About Ethan Gilsdorf
"The hardest-working geek we know, Ethan Gilsdorf."—The Boston Phoenix
"Ethan Gilsdorf ... brings a bit of international cachet as well as a lively, engaging reading style ... he is known for an eloquent yet accessible fusion of the natural world and urban culture."—The Boston Globe
"Boston nerdlord writer Ethan Gilsdorf"—The Quad
"Somerville’s resident d20 dorkwad"—The Weekly Dig
"Adorably amusing"—The Bostonist.com
"[Gilsdorf] captivated the audience with his passionate, inflective reading"— The Somerville News
Shorter biography:
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the travel memoir investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.
The poet, teacher, critic and journalist has worked as a freelance correspondent, guidebook writer, and film, book and restaurant reviewer. Based in Somerville, Massachusetts, he publishes travel, arts, and pop culture stories and essays regularly in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Salon.com, wired.com and Christian Science Monitor, and has published hundreds of articles in dozens of other magazines, newspapers, websites and guidebooks worldwide, including Playboy, National Geographic Traveler, Psychology Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Washington Post and Fodor's travel guides. He is a book and film critic for the Boston Globe, former bicycling culture columnist for the Boston Globe, and is the film columnist for Art New England. His blog "Geek Pride" is seen regularly on PsychologyToday.com, and his Forces of Geek blog is called "Hip Points. He also contributes to blogs at wired.com's "Geek Dad"; Boston.com's Globetrotting; Tor.com; and TheOneRing.net.
Longer biography:
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, his travel memoir investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures that the Huffington Post calls “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky." National Public Radio described the book as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road" and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” It was named a Must-Read Book by the Massachusetts Book Awards.
After playing Dungeons & Dragons religiously in the 1970s and 1980s, Ethan Gilsdorf went on become a poet, teacher, critic and journalist. He has worked as a freelance correspondent, guidebook writer, and film, book and restaurant reviewer in Paris and the U.S. Now based in Somerville, Massachusetts, he publishes travel, arts, and pop culture stories and essays regularly in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Salon.com, wired.com and Christian Science Monitor, and has published hundreds of articles in dozens of other magazines, newspapers, websites and guidebooks worldwide, including Playboy, National Geographic Traveler, Psychology Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Washington Post and Fodor's travel guides.
He is a book and film critic for the Boston Globe, former bicycling culture columnist for the Boston Globe, and is the film columnist for Art New England. His blog "Geek Pride" is seen regularly on PsychologyToday.com, and his Forces of Geek blog is called "Hip Points. He also contributes to blogs at wired.com's "Geek Dad"; Boston.com's Globetrotting; Tor.com; and TheOneRing.net.
Gilsdorf has also been a guest as a fantasy and escapism expert on radio and television programs such as the CBC's' "Definitely Not the Opera"; Public Radio International's "To the Best of Our Knowledge"; Air America's "Inside Story"; and NPR's "Around And About" and "Radio Boston."
He has given lectures at universities such as MIT, Notre Dame, Louisiana State University, and the University of Southern California; appeared at conventions such as Pax East, Gen Con, DragonCon, Boskone, Arisia, and SnowCon; and read at book festivals and libraries nationwide including the Boston Public Library, Fayetteville (AR) Public Library, the Boston Book Festival, Decatur Book Festival, Brooklyn Book Festival and the Twin Cities Book Festival.
As a poet, he is the winner of the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Competition and the Esme Bradberry Contemporary Poets Prize, and has published poems in Poetry, The Southern Review, The North American Review, Exquisite Corpse and several anthologies such as Short Fuse: A Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry, Outsiders: Poems About Rebels, Exiles and Renegades and 100 Poets Against the War, among others. He is co-founder of Grub Street's Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP), volunteers as a guest speaker in the Boston Public Schools and leads memoir, narrative non-fiction, journalism, travel writing and creative writing workshops at Grub Street, Emerson College, Media Bistro and, for younger students, in schools and community centers. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Grub Street, a non-profit creative writing center dedicated to nurturing writers and connecting readers with the wealth of writing talent in the Boston area.
Todd Swift, poet, author of Cafe Alibi, and editor of SHORT FUSE: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry, says: "Ethan Gilsdorf strikes me as a poetic Henry James for the 21st century, the cosmopolitan American in Europe, casting a cold eye on the old and new worlds, and delivering an elegant retort to any suggestion that lyricism and wit cannot lie in the same bed. He is one of the best of a new generation of poets emerging now, and should be read."
On assignment for various publications, he has interviewed Sir Ben Kingsley, David Carradine, Sister Helen Prejean, Seth Rogen, George Romero, Chris Cooper, Guillermo del Toro, Bobby and Peter Farrelly, and Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, among other cultural figures.
He has taste-tested caffeinated beer; acted as an extra on a movie set; and embarked on a quest for the perfect French fry. He has walked across Scotland, mountain biked the French Pyrenees, explored caves in New York State and backpacked through India.
To research Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, Gilsdorf traveled from Boston to England, France to New Zealand, Planet Earth to the realm of Aggramar. He hung out with Harry Potter tribute bands, attended fan conventions and gaming tournaments, camped with 12,000 medieval reenactors for a week, sewed his own tunic, learned to sword fight, battled online goblins and trolls, and played Dungeons & Dragons again for the first time in 25 years. He does not own elf ears, but he has kept all his old D&D gear, and has been known to host a Lord of the Rings party or two.
Follow Ethan’s adventures at http://www.ethangilsdorf.com & http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com; Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/fantasyfreaksbook; Twitter: "ethanfreak"