In 2011, after graduating from Middlebury College, Andrew Forsthoefel didn’t know what his next step should be. So he left his mother’s house in Pennsylvania for an eleven-month walking tour of the continental United States to seek advice. Walking with a sign on his backpack reading “Walking to Listen,” he found strangers and new friends to interview, resulting in over eighty-five hours worth of audio. When he returned, he produced a radio documentary from his interviews that was featured on Transom and This American Life. Now a speaker and peace activist, Forsthoefel hosts workshops on reflective writing and learning to listen, and he gives talks about his experience. His first book, Learning to Listen; 4,000 Miles across America, One Story at a Time, relates what Publishers Weekly calls a "fascinating, terrifying, mundane, and at times heartbreaking, but ultimately transformative and wise" experience of backpacking across America.   

Profile in the Boston Globe

Radio documentary "Walking Across America: Advice for a Young Man"