Kim Heacox

Kim Heacox is an American author, photographer, musician, and environmental activist living in Gustavus, Alaska, at the entrance to Glacier Bay National Park. He was born in Lewiston, Idaho and grew up in Spokane, Washington. Heacox is best known for two of his books, The Only Kayak, a memoir (2005, 2020 ), and Jimmy Bluefeather, a novel (2015), both winners of the National Outdoor Book Award, and for his opinion pieces in The Guardian that focus primarily on the climate crisis, global biodiversity loss, and threats to U.S. public lands. His most recent book, On Heaven’s Hill, is a literary novel author Kimi Eisele praised as “the kind of story the planet needs right now.”

Heacox first arrived in Alaska in 1979 as a park ranger in Glacier Bay National Monument (today Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve). His memoir, The Only Kayak (a PEN USA Western Book Award finalist), describes that first summer in Alaska. Heacox has authored 17 books, including five published by National Geographic. His novel, Jimmy Bluefeather (2015), was the first work of fiction in over 20 years to win the National Outdoor Book Award. He has written opinion-editorials for The Guardian, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Anchorage Daily News, and the Juneau Empire. He appears in the 2009 Ken Burns film The National Parks and has been featured on NPR's Living on Earth (discussing his biography, John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire).

In 1985 he began writing for National Geographic Traveler, a new magazine, where his 1987 article on Mount St. Helens won the Lowell Thomas Award for excellence in travel journalism. (He won the same award a second time, in 1990, for a feature article on Alaska’s ABC Islands – Admiralty, Baranof & Chichagof – in Islands magazine). His first full-length National Geographic book, Visions of a Wild America (1996), explores the writings of John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Robert Marshall, Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, and the landscapes that inspired them.

Heacox was a professional nature photographer from 1984-2013. His images were sold around the world by the photo stock agencies Getty, DRK Photo, Peter Arnold and Accent Alaska. In 2000 he won the Daniel Housberg Wilderness Image Award for Excellence in Still Photography from the Alaska Conservation Foundation. In 2001 he served as the official photographer on the Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced, organized by Smith College. Heacox’s photography, and his essay, “The Politics of Beauty,” appear in a book about that expedition, published by Rutgers University Press (2005). His photographs have been published in Audubon, Orion, Outside and Sierra magazines, in National Geographic and Smithsonian books, and in The Guardian and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications.

A 2021 newspaper article argued that political systems must become long‑sighted if humanity is to face any kind of reasonable future.

Awards

 * The Only Kayak - the National Outdoor Book Award, 2020
 * Jimmy Bluefeather - the National Outdoor Book Award, 2015, Banff Mountain Book Award finalist; French Prix Expression winner
 * Daniel Housberg Wilderness Image Award, 2000
 * In Denali - IBPA Benjamin Franklin Book Award, 1992
 * The Lowell Thomas Award for excellence in travel journalism 1987 & 1990