Ben Weissenbach
Author Interview - Ben Weissenbach
Author of North to the Future
Hailed as a “worthy successor” to John McPhee (Kirkus Reviews), Ben Weissenbach — a digital native with little prior wilderness experience—embarks on a series of scientific adventures across the wilds of Alaska with some of the state’s most distinguished and audacious researchers.
At the age of twenty, college student Ben Weissenbach went north to Arctic Alaska armed with little more than inspiration from his literary heroes and a growing interest in climate change. What met him there was a world utterly unlike the 21st century Los Angeles in which he grew up—a land of ice, rock, and grizzlies seen by few outside a small contingent of scientists with big personalities.
There’s Roman Dial, the larger-than-life ecologist with whom Ben walks and rafts a thousand miles across Alaska’s Brooks Range. There’s Kenji Yoshikawa, the reindeer-herding permafrost expert who leaves Ben alone for eleven days to care for his off-grid homestead, where temperatures drop to -49 degrees Fahrenheit. And there’s Matt Nolan, the independent glaciologist who flies him to the largest glaciers in the American Arctic.
As these scientists teach Ben to read Alaska’s warming landscape, he confronts the limits of digital life and the complexity of the world beyond his screens. He emerges from each adventure with a new perspective on our modern relationship to technology and a growing wonder for our fast-changing—ever-changing—natural world.
Author Interview - Ben Weissenbach
Author I draw inspiration from:
My mind has an unfortunate tendency to go blank whenever I’m asked this question. There are also more than I could possibly list here. A few books that sat open on my desk while I was writing the final chapters of North to the Future: Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard, Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, Jon Krakauer’s Eiger Dreams, and Bill Finnegan’s Barbarian Days.
Author Interview - Ben Weissenbach | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book:
In transit. The isolation, movement, and placelessness make it easier to give myself to the book.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
Hmm -- Maybe the narrator of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? I have a feeling he could get us out of there. And he'd drop some serious wisdom along the way.
Author Interview - Ben Weissenbach | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
A few weeks before my 20th birthday, when I read John McPhee's Coming into the Country on a camping trip in Washington state's Olympic Peninsula. I'd been wanting to go to Alaska for a couple years, but McPhee gave me the idea to use writing as a vehicle to get there, meet interesting people, and ask difficult questions. Soon thereafter I fell in love with reporting.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
Paperback, hand's down. I read a physical book differently than an electronic copy, and hardcovers are too bulky -- though you should totally buy mine!
The last book I read:
Clive Oppenheimer's Mountains of Fire, a deep exploration of volcanoes. Poetic, informative, lively — a real delight.
Author Interview - Ben Weissenbach | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer:
I take field notes on a notepad or on my phone, then transcribe them to a Scrivener document, which allows me to code my notes and organize them thematically. I spend a while shuffling notes around on there before I begin drafting.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
Guess I'll go with Kostya Levin from Anna Karenina. Not sure he'd like me, though.
Author Interview - Ben Weissenbach | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
A marine biologist. Or a cross country coach. My own coach was a great mentor to me, and ever since my sister and I began running competitively in high school, I've been a huge track nerd.
Favorite decade in fashion history:
Pretty much every shirt of mine that I really like once belonged to my father, and seems to have been made between 1975 and 1990.
Place I’d most like to travel:
The Himalayas. I have unfinished business there!
My signature drink:
Water by day, beer by night. Not exactly James Bond.
Favorite artist:
Radiohead. (I know -- but they really are!)
Number one on my bucket list:
A trip through Alaska's Revelation Mountains.
Anything else you'd like to add:
This was fun. Hope you enjoy North to the Future!
About Ben Weissenbach:
Author Interview with Ben Weissenbach
Ben Weissenbach is a writer from Los Angeles. He studied under John McPhee at Princeton University and was awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to pursue a PhD in Polar Studies. His work has appeared in the L.A. Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, and Smithsonian, among other publications.
