Steven Callahan

Steven Callahan has spent much of the last 40 years "messing about in boats," exploring the offshore wilderness, and delving into survival issues. He is probably best known for his New York Times bestseller Adrift: Seventy Six Days Lost at Sea, based on his own survival voyage in 1982. Since then, he has continued to voyage offshore, logging some 80,000 mostly trouble-free miles, although most of it has been shorthanded and in deep waters. Callahan also has continued to interview survivors and survival experts, and to work as writer, consultant, equipment tester, and designer. He seeks both detailed solutions to survival problems and conceptual lessons from survival experiences applicable to organizations and individuals facing any challenge.

In his presentations, Callahan uses his own and others' survival experiences to focus on the common stages of survival, the successful strategies survivors employ to adapt, and especially how challenges can ultimately serve as opportunities. He continues to work on a book titled Dancing with Disaster: Surviving and Thriving While Facing Life's Greatest Challenges, upon which his current presentation is based. Survival is the universal human issue, but how we meet it will vary widely. Callahan accepts that life will step on our toes, that we will not emerge without scars, but he also embraces the idea that we can learn to enhance our chances of survival and hopefully gain at least as much as we lose as we face its trials. We can all learn how to be better survivors, and in the process learn how best to face everyday problems.

In Callahan's eyes, venturing in the wilderness is good survival training, and the sea is the world's greatest wilderness. Such environments, Callahan believes, heighten and reveal elements of human character and society. This has helped Callahan's writings even about the specialized world of boats and the sea become embraced by a wider public. Adrift has been published in 16 languages, won the Salon du Libre Maritime in France, and was chosen as a "best book of the 1980s," a "best book for young adults" by the American Library Association, and one of the best adventure books of all time by National Geographic Explorer. Callahan also authored Capsized, which chronicles the experience of four men trapped on an overturned, half-flooded trimaran off of New Zealand for four months in 1989. He has contributed to a dozen other books as well, the majority on seamanship and survival, and spent four years at Cruising World magazine, a New York Times publication, where he served as senior editor. Callahan remains a frequent contributor to the yachting press worldwide, but has also written for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, High Technology, International Wildlife, and Ultrasport, among others.

Callahan has been featured in scores of media venues in more than a dozen countries, including Reader's Digest and People magazines, the Tonight and Today shows, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King Live, Voice of America, and NPR's "All Things Considered." He was the subject of a Heath Reading Video on ocean survival for primary school children, and an NHK (Japan's Public Broadcasting) television series on the human body. In the last few years, he's been featured in numerous programs aired in the US via the Discovery, History, and Biography Channels. Recently, he's been working as consultant and in other capacities with Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee for an upcoming feature film based on the novel Life of Pi.

Callahan has given presentations for scores of maritime interest, from the New York Yacht Club to the US Naval Academy and the International Association for Safety and Survival Training, but his audiences have been as wide-ranging as finance (US Trust), medicine (The Worcester Institute), industry (Corning), computer systems (Primavera Systems), and youth at risk (Black Hills Children's Home). He's also spoken to general audiences in venues such as the nation's leading aquariums and educational institutions.