Fall 2025
T.A. Barron has written 32 award-winning, best-selling books that have been turned into screenplays, audiobooks, and more. But he doesn’t consider writing to be his job.
“My job is to lift the hearts and minds of young people and remind them that they matter,” he says. “I don’t think there’s any more important work than encouraging young people to rise to their very best selves.”
Over the years, Barron has supported and encouraged countless young people in the pursuit of learning through nature. He’s helped create several programs to support young leaders around the world, including CEO Carter Roberts’ vision for the Boundless conservation fellowships at WWF, the Patagonia travel program for Rhodes Scholars, and the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes. He also gives generously of his time, volunteering on numerous environmental and educational boards and speaking to students of all ages about the importance of nature and why their voices matter.
Barron sees young people as a powerful engine for change and is devoted to helping them realize the difference they can make. “Honestly, my biggest fear for young people, in this crazy time in which we live, is that they will fall into despair, which can lead to a feeling of powerlessness,” he says. “I want them to embrace their power.”
Barron’s mother—whom he describes as having a “nature spirit”—fostered his strong connection to the natural world and was relentlessly curious. Forty years after earning an undergraduate degree in French literature, she went back to school and earned a graduate degree in geology—all to better understand Pikes Peak, the mountain she saw every day from her window. “One day she pointed at it and said, ‘This is a book with a story to tell, and I’m going to learn how to read it.’ And she did,” says Barron
Barron inherited not only his mother’s curiosity about nature, but also her predilection for pursuing challenging professional paths. While working in New York’s finance sector early in his career, he got up every day at dawn to write for an hour—even though he’d already received more than 30 rejections for submitted manuscripts. “It was the hour of the day I cherished more than any other, despite having no evidence I could actually be successful as a writer,” Barron says. “All I had was the powerful desire to try.”
After a particularly fruitful period at work led to success, Barron did the unexpected: He quit, moved home to Colorado, and devoted himself to writing full time. “I told my colleagues, ‘I just want to see if I can write one good book that people will cherish,’” he says. “They thought I was a lunatic, uniformly. And maybe I was. But I had to try.”
Today, Barron concedes the gamble may have paid off. “And somewhere along the way, I discovered that stories are the best way to convey big ideas,” he says. That’s why he weaves nature and conservation themes throughout many of his books.
“Nature is our greatest teacher, healer, and source of hope,” Barron says. “It’s so important that we find a path to a humble and gracious relationship with nature—because if we take good care of nature, she will take good care of us.”
(Sources: WWF)
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