giroux published Wohlforth’s widely acclaimed non-fiction account of climate change in the Arctic as experienced by the Eskimos and the scientists studying it, titled The Whale and the Supercomputer. The book won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology, among numerous other national and regional citations for science, culture, and journalism. In 2010, Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Press published The Fate of Nature: Rediscovering Our Ability to Rescue the Earth, which examines the role of culture in addressing global environmental problems. The book uses Alaska as a microcosm to examine the human capacity for co-operation in the commons of the ocean and Arctic.
Wohlforth is an experienced public speaker. He has presented slide lectures on his books more than 100 times in settings such as the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, the Peabody Museum at Yale University, and the University of Alaska Rural Development Program conference in Barrow, Alaska. He has been the keynote speaker at numerous conferences, including the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting, the ARCUS Annual Meeting, and the University of Alaska Book Festival. He also has presented to many K-12 school groups. He has been interviewed on NPR’s Science Friday, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and many other national broadcasts. His public lectures have drawn audiences of more than 150.
