Douglas Whynott

I'm Doug Whynott, the author of five nonfiction books so far. I've thought of writing as a way to vicariously live in pursuits I might have chosen otherwise. I actually applied to a beekeeping school while in college, after working as a bee inspector one summer, but I let that go and continued studying writing. Following the Bloom, a book about migratory beekeepers, was the result. I wrote about the bluefin tuna fishery as a way to spend time where I grew up, on Cape Cod, and had worked briefly (two weeks) on a cod trawler, and less briefly (about nine months) putting on dolphin shows, before heading off to college to pursue writing. Giant Bluefin is my book about the Cape, as I see it. I spent a year and a half at a boatyard in Maine roaming around watching and talking to boatbuilders; the yard was owned by Joel White, the son of E.B. White, and may I say that it was one of the thrills of my life being there and talking to him, though we agreed I was not writing a biography but rather a portrait of a yard. The book is A Unit of Water, A Unit of Time, a title based on the principle that the cost of a boat is equivalent to the amount of water it displaces. I inhabited a veterinary clinic for two years and wrote A Country Practice. The Sugar Season, about a maple syrup producer, won the Green Book Festival award for writing about the environment and was a Boston Globe notable book of the year. My thanks to those of you who have read my books.