Jay Simpson
Project Manager & Digital Storyteller
National Geographic Explorer &
Festival Director @ World Trails Film Festival
(He/him)
Collaborative storyteller with 10+ years of experience leading award-winning projects.
Specialties include: bringing together production teams for cross-cultural collaboration, managing projects to stay on budget and on schedule, winning grants, leveraging multimedia to match the story to audience goals, and being an expert in almost everything made by Adobe.
An award-winning interdisciplinary researcher and producer, Jay has collaborated on campaigns across four continents on issues of human-wildlife conflict, habitat stewardship, HIV/AIDS, and women’s rights. His work can be found in Failed States, the award-winning Wolf OR-7 Expedition Documentary, Journey to Empowerment: Women After the Taliban, and The Walking Collective Podcast. He is also a co-author of Walking & Wayfinding in the Westfjords of Iceland, which won the 2023 Guidebook prize at the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival.
In May 2021, Jay completed a MA degree in Individualized Studies at New York University and was recognized with the Award for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Research for his thesis Coyotes, Urban Naturecultures, and Feral Cohabitation in the Anthropocene.
His current work includes working as the Festival Director for The World Trails Film Festival.
Follow occasional updates regarding his research via tiny letter.
Now on Sale
Walking & Wayfinding in the Westfjords of Iceland
‘Wayfinding in the Westfjords is a diligent tangle of the practical and the magical. Visually sumptuous, it also has some hard yards of stomped wisdom secreted within it. There are clues here about what it means to be claimed by a place. It made me whistle through my teeth and start thinking about a journey north’
— Dr. Martin Shaw, Author of Smoke Hole: Looking to the Wild in the Time of the Spyglass
By Henry Fletcher & Jay Simpson
Written after a decade of walking in the Westfjords, Wayfinding in the Westfjords, Notes on Walking, and Notes on Ecology weave together the practical and the ethereal to guide travelers on their way.
Winner, 2023 Guidebook Prize at the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival
#westfjords #iceland #tourism #trails #landscapes #guiding #books #maps
Current Project
Coyotes, Urban Naturecultures, and Feral Cohabitation in the Anthropocene
An experimental multispecies ethnography of coyotes in New York City written to complete M.A. thesis at New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Studies and accompanied by a short experimental multispecies ethnographic film.
Contact Jay to learn more.
#thesis #ethnographic-film #multispecies-ethnography #queer-ecology #coyotes #new-york-city
Current Project (Director)
The World Trails Film Festival
Trails Film, aka World Trails Film Festival, is created by and for trail-loving communities. Our film programs, chosen from a collection of 80 films (over 40 hrs!), celebrate the diversity of reasons of why trails matter, how they weave into our lives and environment, and the stories of the communities that travel along them. There are many film festivals that focus on epic adventures in nature, but we make sure to include other important themes too, including trails in cities, mental health, trail building, accessibility, and more.
#trails #advocacy #fundraising #filmmaking #community
Ongoing Project (Collaborator & Producer, 2022)
Our Face Tells: Seeing the Genocide of Hazaras in Afghanistan (2022)
A Short Documentary with Zareen Taj
“There is no difference between the Taliban of the 90s and of now. They have the same ideology and perspective… but there is a big difference between women.”
“On behalf of Afghan girls, particularly Hazara girls, we have a message for the Taliban that we will never be defeated.”
Looking at the faces of Hazara women, what do you see? Hazaras are an ethnic minority in Afghanistan, identifiable due to their Asian facial characteristics. Visible in Afghan society, their faces were the targets of genocidal killing by the Taliban. But their faces also reveal their resilience and transformation into leaders within their communities and civil society. This short documentary calls for attention to the genocide of the Hazara people and the oppression of Hazara women. Interviews with remarkable Hazara women, including the first female mayor of Afghanistan, provide insight into how Hazara women continue to resist the Taliban and call out for support from the global community.
#StopHazaraGenocide #Afghanistan #WomensRights #HumanRights
EMERGING Project
Untitled Water Project
Emerging from years of winter swims at Rockaway Beach of New York City, swimming in Icelandic fjords, and open water swimming in Greece, I look towards contact points with water across cultures, histories, myths, and self, seeking the ephemeral edge of living with water on our planet. How do we understand ancient and new ways of knowing in areas that wash away, erode, and submerge from view? Eventual outcomes of this project likely to take the form of in-person experiences, writing, and film.
#Naturecultures #Water #ColdWaterSwimming #WaterCultures #Art
(Guest, 2021)
Appears on: Sonocene Ep 4: Following Coyotes
The presence of coyotes in New York City can seem contradictory. Wild animals living in one of the most populated cities might be hard to believe. However, numerous packs of coyotes have been able to thrive across the city’s pockets of green space.
