David Quammen (born February 24, 1948) is an American

science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

, and

travel writer The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern per ...

and the author of fifteen books. His articles have appeared in '' Outside Magazine'', '' National Geographic'', '' Harper's'', ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its ...

'', ''

The New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...

'', ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', and other periodicals. A collection of David Quammen's drafts, research, and correspondence is housed in

Texas Tech University Texas Tech University (Texas Tech, Tech, or TTU) is a public research university in Lubbock, Texas. Established on , and called Texas Technological College until 1969, it is the main institution of the five-institution Texas Tech University Sy ...

’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library. The collection consists of approximately 63 boxes of publicly available literary production, artifacts, maps, and other papers dated between 1856-2014.

Early life and education

David Quammen was born on February 24, 1948 to W.A. and Mary Quammen. He was raised in the suburbs of

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wi ...

and graduated from St. Xavier High School in 1966. Following this, he was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship, aiding him in attending and graduating from

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

. During his graduate studies at

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, he studied literature, concentrating on the works of

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most o ...

. After the completion of his education and the publication of his first novel, he relocated to Bozeman, Montana, where he currently lives with his wife, Betsy Gaines Quammen.

Career

In the early 1970s, Quammen moved to Montana for

trout Trout are species of freshwater fish belonging to the genera '' Oncorhynchus'', '' Salmo'' and '' Salvelinus'', all of the subfamily Salmoninae of the family Salmonidae. The word ''trout'' is also used as part of the name of some non-salm ...

fishing. In 1983, he finished ''The Soul of Viktor Tronko'', a spy novel based on Russian historical events. A year later, ''Blood Line: Stories of Fathers and Sons'' was published. Following the failure of his spy novel, Quammen began transitioning into a nonfiction writer. In 1981, Quammen began writing columns for Outside Magazine, and continued for fifteen years. Some of the columns from Outside Magazine and others contributed to Quammen's nonfiction books: ''Natural Acts'' (1985), ''The Flight of the Iguana'' (1988), ''Wild Thoughts from Wild Places'' (1998), and ''The Boilerplate Rhino'' (2000). Later in 1999, Quammen began to write a series of three stories following J. Michael Fay's 2000-mile hike through Central Africa for '' National Geographic''. During this time, Quammen walked with Fay for eight weeks along African river basins. Quammen continued working with National Geographic, holding a Contributing Writer position, producing cover stories like "Was Darwin Wrong?" and "The Short Happy Life of a Serengeti Lion." From 2007 to 2009, Quammen was employed as the Wallace Stegner Professor of Western American Studies at Montana State University. Quammen received honorary doctorates from Montana State University and

Colorado College Colorado College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It was founded in 1874 by Thomas Nelson Haskell in his daughter's memory. The college enrolls approxi ...

. For his work, Quammen was awarded with a Rhodes Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction. His book '' Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic'' (2012) received two awards: the Science and Society Book Award, given by the

National Association of Science Writers The National Association of Science Writers (NASW) was created in 1934 by a dozen science journalists and reporters in New York City.

, and the Society of Biology (UK) Book Award in General Biology. In 2013, ''Spillover'' was shortlisted for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. ''The Song of the Dodo'' (Scribner, 1996), a study of the bird's extinction won the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing.

Books

Non-fiction

* Quammen, David. ''Natural Acts: a Sidelong View of Science and Nature''. New York:

Schocken Books Schocken Books is a book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House that specializes in Jewish literary works. Originally established in 1931 by Salman Schocken as Schocken Verlag in Berlin, the company later moved to Palestine and then the Uni ...

, 1985. * Quammen, David. ''The Flight of the Iguana: a Sidelong View of Science and Nature''. New York:

Delacorte Press Dell Publishing Company, Inc. is an American publisher of books, magazines and comic books, that was founded in 1921 by George T. Delacorte Jr. with $10,000 (approx. $145,000 in 2021), two employees and one magazine title, ''I Confess'', and so ...

