Selected Bylines

Working at the Morbid Anatomy copy.JPG

Working at Morbid Anatomy’s Proteus Gowanus space in 2013

Northwest Know-How: Haunts // Sasquatch Books

The Extraordinary Body of Evatima Tardo // Wellcome Collection

The Nondescript (fiction) // The Ghastling

Possessed (essay/fiction) // The Happy Reader

Gray // Wildsam Field Guides, Seattle edition

Uncertainty Bootcamp  // Seattle Met Magazine

The Pioneering Health Officer Who Saved Portland From the Plague // Smithsonian Magazine

What Should You Wear to Your Funeral? Future of Death // Considerable

Death Is Forever. Cemeteries, as They Currently Exist, Might Not Be Future of Death // Considerable

Mary Shelley’s Obsession With the Cemetery JSTOR Daily

How Jeremy Bentham Finally Came to America, Nearly 200 Years After His Death Mental Floss

“Lives on Show, Bodies Behind Glass: Julia Pastrana’s Parallels in Museum Collections” in The Eye of the Beholder: Julia Pastrana’s Long Journey Home

A Brief History of American Anatomy Riots The National Museum of Civil War Medicine

A Brief History of Medical Cannibalism Lapham’s Quarterly Roundtable

What Do the Scary Clowns Want? The New York Times

The Legend (and Truth) of the Voodoo Priestess Who Haunts a Louisiana Swamp Mental Floss

9 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets of Haunted Houses Mental Floss

How New Yorkers Became Convinced That Dinosaur Bones Were Buried in Central Park Atlas Obscura

The Woman Who Held Hitler’s Teeth Broadly/Vice

“Death Doulas” Are Helping Americans Savor the Last Days of Their Lives Quartz

The World’s Strangest Radio Broadcasts Mental Floss

The Eccentric British Headmaster Who Never Existed Mental Floss

Islands of the Undesirables series: Roosevelt Island, Randall’s and Wards Islands, Hart Island Atlas Obscura

The Time a Salvador Dali Painting Was Stolen From Rikers Island Mental Floss

The Secret History of the Pencil Mental Floss

Einstein’s Brain Heist: Why Are We So Obsessed with Famous Dead Bodies? Slate

The 20 Best Small Towns to Visit in 2015 Smithsonian Magazine

No One Really Knows What a Shamrock Is Smithsonian Magazine

How SkyMall Captured a Moment of Technological and American History Smithsonian Magazine

The Wee Hours Lapham’s Quarterly Roundtable

The Photographer Who Ansel Adams Called the Anti-Christ Smithsonian Magazine

Julia Pastrana: A “Monster to the Whole World” The Public Domain Review

Why Beheading is “The Ultimate Tyranny” Boston Globe

The Doctor Who Starved Her Patients to Death  Smithsonian Magazine

The London Graveyard That’s Become a Memorial for the City’s Seedier Past Smithsonian Magazine

The Ten Crimes That Shook Seattle Seattle Met

Trap Streets: Copyrighting Cartography with Fictional Places Atlas Obscura

The Gory New York City Riot that Shaped American Medicine Smithsonian Magazine

Maude Paris Review Daily

Meet Grandison Harris, the Grave Robber Enslaved (and Then Employed) by the Georgia College of Medicine Smithsonian Magazine

The Graves of Forgotten New Yorkers The New York Times

How the Ouija Board Got Its Name Atlas Obscura

25 Objects that Changed Seattle Seattle Met

A Grave Matter: That Time We Exhumed Lee Harvey Oswald’s Body to See if He was a Soviet Assassin Slate

Body Snatchers of Old New York Lapham’s Quarterly Roundtable

Waiting for Houdini to Escape from Death Atlas Obscura

The Scattered Bones of Christopher Columbus Lapham’s Quarterly Roundtable

The Horrors of Premature Burial Atlas Obscura

Fond Farewells: A Reconsideration of The American Way of Death Lapham’s Quarterly

How Did Bits of Percy Shelley’s Skull End Up in the New York Public Library? Atlas Obscura

Cremation is On the Rise, But Where To Put the Ashes? Time Ideas

Why So Much Controversy over Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Corpse? The Guardian

Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Unwanted Body: Where Other Notorious Criminals Are Buried Time Ideas

Field Notes, The Double World: One Man’s Search for Meaning in the Seattle Public Library The Appendix

The Madam Who Turned to Stone The Stranger

The Rise in Exhumations The New York Times

The Dead Have Something to Tell You The New York Times

The Arctic Club’s Most Famous Tenant Seattle Met 

Where Are They Now: Dictators Edition (PDF) Boston Globe Ideas, November 2011

A Measure of Mystery: Where Our Words for Mass, Weight, and Distance Come From (PDF) Boston Globe Word column, October 2011

A Deck Of Cards And A Golden Whistle: Grave Goods Of The Stars (PDF) The Believer, March 2011

Experimenting with Drugs Cover feature on Vancouver’s safe-injection site (Winner of a Society of Professional Journalists Excellence Award), The Stranger, June 2003

Invisible Literature: Wayde Compton Discovers the Unmapped Territory of Black British Columbia The Stranger, May 2002

Research and writing:

2005-2010: Five editions of Schott’s Almanac

Research:

iHeart Radio podcasts

Scott Rudin productions

Schott’s Vocab (NYT.com blog)

Toponymity: An Atlas of Words by John Bemelmans Marciano

Anonyponymous: The Forgotten People Behind Everyday Words by John Bemelmans Marciano

Whatever Happened to the Metric System?: How America Kept Its Feet by John Bemelmans Marciano