Neal Moore Speaking Fee: $10,000 to $20,000

span style="font-weight: 400," Dubbed “a modern-day Huckleberry Finn” by CNN, adventurer/storyteller Neal Moore shares lessons learned from a solo 7,500-mile transcontinental odyssey of illumination, connectivity and hope in a style of journalism all his own, slow and low down from the viewpoint of a canoe.  /span span style="font-weight: 400," After living most of his life in Africa and East Asia, Neal felt a blazing desire to reconnect with a part of who he is, to experience his native country up close and personal, to travel America’s first thoroughfares via its first mode of transport, the canoe. Bent on exploration, akin to a quest, Neal wanted to discover where America has been and where it is headed. He became the first person known to paddle a canoe solo and continuously across the United States from the West Coast to the East Coast. Paddling the wrong way, the hard way, his journey linked 22 rivers and waterways in 22 states over 22 months, from Astoria, Oregon, to New York City, with a circuit of the Statue of Liberty as the grand finale. His trip took place in the midst of a global pandemic and a contentious election cycle as he explored the threads that tie us together – even during a time of extreme polarization by race, class and political ideology.  /span span style="font-weight: 400," Neal Moore is the author of  /span i span style="font-weight: 400," Down the Mississippi, /span /i span style="font-weight: 400,"  an account of a solo canoe voyage from the Mississippi’s headwaters at Lake Itasca in Minnesota to New Orleans, and, most recently, /span i span style="font-weight: 400," Homelands: A Memoir, /span /i span style="font-weight: 400," about his time as a naïve, 19-year-old Mormon missionary in South Africa as it was throwing off white-minority rule. A nomad, public speaker and itinerant scribbler, Neal’s reporting has taken him from night-market meetings with Chinese cyber-dissidents to mountaintop encounters with approaching super typhoons. His dispatches from North America, Africa and the Far East have appeared in The New Yorker, Der Spiegel and on CNN International. His “sea to shining sea” journey of illumination was covered by news outlets around the world, including The New York Times, The Times of London and Adventure Magazine of New Zealand. Neal will appear in a series of cards with the images of entertainers, journalists and sports icons issued in 2022 by Topps Allen &, Ginter. /span