Ethan Gilsdorf
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the travel memoir / pop culture investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.
After playing Dungeons & Dragons religiously in the 1970s and 1980s, Ethan Gilsdorf went on to become a poet, teacher, critic and journalist. In the U.S. and in Paris, he’s worked as a freelance correspondent, guidebook writer, and film, book and restaurant reviewer. Now based in Somerville, Massachusetts, he publishes travel, arts, and pop culture stories regularly in the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Christian Science Monitor, and has been published in dozen of other magazines and newspapers worldwide, including National Geographic Traveler, Psychology Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Australia Financial Review, USA Today and the Washington Post. He is a book and film critic for the Boston Globe, his blog "Geek Pride" is seen regularly on PsychologyToday.com, and he also blogs for Boston.com's Globetrotting, Tor.com and TheOneRing.net. Gilsdorf has also been a guest as a fantasy and escapism expert on radio programs such as Air America's Inside Story and NPR's "Around And About."
Follow Ethan’s adventures at http://www.ethangilsdorf.com.
“Real life this fdar had taught me that in the adult world, fate was chaotic and uncertain. Guidelines for success were arbitrary. But in the world of D&D, at least there was a rule book... By role-playing, we were in control, and our characters... wandered through places of danger, their destinies, ostensibly, within our grasp.”
“Who needs sports stardom when you can shoot fireballs from your fingertips?”