, 1988. * Quammen, David. "Miracle of the Geese." ''Words from the Land: Encounters with Natural History Writing''. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1988. * Quammen, David. ''The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions''. New York: Scribner, 1996. * Quammen, David. ''Wild Thoughts From Wild Places''. New York: Scribner, 1999. * Quammen, David, ed. '' Best American Science and Nature Writing''. Boston:

Mariner Books Mariner Books, originally an imprint of HMH Books, was established in 1997 as a publisher of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry in trade paperback. Mariner is also the publisher of the Harvest backlist, formerly published by Harcourt Brace/Harcou ...

, 2000. * Quammen, David. ''The Boilerplate Rhino: Nature in the Eye of the Beholder''. New York: Scribner, 2001. * Quammen, David. ''Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind''. New York, W. W. Norton, 2003. * Quammen, David. ''Alexis Rockman.'' New York:

Monacelli Press Phaidon Press is a global publisher of books on art, architecture, design, fashion, photography, and popular culture, as well as cookbooks, children's books, and travel books. The company is based in London and New York City, with additional of ...

, 2004. * Quammen, David. ''The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution''. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. * Quammen, David. ''The Kiwi's Egg: Charles Darwin and Natural Selection''. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007. * Quammen, David. '' Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.'' New York: Norton, 2012. * Quammen, David. ''Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus.'' New York: Norton, 2014. * Quammen, David. ''The Chimp and the River: How AIDS emerged from an African Forest.'' New York: Norton, 2015. * Quammen, David. ''Yellowstone: A Journey Through America’s Wild Heart.'' National Geographic, 2016. * Quammen, David. ''The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life.'' New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019. * Quammen, David. ''Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus.'' New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022.

Fiction

*Quammen, David. ''Walking Out,'' 1980. *Quammen, David. ''The Zolta Configuration''. New York:

Doubleday Books Doubleday is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 and was the largest in the United States by 1947. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed th ...

, 1983. *Quammen, David. ''To Walk the Line.'' New York:

Pocket Books Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books. History Pocket Books produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in the United States in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing ...

, 1985. *Quammen, David. ''The Soul of Viktor Tronko''. New York: Dell,1987. *Quammen, David. ''Blood Line: Stories of Father and Sons''. Boulder: Johnson Books, 1988.

Awards and accolades

*1970 Rhodes Scholarship *1987 National Magazine Award *1988 Guggenheim Fellowship *1994 National Magazine Award *1996 Academy Award in Literature from the

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...

*1996 Natural World Book Prize *1997 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism *1997 Lannan Foundation Fellowship *1997 John Burroughs Medal for

nature writing Nature writing is nonfiction or fiction prose or poetry about the natural environment. Nature writing encompasses a wide variety of works, ranging from those that place primary emphasis on natural history facts (such as field guides) to those in w ...

*2000 Honorary doctorate from Montana State University *2001 PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award for the Art of the Essay for ''The Boilerplate Rhino'' *2005 National Magazine Award *2009 Honorary doctorate from

*2012

The Stephen Jay Gould Prize The Society for the Study of Evolution is a professional organization of evolutionary biologists. It was formed in the United States in 1946 to promote evolution and the integration of various fields of science concerned with evolution and to organ ...

from the

Society for the Study of Evolution The Society for the Study of Evolution is a professional organization of evolutionary biologists. It was formed in the United States in 1946 to promote evolution and the integration of various fields of science concerned with evolution and to organ ...

*2013

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction __NOTOC__ The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction were established in 2012 to recognize the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year. They are named in honor of ni ...

, finalist for ''Spillover''

References

External links

*
Author papers at Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University

Video: David Quammen discussing ''Spillover'', September 2012

From the NPR Radio Show, Krulwich on Science, titled "Three Nice Things We Can Say About Mosquitoes", July 30, 2008

From the NPR Radio Show the Bryant Park Project interview about his book "The Reluctant Mr. Darwin" on July 1, 2008

From the NPR Radio Show, Krulwich on Science, titled "The Racing Asparagus" (promoting his Charles Darwin biography), September 20, 2006

''"Walking Out"'' (1980) - full text at the Short Story Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Quammen, David American nature writers American non-fiction environmental writers American science writers American science journalists 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers National Geographic people Charles Darwin biographers American Rhodes Scholars John Burroughs Medal recipients PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award winners St. Xavier High School (Ohio) alumni Yale University alumni Alumni of Merton College, Oxford Writers from Cincinnati Writers from Montana American male writers People from Bozeman, Montana 1948 births Living people