Paul Spencer Sochaczewski

Bestselling author Paul Sochaczewski has published 22 books and more than 600 articles in major international publications. His tales of personal travel include the five-volume Curious Encounters of the Human Kind series, An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles (following Alfred Russel Wallace in Southeast Asia), The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen, Soul of the Tiger (with Jeff McNeely), A Conservation Notebook, Quests, and Searching for Ganesha. Gary Braver, author of Tunnel Vision, said Paul's work is "in the great tradition of Asian reporting. The humanity of Somerset Maugham, the adventure of Joseph Conrad, the perception of Paul Theroux, and a self-effacing voice uniquely his own." Paul's handbook for people who want to write their personal stories, Share Your Journey, is based on the creative writing workshops he runs in more than 20 countries. His Borneo Trilogy of darkly satiric novels — Redheads, EarthLove, and Jungle Gyre — exposes the rainforest wars fought by concerned (but often ego-addled) conservationists against the armies of Big Business, Big Politics, and Big Power. These eco-thrillers have been compared to the writing of Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Tom Wolfe, and Graham Greene.

Paul is an American-French writer, writing coach, conservationist, and communications advisor to international non-governmental organizations. He is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and has lived and worked in more than 80 countries, including long stints in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.

Paul served in the United States Peace Corps from 1969 to 1971, working as an education advisor in Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. This exposure to the way people relate to their natural environments has informed his writing. Most of his work has a Southeast Asian theme and focuses on environmental challenges. Paul was also founding creative director of J. Walter Thompson advertising agencies in Indonesia and Singapore.

As head of creative services at WWF-World Wide Fund for Nature, 1981-1994, he created international public awareness campaigns to protect rainforests, wetlands, plants, and biological diversity, and managed the WWF Faith and Environment Network. With a MacArthur Foundation grant, from mid-1992 to mid-1993 he took a leave of absence from WWF to research environmental problems in the Pacific for the Environment Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu. He then worked for ten years as global communications director of the International Osteoporosis Foundation.