Russell A. Potter has been fascinated with the Arctic regions for many years, and has written and lectured extensively on many different aspects of its history. In April of 2004 he traveled to the remote corners of the Canadian Arctic to revisit several of the sites where traces of the ill-fated Franklin expedition of 1845 still remain, for the filming of the NOVA program Arctic Passage: Prisoners of the Ice.
He was first drawn to the tale of Franklin disaster by David C. Woodman’s 1991 book Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony, and went on to start the first e-mail list for Franklin researchers in 1996. In 1999, he founded the Arctic Book Review, which has counted among its reviewers notable authors such as Lawrence Millman and Kenn Harper. He has written on the visual representations of the Arctic for The Polar Record and numerous other journals, and contributed to the Encyclopedia of the Arctic, edited by Mark Nuttall. He has lectured at the Clark Art Institute, Hunter College, the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, Scotland, and Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and is currently Professor of English and Media Studies at Rhode Island College.
