James Prosek

An extraordinarily talented artist, writer, and musician, James Prosek is a passionate voice for conservation, wild trout habitat, and the sport of fly fishing. James will be advising us on how we can raise awareness about conservation issues in the coming years and is generously allowing his artwork to be used to help raise funds for World Trout and other conservation causes. Winston's friendship with James goes back to 1996, when we were first introduced to the young naturalist and his work: Trout: An Illustrated History (Knopf, 1996), which he published as an undergraduate at Yale with watercolors of seventy species, subspecies, and strains of North American trout. We were lucky enough to feature his artwork in our 1997 catalog, ad campaign, and accessory line. And we've been ardent fans ever since.

James furthered his study of native trout species in his travels abroad from 1996 - 2003. His extensive research into the trout of Europe, Asia, and North Africa is beautifully recorded in his book: Trout of the World, an illustrated history of the native species he encountered in his travels. In 2004, James, along with Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia, founded World Trout, an ongoing conservation effort to preserve native trout species worldwide.

Winston is pleased to join the effort by contributing proceeds from the sales of our Winston World Trout T-shirts and our signed James Prosek books to World Trout. James is dedicated to preserving native trout species around the world and bringing public awareness to the threats to their habitat. "Preserving diversity of indigenous trout species around the world is also about preserving our last coldwater wildernesses, and arguably our most precious resource, clean water."

Prosek's current work is concerned with man's changing relationship to nature. In his writing and painting he is examining the human compulsion to order nature through naming. His latest book, Bird, Butterfly, Eel, uses these creatures' stories and his own sun-kissed paintings to introduce young readers to the basic elements of bird, fish, and insect migration. Prosek's next book, about eels, is due out in Summer/Fall 2010 with HarperCollins Publishers. The book explores the life history, mystery, and world cultural associations concerning the freshwater eel. His story about freshwater eels is scheduled to run in National Geographic magazine in 2010.

• Trout: An Illustrated History (Knopf, 1996)
• Joe and Me: An Education in Fishing and Friendship (Morrow, 1997)
• The Complete Angler (HarperCollins, 1998)
• Early Love and Brook Trout (Lyons Press, 2000)
• Fly-Fishing the 41st Parallel (HarperCollins, 2003)
• Trout of the World (Stewart Tabori and Chang, 2003)
• A Good Day's Fishing (Simon & Schuster, 2004)
• The Day My Mother Left (Simon & Schuster, 2007)
• Bird, Butterfly, Eel (Simon & Schuster, 2009)

His latest artwork "Real & Imagined" unites his interest in the tradition of rendering from nature with a turn toward the inner world of fantasy. The progeny of this crossbreeding are hybrid creatures: fish-and-bird, fish-and-human, and, more recently, bird-and-household objects, such as pencils and drill bits.

World Trout with James Prosek (see the Education section of The Winston Channel).