Kim Heacox Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Kim Heacox is an award-winning writer of several works including the starred Kirkus star-reviewed work “John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire.”

The author has also written feature articles that have been featured in the likes of “National Geographic Traveler,” “Audubon,” “Orion,” “Travel & Leisure,” “Islands,” and “Wilderness.”
He has also penned editorials for the likes of the “Los Angeles Times” in addition to several other major publications across the US.

Heacox also worked with Gretel Ehrlich and other VIPs to commentate on environmental issues on “The National Parks,” a twelve-hour PBS film.

The work documented the history of the American conservation movement and the country’s national parks and is currently available on Netflix.

Kim Heacox’s memoir “The Only Kayak” made the final shortlist for the Pen Center USA Western and for his travel writing he won the Lowell Thomas Award.

“Jimmy Bluefeather” the National Outdoor Book Award-winning work which he published in 2015 has many photographs which are sold across the globe by Getty Images.
When Kim is not writing, he can be found doing simple carpentry, playing the guitar, and kayaking in Gustavus alongside Melanie his wife.

It was in 1979 that Kim Heacox arrived in Alaska where he had been employed by the “Glacier Bay National Monument” as a Park Ranger. He describes much of his time and particularly his first summer on the job in the novel “The Only Kayak.”
By 1985, he had a lot of experience and got a job working for the new “National Geographic Traveler.” He managed to become very successful with “National Geographic” which probably marked his entry into travel writing.
Two years after he started working for them, he penned an article about “Mount St. Helens,” which was the winner of the Excellence in travel journalism Lowell Thomas Award.

He would then win that same award in 1990 when he penned an article for Islands Magazine about the ABC Islands in Alaska. It was in 1996 that he penned “Visions of a Wild American,” his debut full-length “National Geographic” book.
It was a work that explored the writings of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, John Muir, Wallace Stegner, Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, Rachel Carson, and Robert Marshall, and the landscapes that were a huge inspiration for their works.

Between 1984 and 2013, Kim Heacox worked as a professional nature photographer. Just like with his writing, he was very successful as he sold his images all over the world.

His images have been featured in many stock photo distribution agencies that include Accent Alaska, DRK Photo, and Getty. In 2000, he was the winner of the Alaska Conservation Foundation’s Daniel Houseberg Image Award for Excellence.
In 2001, he got the contract and was the official photographer for the Smith College-organized Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced.

In 2005, Rutgers University Press published a book that featured an essay titled “The Politics of Beauty” and some of the best photographs by Heacox from the expedition.
Over the years, his photographs have been featured in some major publications and books including the Wall Street Journals, Audubon, The Guardian, Orion, Smithsonian books, Sierra, Outside Magazines, and National Geographic among others.

Kim Heacox’s work “Jimmy Bluefeather,” tells the story of a man named Old Web Kisting, a ninety-five-year-old man. Given his age, pain is a constant pain that often makes him wish he was dead.

Part Tlingit and part Norwegian with a little bit of Portuguese and Filipino blood, he happens to be the last of the best canoe carvers in South East Alaska’s village of Jinkaat.

James his grandson is one of the most promising basketball players whose future completely goes off the rails when he injures his leg in a logging accident.

He tells his grandfather that he no longer wishes to live but this drives Old Keb into a frenzy as he invites him to help finish his last canoe. Together with Steve a very likable dog and a few crazy friends, they go on a journey of canoe building.

Suddenly, the old senses which had been dulled over the years come back as he shows his wisdom in the reading of storms, tides, and currents. Together, they all paddle deep into the wild Alaskan wilderness for some wild adventure.
It makes for a great story with themes of reconciliation, and love that goes deep into the human heart.

“The Only Kayak” by Kim Heacox is a coming-of-age memoir that is written in the tradition of the likes of Henry David Thoreau, John McPhee, and Edward Abbey.
Written in a deeply human, tender, funny, and irate voice, the author asks what it means to fall in love with a place that will certainly change. The author was born in the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho and then was brought up in Washington’s Spokane.
He would then get a job as a young ranger in Alaska, where he discovered sea and land reborn in the shadow of a retreating glacier.

He writes of Glacier Bay as a place where people often get reborn and recreate themselves since the sea and land show one that resurrection is possible.

He writes of a place where inlets are filled with glacial silt, flowers germinate from granite boulders, moose swim the fiords and nautical charts become obsolete as shorelines and land shift when the weight of glacial ice is no longer upon them.
It is a tale of hope, risk, and friendship as Kim talks of coming home to learn two to live in a strangely welcoming place.

“John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire” is a double-edged biography of Alaska and John Muir who have to be some of the most interesting aspects in the narrative of wild America.

John Muir was a contemporary Celtic priest, revolutionary, scientist, inventor friend, father, son husband, and a great ambassador for the Scottish Enlightenment both in intellect and temperament was a very fascinating man.
In this work, we get deep into the story of the evolution of Muir from an outdoor adventure man into a guardian of ecological systems. Over the course of his life, he also developed from an impassioned author and became a leading activist.
It is a dramatic and engaging profile of the man and also an expose of the glaciers in Alaska and how important they are for the modern world. Through his life, we see how it is possible for one man to make a better world just by embracing the wilderness.

Muir reordered American priorities and made it possible for a new scientific revolution to kick off.
The new revolution was championed by the likes of Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold and is still championed by the likes of Jared Diamond and E.O. Wilson.