David Quammen
David Quammen writes books and reported stories about evolution, wildlife, conservation, and the connections between human health and the natural world.
At 100 nudges, fangea sends David’s team an official invite.
🔒 Star boosts open once David claims this page.
Latest
David’s happenings, collected from public sources, plus his backstory and Starbook, where fans write.
Known for
Overview
- From
- Raised near Cincinnati, Ohio; based in Bozeman, Montana.
- Work
- Author and science and nature journalist.
- Education
- Yale and Oxford.
- First book
- To Walk the Line, a novel published in 1970.
- Early platform
- Outside magazine columnist from 1981, for fifteen years.
- Landmark book
- The Song of the Dodo (1996), his award-winning exploration of island biogeography and extinction.
Mini bio
How it started.
Quammen grew up beside a hardwood forest outside Cincinnati. Watching that forest get bulldozed was formative. After studying at Yale and Oxford and publishing his first novel, To Walk the Line, he moved to Montana in 1973.
Finding his beat.
He began a fifteen-year run as an Outside columnist in 1981. His natural-history essays led into books about ecology, evolution, and extinction. The Song of the Dodo became a landmark, earning the John Burroughs Medal and the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Award.
Following the scientists.
For Spillover, he spent five years following researchers in the field and in laboratories to understand how infections move from animals into humans. Breathless later brought readers into the scientific response to COVID-19 and became a 2022 National Book Award finalist.
Still asking questions.
The Heartbeat of the Wild draws on twenty-one National Geographic features, with updates and connecting material about conservation and wildness. His recent work includes essays and interviews on evolution and disease. The New York Review of Books lists Devil on the Run, about cancer and Tasmanian devils, as forthcoming in 2027.
Creditschronological, newest first
Books
- 2023The Heartbeat of the WildAuthor
- 2022BreathlessAuthor
- 2018The Tangled TreeAuthor
- 2012SpilloverAuthor
- 1996The Song of the DodoAuthor
Magazine writing
- 2026Song of Our CellsEssayist and book reviewer, The New York Review of Books
- 2025Remembering Jane GoodallWriter, National Geographic
- 1981–1996Natural ActsColumnist, Outside
Awards
- National Book Award finalist2022 · Nonfiction, for Breathless.
- National Book Award longlist2018 · Nonfiction, for The Tangled Tree.
- National Magazine AwardsThree-time recipient; his National Geographic essay “Was Darwin Wrong?” received an award in 2005.
- John Burroughs MedalFor The Song of the Dodo, his book about island biogeography and extinction.
- PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award for the Art of the EssayFor The Boilerplate Rhino, his 2000 collection of Outside columns.
Quotes
Hope is a duty, an act of the will.David Quammen, Il Bo Live
In an interview published in October 2025, he reflected on Jane Goodall’s example and the need to keep working on environmental problems.
Trivia
- He began as a novelist before turning to science and nature nonfiction.
- He walked for eight weeks with J. Michael Fay while reporting on the Megatransect through Central African forests.
- For Breathless, he conducted extended Zoom interviews with ninety-five scientists and public-health officials.
- The title Breathless emerged while he and his wife, author Betsy Gaines Quammen, were brainstorming alternatives in his office.
Find David
Follow his reporting, books, and conversations about the living world.
Are you David Quammen?
Fans built this page. Claim it to connect with them and unlock Star boosts, or request a takedown if you’d rather it not exist.