selected essays 

reader on library steps
Widener Library, Garry Knight Flickr

SKEWING
MALE

NOT LONG AFTER my history of Polynesian voyaging was published, I began to get emails from readers. This was not an unfamiliar experience; I’d had letters from readers before. But this was a very specific set of correspondents, one I was not expecting to hear from, and I’ve been thinking about them ever since. (more)

Marquesas
Nuku Hiva, Stuart Freedman In Pictures

In the Footsteps of RLS

IN THE SUMMER of 1888, Robert Louis Stevenson embarked on a valedictory tour of the South Pacific. His health, never good, was in decline, and he believed, as he later recalled, that he “was come to the afterpiece of life, and had only the nurse and the undertaker to expect”. He was not far wrong: he lived only another six years. (more)

Lucy Jones, New York Times
Lucy Jones, New York Times

On Being an Outsider

BEFORE I HAD any children of my own, I spent a decade and a half living in places where I was an outsider. While I never lost the feeling of estrangement that comes from missing basic cultural cues, for me this was a period of great liberation. I loved the freedom that being a stranger gave me. I loved the fact that people were unable to “place” me and that I was also largely free of preconceptions about them. (more)

selected essays & REVIEWS

“Some Kind of Kin,” Orion Magazine, Summer 2019.

“The Ritual of Renewal,” The American Scholar, April 10, 2019.

Down the Research Rat Hole,” JSTOR Daily, December 20, 2018.

“‘The White Road: Journey into Obsession,’ by Edmund de Waal,” Boston Globe, November 7, 2015.

“‘The Sea Inside’ by Philip Hoare,” Boston Globe, June 7, 2014.

“Prose Matters,” Essay Daily, September, 27, 2103.

“Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love,” Paris Review Daily, May 27, 2013.

“‘Alone on the Ice’ by David Roberts,” Boston Globe, January 26, 2013.

“‘The Human Shore’ by John R. Gillis & ‘Among the Islands’ by Tim Flannery,” Boston Globe, November 24, 2012.

“‘Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms’ by Richard Fortey,” Boston Globe, April 12, 2012.

If we couldn’t read,” Boston Globe, February 5, 2012.

“‘The Man Within My Head,’ by Pico Iyer,” Boston Globe, January 1, 2012.

“‘Into the Silence’ by Wade Davis,” Boston Globe, October 21, 2011