On April 30, award-winning author Marty Essen will present his high-energy multimedia show “Around the World in 90 Minutes” at Flathead Valley Community College.
Essen’s show features interesting facts, humorous stories and the best of thousands of photos he took while traveling the world for his book, “Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents.” According to Essen, it’s the type of show where the audience has fun laughing at the stories, oohing and aahing at the photos, and then, when it’s all done, they realize just how much they’ve learned.
“Around the World in 90 Minutes” began as a show Essen presented in bookstores as part of his first book tour. Later, after numerous refinements, the show took on a life of its own in colleges, museums and nature centers across the United States. For the last four years, Essen’s presentation has placed at the top of the list of booked college speakers by the Association for the Promotion of Campus Activities. Additionally, Campus Activities Magazine named Essen as one of its “Hot Speaker” picks.
Show highlights include amazing animal facts, debunking animal myths, cuddly wallaroos and spiny walking sticks, charging elephants and howling wolves, deadly snakes and friendly penguins, bizarre creatures and endangered species, swimming with piranhas, kayaking in the rainforest, hiking with the porcupine caribou migration, rafting with humpback whales and surviving a hippo attack in Zimbabwe.
In addition to being an Amazon best-selling author, Essen has won multiple book awards for travel/essay writing, including the Benjamin Franklin Award, Best Books Book Award, and National Indie Excellence Award. In addition, he won a first place award at the 2009 Green Book Festival in Los Angeles, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune named “Cool Creatures, Hot Planet” a Top 10 “Green” book.
Free and open to the public, the presentation will take place at 7 p.m. in the large community room in the Arts & Technology building on the FVCC Kalispell campus.
For more information, call 756-3981.