Our inaugural WhaleFest in 2011 featured writers and musicians who have found ways to bring the ocean and its inhabitants to distinctly different audiences.

David Rothenberg has written and performed on the relationship between humanity and nature for many years. He is the author of Why Birds Sing, on making music with birds, and he spoke and performed around his following book, Thousand Mile Song, on making music with whales. As a composer and jazz clarinetist, Rothenberg has sixteen CDs out under his own name, and he is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Philip Hoare is an English writer, especially of history and biography. His book Leviathan or, The Whale, which won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction was the subject of his presentation but he is also an experienced broadcaster, curator and filmmaker, he wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton, and curator of the Moby-Dick Big Read.