American writer and populariser of science. (b. cUncinnati, 1948)
He graduated in Yale, he studied literature at Oxford, focusing on the works of William Faulkner. Since the early 1970s he has been drawn to trout fishing in the state of Montana, where he resides while travelling the world for his articles in the National Geographic.
From 2007 to 2009 he taught Western American Studies at Montana State University. For fifteen years he edited a column entitled “Natural Acts” for Outside magazine. In 2013 his book Spillover, in which he predicts a zoonotic pandemic originating in China, was shortlisted for the PEN / EO Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. The Covid-19 pandemic thus brought him to global prominence.
