Welcome. I am a husband, writer, cat father and aspiring human being. Here’s the writer part.

I have traveled by open boat 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle in search of the sites of three giant iron meteorites and once spent weeks living in a tent on the Antarctic plateau to document the work of scientists in that icy place. I've suited up as an analogue astronaut during a stint at the Mars Desert Research Station and later organized and led Imagination 1, a lunar analogue mission in 2024 at Biosphere’s Space Analog for Moon and Mars. At Mt. Wilson Observatory, I observed the Moon through a 60-inch telescope—a bit larger than the backyard scope I normally use. A few years ago, I tracked down the identity and history of the young Ohio farm boy who inadvertently killed the last known wild Passenger Pigeon. And I have worked in archives and libraries around the world. 

All of this was in pursuit of stories, and stories form the backbone of my three research-driven nonfiction books. 

My most recent book --Still as Bright: An Illuminating History of the Moon from Antiquity to Tomorrow--came out in 2024 from the amazing team at Pegasus Books. It's garnered praise from Booklist, Kirkus Reviews (starred review), Sky & Telescope and others, while the Toronto Globe & Mail named it to its Best 100 Books of 2024. It was a Planetary Society Book Club selection. Still as Bright won a Utah Book Award in 2024. I also have written The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars (Tarcher/Penguin 2009), and Hope Is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds (Tarcher/Penguin 2000), both of which were published to wide acclaim. 

Story—and a love of wonder—are also at the heart of my four collections of poetry and lyric essays: Held as Earth; Bodies, of the Holocene; and The Underneath. Forthcoming from Torrey House Press are new poems collected in “Sofa Floating on an Ancient Sea.”

As an anthologist, I've worked with co-editors to bring the voices of others to new audiences in The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide, and  Beyond Earth's Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight, which has been featured or reviewed in such venues as “Planetary Radio,” Scientific American and “The Open Mind” on PBS. Shout-out to Eric Magrane and Julie Swarstad Johnson, fellow co-editors of those projects.

​Articles, poems and essays about space and astronomy have appeared in Discover, SpaceNews, Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, The Space Review, SkyNews and the Los Angeles Times, to which I contribute op-eds. My work has been featured or reviewed in many venues, including NPR's “All Things Considered,” USA Today, People, Science, The New Yorker, Nature and Michio Kaku’s “Science Fantastic.” For Esquire, I wrote about the all-artists mission at Biosphere. Other pieces in the L.A. Times are here and here and here, among recent contributions.

​I have won fellowships and awards from multiple establishments, including Utah Arts and Museums, the Whiting Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Rachel Carson Center in Munich. Other awards include the John Burroughs Prize for Best Natural History Essay, the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, the Glasgow Prize for an Emerging Writer, a UCLA Institute of Environment and Sustainability Journalism Fellowship and the New American Press Poetry Prize.

​I taught at Kansas State University, Utah State University (where I founded and edited Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing) and at the University of Arizona, where, before retiring, I taught creative writing, the history of science fiction, and science communication. Former students have gone on to publish books with Little, Brown; William Morrow; Orbit; Broadway; Georgia and other presses. Through Arizona’s Carson Scholars Program I helped mentor nearly 100 young scientists to speak and write with accuracy and passion, work recognized by a Graduate and Professional Student Council Mentor of the Year Award.

No biography is complete without thanks. ​I owe a debt of gratitude to loved ones, friends, editors, former colleagues, sources, neighbors, books, critics (in the most expansive sense of the word), nature, former students, those no longer in my life and even a few cats for how they remind me to take Seneca’s words to heart: “As long as you live, continue to learn how to live.”
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