Author Talk, Neil Shea, "Frostlines"

Darien Library and Barrett Bookstore are excited to welcome author Neil Shea, who will discuss his new book, Frostlines: A Journey Through Entangled Lives and Landscapes in a Warming Arctic.  Come join us as Neil, a National Geographic writer, discusses the exploration of the Arctic, and how it's being transformed by climate change. 

About the Book

As warming reshapes our planet, the Arctic—a region that once seemed unchangeable and immutable, beyond the reach of modern problems—is quickly coming undone. While the old cold world can still be glimpsed in the movements of caribou, the hidden lives of wolves, or the hunting skill of an Inupiat elder, look closer and you’ll find a new Arctic emerging in its place.

In Frostlines, Neil Shea reveals how the beauty, chaos, and power of change in the far north are reflected in the individual lives of people and animals. Structured as a revolution around the pole from east to west, Shea sojourns with a wolf pack on Canada’s Ellesmere Island and travels among the Indigenous Netsilingmiut and Tlicho peoples of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. He tracks dwindling caribou herds across Alaska and measures the potential of oil and gas developments along North America’s wildest edge. And in the European Arctic, he explores the new Cold War rising between Russia, China, Europe, and the United States over who controls the pole and will reap its riches as the ice melts. What Shea finds is not one Arctic but many—all still linked by shattering cold, seasons of darkness, and a pure, inimitable light.

Written with masterful prose and a spark of adventure, Frostlines is an expansive yet intimate revelation of the Arctic during a time of transformation, and a journey along the threshold of this stunning and sometimes frightening world that’s emerging right before our eyes.

About the Author

Neil Shea is a writer based in Brooklyn. For 20 years he’s written for National Geographic, reporting around the world at the intersection of conflict, climate science, and cultural change. Recently his work has focused on the chaotic transformations unfolding in the Arctic, and his first book, Frostlines, gathers his storytelling into a narrative journey around the top of the world.

Neil is a contributing editor with the Virginia Quarterly Review, and The American Scholar, and he also writes for the science blog, The Last Word on Nothing, and his own Substack newsletter, Don't Save Anything. Between 2006 and 2015, he covered conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kurdistan. 

Beyond magazines and the web, he works in film, television, and audio. His Peabody-nominated investigative podcast, "Unfinished: Deep South" was one of The Atlantic’s best pods of the year in 2020. He also teaches journalism and non-fiction writing, and has worked at Boston University, The University of the South, Denison University, and Furman University.

Neil’s storytelling has received numerous awards, nominations and grants. He is recently the recipient for a grant from the Pulitzer Center for his work on the decline of Arctic caribou, and in 2022 he was the John D. And Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation resident at Yaddo. His podcast, “Deep South,” was nominated for a Peabody Award in 2021. Neil lives with his partner, the filmmaker Taylor Hom, and their children.