Peter Matthiessen and Subhankar Banerjee
Wednesday, November 5, 8 p.m.

Legendary author and wilderness advocate Peter Matthiessen and Arctic photographer Subhankar Banerjee opened the 10th annual Festival.

Born in New York in 1927, Peter Matthiessen is a novelist, environmental activist and lifelong naturalist whose non-fiction books include "The Tree Where Man Was Born", which was nominated for the National Book Award, and "The Snow Leopard", which won it. He became one of only a handful of National Book Award winners to be nominated in both fiction and non-fiction categories. Matthiessen presented from his newest book, "End of the Earth: Voyages to Antarctica", in which he embarks on the ultimate safari — a true back-of-beyond voyage to the world's most unforgiving land, the islands off Antarctica's northern ice shelf. The ultimate lyricist of loss, Matthiessen agonizes over what is passing away, but does so in a manner that increases our appreciation of what remains.

Subhankar Banerjee's book "Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land" is a testament to one of the world's last great wild places. Although oil exploitation proponents have described the refuge as a barren "wasteland of nothingness", Banerjee's photographs reveal otherwise. He shows that the Refuge pulses with life year-round — a claim he can support after spending 14 months travelling over 6000 kilometres on foot and by raft, kayak and snowmobile in order to photograph the stunning flora and fauna that inhabit this remote region. The book became the centre of a political firestorm in the U.S. when Senator Barbara Boxer held it up on the Senate floor to show why the Refuge should not be opened to drilling. Subsequently, Subhankar's Smithsonian exhibition was consigned to a basement corridor in the Natural History Museum.