About Ethan

I’m a lucky guy.

I’m fortunate and privileged to have made writing, teaching, gaming, and adventuring the center of my life for the past 25 years. Among my many hats: I am an essayist, memoirist, critic, journalist, poet, teacher, performer, speaker and failed filmmaker and novelist.

Contact me:
ethan [at] ethangilsdorf [dot] com.

The story:

It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
—J.R.R. Tolkien

As a child, I had a dream to write for the Boston Globe and become the next J.R.R. Tolkien and Steven Spielberg. Being a famous filmmaker or fantasy novelist didn’t quite pan out. I did end of writing for the Globe. Forty-five years later, I’m still figuring out this whole writing thing.

I wrote the award-winning memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. I’ve published my short form work — personal essays, articles, reviews, cultural commentaries, profiles, opinion pieces, short stories, and poems— in the Globe (of course), but also the New York Times, Washington Post, Esquire, Wired, Salon, O the Oprah Magazine, National Geographic, Brevity, Electric Literature, Poetry, Poets & Writers, The Southern Review, North American Review, The Massachusetts Review, among other publications. I’ve been a book, film and food critic for the Globe (where I was also the bicycling culture writer), New York Times, Art New England, National Public Radio/WBUR's TheARTery, Pariscope and Time Out, and a travel guide writer for Fodor’s.

Along the way, I’ve picked up a few laurels. Twice my work has been named "Notable" by The Best American Essays. I was awarded the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Competition and the Esme Bradberry Contemporary Poets Prize; writer's residencies from the Millay Colony for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and Writing Downtown (Las Vegas); and grants from the Somerville Arts Council and Vermont Arts Council. My poems and essays have been selected for textbooks and anthologies.

These days, I teach creative writing at GrubStreet in Boston, where I co-founded GrubStreet's Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP) and now lead the 10-month long intensive Essay Incubator program and offer workshops on essay, creative nonfiction and memoir. I have also taught writing at LitArtsRI, Louisiana State University, Emerson College, Media Bistro and Marlboro College. I also lead writing workshops for non-profit social justice organizations, and I teach kids and adults how to play Dungeons & Dragons.

Way back when, I did study filmmaking (see above) and creative writing at Hampshire College, and received an MFA in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University. I’ve had my hands in editing a couple literary magazines, Frank and New Delta Review. My last “real jobs” were working for a bookstore and then a small college at the turn of the millennium (a change of pace from being a dump truck driver, a movie projectionist, a landscaper, a landfill manager and a grad student).

A regular presenter, performer, and event moderator, I’ve appeared on NPR, The Discovery Channel, PBS, CBC, BBC, Mortified, and the TED stage and podcast. I have given talks and readings at Harvard, MIT, USC, Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival, La Sorbonne, the New York Public Library, and have given hundreds of readings elsewhere throughout the North America, Europe, and Middle-earth. (I even made an appearance in the French documentary Revenge of the Geeks.)

In pursuit of my stories, I’ve acted as a Hollywood extra, walked across Scotland, quested for the perfect French fry, traced Thoreau's route across Maine, couch-surfed in Iceland, spent a day as a pilgrim at Plimoth Plantation, and worn a tunic for two weeks while camping with 12,000 medieval re-enactors.

A perk of being a (mostly former recovering) journalist is that I’ve interviewed some of my heroes: Sir Ben Kingsley, John Cleese, Cheryl Strayed, Junot Diaz, Stan Lee, Amy Poehler, Viggo Mortensen, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, William Shatner, Sister Helen Prejean, Guillermo del Toro, George Romero, Jon Favreau, Steve Carell, Wil Wheaton, Nick Hornby, Andy Serkis, and Seth Rogen, among others.