In this episode, “Following Coyotes,” Jay Simpson (artist-researcher and National Geographic Explorer) tells a story about coyotes, soundscape ecology, and how to listen to a landscape. Drawing from his research and sensory ethnography practice, Simpson leads us along coyote paths that run throughout Pugsley Creek Park, along Westchester Creek, and throughout Ferry Point Park in the Bronx. We’re able to hear the extent of noise pollution within these environments, and the proximity to which coyotes and humans can co-create city spaces. What can we learn about New York City, about our notions of a wild nature, and about environmental change as we walk along the pathways of coyotes?
All proceeds from this episode will be donated to the Gotham Coyote Project, a collective of researchers, educators, and students working together to study the ecology of the northeastern coyote in New York City and the region.
#coyotes #urbanecology #podcast #walking #Lenapehoking
(Producer, 2021)
Walking on Native Land — Walking Collective Podcast
In conversation with Joe Whittle, a photographer, writer, seasonal US Forest Ranger, and enrolled member of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma and descendant member of the Delaware Nation of Oklahoma. Follow him at @joewhittlephotography. Our episode features an image of Joe’s friend, Kanim, as gathers wild cous roots (aka cous biscuitroot) in a garden that was tended by his ancestors for over 15,000 years (Nimiipuu Territory).
#LandAcknowledgement #podcast #walking #Lenapehoking
(producer, 2021)
Connecting to Place in Iceland — Walking Collective Podcast
“Can walking build connection to place? How can I connect to the places I move through, if I’m only an ephemeral traveler?”
#walking #iceland #PlaceBased #tourism #podcast
(Teacher, Co-producer, 2018)
National Student Walkout #ENOUGH
Helping my students lead a protest in response to the Parkland Shooting, create media about our experience, and process this moment in our community.
(Guide & Producer, 2017)
Audio From the Trips to the Westfjords of Iceland
Sounds collected from guiding trips into the Westfjords of Iceland. These include songs, environmental recordings, and more.
#walking #iceland #PlaceBased #tourism #nature
(Producer, 2016)
Wolf OR-7 Expedition Documentary
A 1,200-mile expedition retracing the route of the first known wolf in California since 1924 to learn about wildlife recovery, human-wildlife conflict, and living with predators in changed landscapes.
#documentary #wildlife #wolves #PacificNorthwest
Photography & Research, 2015
The Trouble With Visiting the Tigers of Thailand
Photography & Research, 2015
What you should know before visiting elephants in Thailand
Reflections on my trip to Thailand to explore the lives of Asian elephants in the wild, working for tourist, and in welfare sanctuaries.
National Geographic Explorer Grant, 2012
Rim of Africa Trail — Multimedia Trail Journal
(Collaborator & Book Designer, 2011)
Journey to Empowerment: Women After the Taliban by Zareen Taj
“In 2004, Zareen Taj felt urgency for making a trip to her country to explore the lives of survivors of Taliban massacres. The Taliban murdered men and burned homes and bazaars in an attempt to wipe out the population and economic means of the Hazara, an ethnic minority. The stories within this book are selected from the surviving women Zareen interviewed and present a unique window into the stories of many Afghan women.”
A book and twin photo exhibition produced in collaboration with Zareen Taj, a women’s rights activist who traveled back to Afghanistan two decades after she fled from the Taliban as a young activist.
(Audio & Web Producer, 2009-2012)
GreatGuides.Org Audio Stories and Non-Profit Audio Storytelling from Africa
While traveling overland from Cape Town, South Africa to Kenya and back over the course of 16 months, I helped develop a podcast and web platform offering unique stories from remote locations across Southern and East Africa. To create these stories we interviewed non-profits doing important and innovative work and developed audio stories written and read by high-end tour guides, aiming to make their stories more accessible.
#RadioStorytelling #SouthAfrica #SouthernAfrica #NonProfits #tourism
(Collaborator & Video Editor, 2009)
Oppression of Hazara in Afghanistan — Short Documentary with Zareen Taj
As a child, Zareen Taj witnessed the Soviet invasion and occupation of her country and the brutal oppression and persecution of her people at the hands of the Taliban.
After two decades of absence, Zareen returned to Afghanistan for a two-month video documentary journey that she organized and led. She brought back over 40 hours of videotapes, 700 photographs, and 20 hours of cassette recordings; parts of which are included in her video here.
This video is only part of Zareen’s work as she hopes to complete a feature-length documentary.