The Scholar: John Elder has found his subject in the hills and forests of Vermont. With his family, Elder runs a maple sugaring operation, which he writes about in The Frog Run.  His book Reading the Mountains of Home, presents a compelling mediation on natural, personal, and literary history: three sympathetic strands anchored by the particulars of home and land. Co-editor of the Norton Book of Nature Writing, Elder is the Stewart Professor of English and Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, Vermont.   

The Adventurer: Sy Montgomery was once described by the Boston Globe as "part Indiana Jones and part Emily Dickinson." It's an apt description for a thoughtful woman who has been chased by a silverback gorilla in the Congo and bitten by a vampire bat in Costa Rica; communed with 18,000 snakes in a pit in Manitoba and handled a wild tarantula in French Guinea; been undressed by an orangutan in Borneo, hunted by a tiger in India, and swum with piranhas, electric eels, and dolphins in the Amazon River. Her books for adults and children have won dozens of awards; and The Good Good Pig, her memoir of life with her pig, Christopher Hogwood, is an international bestseller.   

The Scientist: Katy Payne, a field biologist and bioacoustician at Cornell University, is well-known as an original researcher on the songs of humpback whales and the discoverer of long-distance, infrasonic communication among elephants. She is also the author of an astonishing account of her many years' work with elephants: Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants, which was selected as a Best Book by Scientific American. Her children's book, Elephants Calling, was honored by the National Science Teachers Association, the John Burroughs Association, and Scientific American. Katy lives and writes in a beaver swamp in upstate New York.   
 
The panel moderator, Dale Peterson, is the author and co-author of several books on animals, nature, and conservation. His recent biography, Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man, was a New York Times Notable Book and a Denver Post and Boston Globe Best Book of the Year for 2006. His latest publication, Elephant Reflections, is due to be released by the University of California Press this February. Dale serves on PEN New England's Board of Directors.