Frank Bures is an award-winning writer and essayist. His books include Pushing the River: An Epic Battle, a Lost History, a Near Death, and Other True Canoeing Stories, Under Purple Skies: The Minneapolis Anthology, and The Geography of Madness: Penis Thieves, Voodoo Death, and the Search for the Meaning of the World's Strangest Syndromes, which Newsweek called one of the best travel books of the decade.

His work has appeared in Harper’s, The Atlantic, Outside, and other publications, and has been included or selected as “Notable” in the Best American Travel Writing, Best American Essays and Best American Sports Writing nineteen times.

Apart from giving tours of his hometown, Bures has tracked down genital thieves in Nigeria, gone on Sasquatch expeditions in the north woods and competed in the World Rock Skipping Championships on the Great Lakes. He has interviewed everyone from sitting U.S. Senators to Klingon Karaoke aficionados to plant psychics. He has lived in Italy, Tanzania, New Zealand and Wisconsin. He still speaks Italian and Swahili passably well, and used to be able to get by in Thai. Currently he lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two daughters, not far from the Mississippi River, which he grew up on further to the south.