Join First Light Books for an evening with Kevin Fedarko, whose 750-mile trek through the Grand Canyon has been called "the toughest hike in the world." He'll be here to talk about that journey, the wildness and history he encountered along the way, and the book that came out of it: A Walk in the Park.

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He'll be joined in conversation by Stephen Harrigan, one of Texas's most celebrated writers and a fellow Outside contributor whose own work has long explored the power of landscape and place.

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A reception with the author will take place from 6:00 to 6:30 PM, followed by the conversation at 6:30 PM and a signing to close the evening. Tickets include a copy of the book and a reserved seat. Unreserved seats are available on a first come, first served basis. Free RSVPs are also encouraged. Whether you've read the book or simply love a great adventure story, this is a conversation worth the visit.

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About the book

“A triumph. Fedarko doesn’t describe awe; he induces it.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Passionate…memorable…life-affirming.” —The Wall Street Journal

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A few years after quitting his job to pursue a dream of becoming a whitewater guide on the Colorado River, Kevin Fedarko was approached by his best friend, National Geographic photographer Pete McBride, with a vision as bold as it was harebrained. Together, they would walk the length of the Grand Canyon end to end, a journey McBride promised would be "a walk in the park." Against his better judgment, Fedarko agreed, unaware that the small cluster of experts who had completed the crossing billed it as the toughest hike in the world. Fewer people are known to have done it than have walked on the moon.

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The ensuing ordeal lasted more than a year. They struggled through a vertical labyrinth of thousand-foot cliffs and crumbling ledges where water is measured out by the teaspoon and every step is fraught with peril, through stretches where no trail exists and no trail ever has. Along the way, veteran long-distance hikers ushered them into secret pockets of enchantment invisible to the millions of tourists gathered on the rim. Members of the canyon's eleven Native American tribes brought them face-to-face with layers of history that forced them to reconsider some profoundly troublesome myths at the very center of our national parks. And always, there was the great gorge itself: austere and unforgiving, yet suffused with magic, drenched in wonder, and redeemed by its own transcendent beauty.

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A Walk in the Park is a singular portrait of a sublime place and a deeply moving plea for the preservation of America's greatest natural treasure.

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Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award. A New York Times bestseller. Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, Air Mail, Smithsonian Magazine, and Financial Times.

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About the author

Kevin Fedarko has spent the past twenty years writing about conservation, exploration, and the Grand Canyon. He studied political science at Columbia University and Russian history at Oxford, where he earned a Master of Philosophy, before joining the staff at Time, where he worked primarily on the foreign affairs desk. His reporting there helped garner an Overseas Press Club Award for coverage of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. He later served as a senior editor at Outside, where he covered outdoor adventure.

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His writing has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, Esquire, and other publications, and a trio of his stories from the Himalayas, the Horn of Africa, and the Colorado River are anthologized in The Best American Travel Writing. He is also featured in the documentary Into the Canyon, which chronicles his and McBride's traverse and is available on streaming services.

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Fedarko is the author of The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon, which won the Reading the West Book Award, the National Outdoor Book Award, and was a finalist for the PEN Literary Sports Writing Award and the Banff Mountain Book Award. A Walk in the Park won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Both books were New York Times bestsellers and winners of a National Outdoor Book Award. Fedarko lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, and still works as a part-time whitewater guide in Grand Canyon National Park.

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About the moderator

Stephen Harrigan is a novelist, journalist, historian, and screenwriter, and one of the defining literary voices of Texas. He is the author of fourteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Gates of the Alamo, which became a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book and won the TCU Texas Book Award, the Western Heritage Award, and the Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. His novel Remember Ben Clayton won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for best historical fiction from the Society of American Historians. His sweeping narrative history, Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas, was published by the University of Texas Press and was praised by NPR as the work of a writer who "is to Texas literature what Willie Nelson is to Texas music."

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In 2025, Harrigan published two new books: Sorrowful Mysteries: The Shepherd Children of Fatima and the Fate of the Twentieth Century (Knopf), named by Esquire as one of the "35 Best Books" of the year; and An Anchor in the Sea of Time (University of Texas Press), a collection of personal and reported essays on memory, history, and identity. His other novels include A Friend of Mr. Lincoln, The Leopard Is Loose, Aransas, and Jacob's Well. His essay collections include The Eye of the Mammoth.

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A longtime writer-at-large for Texas Monthly, Harrigan's journalism and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, National Geographic, and Slate, among others. He was a finalist for the National Magazine Awards and won the Edwin "Bud" Shrake Award from the Texas Institute of Letters for best work of journalism. As a screenwriter, his credits include HBO's The Last of His Tribe (starring Jon Voight), TNT's King of Texas (starring Patrick Stewart), and The Colt, for which he was nominated for a Writers Guild Award and the Humanitas Prize.

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Harrigan taught for twenty years at the University of Texas's James A. Michener Center for Writers and is a founding member of Capital Area Statues, Inc. He is the recipient of the Texas Book Festival's Texas Writers Award, the Lon Tinkle Award for lifetime achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Texas Medal of Arts, and has been inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. He lives in Austin.

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