Kieran Mulvaney

I'll admit it. Twenty-four years, when the world was all a-twitter about three gray whales trapped in the ice off Alaska, I didn't get it. I was 20 years old, the director of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, and I was booked on UK television to talk about the marvel of their rescue. And I was kind of snitty about it. It was a lot of money to spend on a couple of whales, i harrumphed. (more…)

I know. It's been far too long. It has been an overwhelming couple of months. A lot of travel, including to Iceland, a place to which I already long to return. An oddly hypnotic, haunting land, the kind of place where i could easily see myself shipping up for a long time. There was something strangely powerful about, of all things, my cab ride to the airport, with the barren volcanic ground separating the road from the sea and the very visceral sense that here, indeed, one is on the edge, at the boundary between land and sea, a remote outpost in the middle of the North Atlantic.

I discovered, also, some Icelandic music. Everyone knows Bjork, of course. But then there is Sigur Ros. Sigur Ros may create the most extraordinarily beautiful music known to humanity, music that is so reflective of the land from which they come. By way of evidence, I present "Von."

Well, in the end, that year worked out a lot better than those that immediately preceded it.
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I'm extremely grateful to the folks at January magazine for naming "The Great White Bear" as one of the best non-fiction books of 2011. In a glowing review, India Wilson wrote that, "Arguably, Mulvaney is well on his way to being one of the ranking conservation writers of his generation. He writes alternately with joy and like his heart is bleeding and, in his passion, he carries us along." Wow. Thank you very much indeed.

I know, I know, it's been a while. All is well, but the workload has been somewhat extreme. This is, of course, a good thing - better than having insufficient work, certainly - but only if I do what I need to do before the deadline by which I have to do it. And that, my friends, is going to be a close shave. It'll take me up until the Christmas vacation, I'm afraid, and at that point, I'll come up for air ...

I'm in Las Vegas for another big fight (this time, Floyd Mayweather vs Victor Ortiz). as has been the case for big pay-per-views since 2009, Bert Sugar and I have shot some webisodes for HBO.com. Enjoy.