David Quammen
Born	(1948-02-24)February 24, 1948 (age 77) Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.
Alma mater	Yale University (BA) University of Oxford (BLitt)[1]
Genre	Non-fiction
Spouse	Betsy Gaines Quammen
Website
davidquammen.com

David Quammen (born February 24, 1948) is an American writer focusing onscience,nature, andtravel. He is the author of fifteen books. Quammen's articles have appeared inOutside,National Geographic,Harper's Magazine,Rolling Stone,The New York Times Book Review,The New Yorker, and other periodicals. He is also a science communicator.^[2]

A collection of Quammen's drafts, research, and correspondence is housed inTexas Tech University's Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library. The collection consists of approximately 63 boxes of publicly available literary production, artifacts, maps, and other papers dated from 1856–2014.^[3]

David Quammen was born on February 24, 1948, to W.A. and Mary Quammen.^[4] He was raised in the suburbs ofCincinnati, Ohio, and graduated fromSt. Xavier High School in 1966. He attended and graduated from Yale University. In 1970 he was awarded aRhodes Scholarship, enabling him to study atUniversity of Oxford.

During his graduate work atOxford, he studied literature, concentrating on the works of American writerWilliam Faulkner. After completing his education and publishing his first novel, he relocated to Bozeman, Montana. He has continued to live there with his wife, Betsy (Gaines) Quammen,^[5] a conservation activist.^[4]

In the early 1970s, Quammen moved to Montana fortrout fishing. In 1983, he finishedThe Soul of Viktor Tronko, a spy novel based on Russian historical events. A year later, the story collectionBlood Line: Stories of Fathers and Sons was published. Following the commercial failure of his fictional works, Quammen began transitioning into a nonfiction writer.^[6]

In 1981, Quammen began writing columns forOutside 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), andThe Boilerplate Rhino (2000).^[6]

Later in 1999, Quammen began to write a series of three stories followingJ. Michael Fay's 2000-mile hike through Central Africa forNational 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."^[6]

From 2007 to 2009, Quammen was employed as the Wallace Stegner Professor of Western American Studies atMontana State University. Quammen received honorary doctorates from Montana State University andColorado College. For his work, Quammen was awarded aGuggenheim Fellowship in 1988,^[7] and aLannan Literary Award for nonfiction in 1997.^[8][6]

His bookSpillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (2012) received two awards: the 2013Science in Society Book Award,^[9] given by theNational Association of Science Writers, and theRoyal Society of Biology (UK) Book Award in General Biology.^[10] In 2013,Spillover was shortlisted for thePEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.^[11]The Song of the Dodo (Scribner, 1996), a study of the bird's extinction won theJohn Burroughs Medal for nature writing.^[3]

External videos
In Depth interview with Quammen, June 4, 2023,C-SPAN
Presentation by Quammen onMonster of God, September 30, 2003,C-SPAN
Presentation by Quammen onSpillover, October 12, 2012,C-SPAN
Presentation by Quammen onThe Tangled Tree, September 11, 2018,C-SPAN
Presentation by Quammen onBreathless, October 25, 2022,C-SPAN
Presentation by Quammen onBreathless, February 18, 2023,C-SPAN

• Quammen, David.Natural Acts: a Sidelong View of Science and Nature. New York:Schocken Books, 1985.
• Quammen, David.The Flight of the Iguana: a Sidelong View of Science and Nature. New York:Delacorte Press, 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, 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, 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.ISBN 978-0-393-06680-7
• 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.

• Quammen, David. "Walking Out,'" short story, 1980.^[12]
• Quammen, David.The Zolta Configuration. New York:Doubleday Books, 1983.
• Quammen, David.To Walk the Line. New York:Pocket Books, 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.

• 1970Rhodes Scholarship^[13]
• 1987National Magazine Award^[14]
• 1988Guggenheim Fellowship^[15]
• 1994National Magazine Award^[14]
• 1996 Academy Award in Literature from theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters^[16]
• 1996Natural World Book Prize^[17]
• 1997Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism^[18]
• 1997Lannan Foundation Fellowship^[8]
• 1997John Burroughs Medal fornature writing^[19]
• 2000 Honorary doctorate fromMontana State University^[20]
• 2001PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award for the Art of the Essay forThe Boilerplate Rhino^[21]
• 2005National Magazine Award^[14]
• 2009 Honorary doctorate fromColorado College^[22]
• 2012The Stephen Jay Gould Prize from theSociety for the Study of Evolution^[23]
• 2013Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, finalist forSpillover^[24][25][26]
• 2013 Science in Society Book Award, for Spillover^[9]
• 2013 Royal Society of Biology (UK) Book Award in General Biology, for Spillover^[10]

• Edward Abbey

Wikiquote has quotations related toDavid Quammen.

• Appearances onC-SPAN
• Author papers at Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University
• Video: David Quammen discussingSpillover, September 2012
• NPR 'Fresh Air' interview New Coronavirus 'Won't Be The Last' Outbreak To Move From Animal To Human, Feb 5, 2020
• 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
• Books by David Quammen
• "Walking Out" (1980) - full text at the Short Story Project

• American nature writers
• American non-fiction environmental writers
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• 20th-century American novelists
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• National Geographic people
• 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
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