page_title: Ethan Gilsdorf
section_title: Journalism, reviews and essays
hierarchical_section_title: Ethan Gilsdorf / Career / Journalism, reviews and essays
caption_attribution_description: English: Ethan Gilsdorf with d20, Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, and D&amp;D gaming materials.
context_page_description: Ethan Gilsdorf is an American writer, poet, performer, editor, critic, teacher and journalist.
  Gilsdorf is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. Gilsdorf began his writing career in the 1990s as a poet. He began writing nonfiction in 2000 as a Paris-based freelance journalist. He now writes about arts, culture, media and technology, and reviews books and films, for such publications as The New York Times, Boston Globe, Wired, and Salon. He also works as a writing instructor and consultant.
context_section_description: During a five-year stay in Paris from 1999 to 2004, Gilsdorf got his start in journalism as a freelance travel, hotel, food and film writer for Fodor's travel guides and Time Out.
  In Paris, and later in Boston, he went on to publish features stories, essays, op-ed and reviews on travel, arts, technology, the media and pop culture regularly in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Salon, Boston Magazine, and Wired. He has published hundreds of articles and op-eds in dozens of other magazines, newspapers, websites and guidebooks worldwide, including Esquire, CNN, io9.com, Playboy, National Geographic Traveler, Psychology Today, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times. He is a contributor to the blogs "GeekDad" (formerly at Wired.com), "Geek Pride" on PsychologyToday.com, and Boston NPR affiliate WBUR's Cognoscenti and TheARTery.
  He specializes in immersive, participatory journalism, wherein he tries out things and reports back on them: being a pilgrim at Plimoth Plantation; re-enacting the world of Stranger Things and the 1980s; or mountain biking in the French Pyrenees.
  His book reviews appear frequently in The New York Times Book Review and The Boston Globe, and he is the film columnist for Art New England.
  Gilsdorf has contributed to several books, including the writing craft books Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing About Grief and Loss; Create Your Writer Platform: The Key to Building an Audience, Selling More Books, and Finding Success as an Author; and the textbook Reading Culture: Contexts for Critical Reading and Writing (8th edition). He has also contributed to Fodor's Paris; Fodor's France; and Time Out Paris Eating and Drinking.
caption: Ethan Gilsdorf with giant d20, his book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, and his D&D gaming materials, taken in 2014.
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