Author

"Leslie Hsu Oh is one of the most innovative outdoor writers today. Her prose style has a combination of spare lyricism, perfect rhythm and sensory power that seems almost like magic, bringing her readers fully into the worlds she re-creates. As a mother who goes on backcountry expeditions with her young children, and an adopted daughter of a Diné and Tlingit family, she also brings a perspective that's seldom heard — a voice capable of overturning outdated formulas that have long dominated the genre. She is part of a generation of writers who are redefining what it means to write about nature and adventure and to seek a more inclusive sense of place in the wild and the world." ~Katie Ives | former Alpinist Magazine, Editor-in-Chief

"Leslie, I just want to say that I read your piece in Outside on your incredible anniversary hike through Chilkoot Pass today, and was in tears. Not just for the struggles that you and Thomas overcame, but for the insightful, personal and emotional journey that shared, and what you'd dealt with leading up to the trip also. I want to tell you that I really appreciated the piece, your strength and openness as a human and a wife/mother/woman/adventurer/perseverer is apparent and so inspiring. Really amazing stuff, and I hope to read more of your work soon."
~Jess Smith | President of OutsidePR

Leslie Hsu Oh is an author, photographer, editor and founder of an award-winning nonprofit. Currently, she is based in Lake Tahoe, California. Through the lens of conservation & wildlife, culinary, culture, gear, family travel, health & wellness, indigenous knowledge, outdoor adventures, sustainability, watersports and wintersports, she hopes to make a difference in this world through longform features and essays.

By the age of twenty, she had white water rafted, spelunked, hiked, and ridden on horseback through nearly all the national parks in the United States and Canada when both her birth mother and eighteen-year-old brother die from hepatitis B. She is currently writing a memoir about the years that followed their death and how she turned to the natural world and the indigenous people most intimate to these places for answers.

She rappelled down a waterfall in Maui, photographed whales from a helicopter (and flown one), kayaked in Puerto Rico’s bio bay, fly fished beneath a waterfall in the highlands of Iceland, paraglided off a cliff in the Alps, ice climbed a glacier in Alaska, jumped out of an airplane in sight of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park and was invited by Elders to ceremonies or sacred landscapes that are not open to outsiders. Leslie has degrees in biology, ethnobotany, MFA in creative writing and public health from Harvard. Her work (photographs and words) appears in Alaska Magazine, Alpinist, Backpacker Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, Fourth Genre, Huffington Post, National Geographic, Outside Magazine, Parenting Magazine, Popular Mechanics, Real Simple, Runner's World, Saveur, Smithsonian Magazine, Sierra Magazine, Travel + Leisure, Vogue, Washington Post and more.

Leslie is a Champion of Change for the White House in Asian American and Pacific Islander Storytelling and Art, a Schweitzer Fellow for Life. Her work has been named among the distinguished stories of the year by Best American Essays. In five consecutive years, she won 8 gold medals, 5 silver medals in North American Travel Journalist Association's Travel Media Competition and two bronze medals (one in Society of American Travel Writer Foundation's  Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award. Read more about Leslie here.