Wilbur F. LaPage

Will is the author of Parks for Life (Venture, 2006); Rethinking Park Preservation -- Treading the uncommon Ground of Environmental Belief (CABI, 2012); The Cliff Dwellers (a novel, Sunstone Press, 2011); and three books of parks poetry: A Park is a Poem on the Land; Voices from the Park; and Along the Buffalo (Publish America). He was the Carlson Distinguished Lecturer at Indiana University (2006-2007); recipient of the Hartzog-Cox award for sustained park leadership from Clemson University (2009); member of the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors (1985-87); and the first recipient of NRPA's Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Award for Excellence in Park Research. Will is also the author of Partnerships for Parks -- A Handbook for Building and Guiding Park Partnerships (National Association of State Park Directors (1994).

Will has been a poet in residence at Rocky Mountain NP, Acadia NP, and the Buffalo National River. He has served on the faculties of the Universities of New Hampshire, Maine, Wyoming, and Colorado State; and has worked with the U.S. State Department, and USAID, providing assistance to national park systems in Eastern Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean. A member of President Reagan's Commission on Americans Outdoors, he was director of New Hampshire state parks and historic sites from 1984 to 1994; and  has just published "A Day in the Life of a Tree -- Sixteen Short Stories and Nineteen Long Poems".  Will's second novel, "The Fall of the Steward", will be available as an eBook in December, 2014.