I grew up in New York City, snorkeling in my bathtub, and pretending the living room shag carpet was finger coral. Our cairn terrier was the size of a snapper. I studied English at Cornell (Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa and Distinction in All Subjects), and learned to scuba dive in the vicyhssoise waters of nearby Skaneateles Lake, which William Henry Seward, Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state, called “the most beautiful body of water in the world.” We saw trout.
I’ve lived in Italy, reported on it for The New Republic, The New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, Robb Report, Boston Magazine, Forward and others, and I set my first novel, Sasso, in the tufa caves of Basilicata, far away from the water.
In New York, I've worked in book publishing, on staff at Vanity Fair, and I taught travel-writing seminars, workshops and master classes for Mediabistro from 2002 to 2015, including a week-long program in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, France and before the Society of American Travel Writers in Memphis, Tenn. I’ve been a travel-writing panelist for the American Society of Journalists and Authors, National Geographic Center for Sustainable Destinations, and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, among others. I’ve also served as a contributing editor at a half-dozen travel publications, including Lexus and Fathom, and a columnist for Coastal Living, where I wrote a 32-part blog about building a house in Hawaii.
My articles on the underwater world have run in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic Traveler, Outside, Men’s Journal, Afar, Scuba Diving, Sport Diver, Caribbean Travel & Life, Islands, Robb Report, Lexus, New York Magazine, Hemispheres, Coastal Living, Fathom, Blue, Hamptons Magazine, Executive Travel, Texas Journey/AAA, Meridian, Reach and Atmosphere.
My fiction and journalism have been published in 18 countries and translated into nine languages, and my articles for Glamour magazine have been used as course materials by the psychology and sociology departments of the University of Wisconsin, Santa Barbara City College and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and been anthologized by Dushkin Publishing/McGraw Hill’s Annual Editions (1995 and 1997). In addition to stories in Italy: The Best Travel Writing from The New York Times (Harry N. Abrams/Istituto Geografico DeAgostini, 2005) and Best Food Writing 2007 (Marlowe & Company, 2007), I won honorable mention in The Best American Sports Writing (2010 and 2012) for articles about bog snorkeling in Wales and goat racing in Tobago, a 2008 Solas Award about the post-Carnival haze in Bahia, a 2015 gold Adrian Award about sailing regattas in Anguilla in hand-made wooden sloops, and a 2017 Destination Canada award for Best Adventure Writing about snorkeling with salmon in Vancouver Island.
I’ve scuba dived frozen lakes, thermal springs, submarines, oil rigs and the Great Wall of China.
I’m also a PADI Divemaster and Ice Diver, PFI Intermediate Freediver, Explorers Club Fellow, and I placed second by split decision in the Eastern Collegiate Judo Championships at Slippery Rock University in 1985 (and was then promptly eliminated in the first round of the nationals at UC-Berkeley later that year).
Photo by Jason Cohn