William Powers hails from Long Island, NY and has worked for over a decade in development aid and conservation in Latin America, Africa, Washington, D.C., and Native North America. From 2002 to 2004 he managed the community components of a project in the Bolivian Amazon that won a 2003 prize for environmental innovation from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. His essays and commentaries on global issues have appeared in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, and on National Public Radio. Mr. Powers has worked at the World Bank, and holds international relations degrees from Brown University and Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service.  A 2004-2005 recipient of the Open Door Foundation for non-fiction, he is the author of the Liberia memoir Blue Clay People and the Bolivian memoir Whispering in the Giant's Ear.

Read Bill’s New York Times and other essays, and hear his interviews. Click here.


A note from Bill:

I currently live in Samaipata, Bolivia, a colonial village two hours from Santa Cruz, near Amboro National Park and the El Fuerte Inca ruins. Here’s a Washington Post travel piece I wrote about Samaipata.

I’m writing a book about the soft world, those stubborn pockets of humanity and culture that are quietly resisting globalization’s homogenizing forces. The book is based on my experience of living in a 12’x12’, off-the-grid, permaculture cabin in North Carolina, but draws from a decade living and traveling in soft world cultures: in Africa, South America, India, and in soft world niches in the U.S.