I’m a generalist, which means I have written about everything from shark research in the Chesapeake Bay to traveling in far-flung Caribbean islands, from profiles of watermen, businessmen, and boatbuilders to stories about climate archives in whale ear wax.
For me, writing is a gateway to the rest of the world. I love immersing in a subject or a place and learning about something completely new. I ask a lot of questions. I pay attention to the details. I listen. Whether for a magazine story or a poem, the MO is the same.
Photo by Tamzin B. Smith
My professional journalism career began in daily newspapers, then came my real education during nearly four years with The Associated Press in Northern New England. The lessons in journalism, interviewing, and writing I learned there eventually took me into magazines, where I have worked in various forms—writer, editor, freelancer—ever since. Always connected to the natural world, in 2016 I began focusing on science writing, and since February 2020 have been a science writer and editor with Maryland Sea Grant College. I’m also senior editor of Good Old Boat magazine. And, I continue to write and publish poetry.
In 2008, my husband, young son and daughter, and I sold most of what we owned, moved onto our 45-foot sailboat Osprey, and went sailing fulltime throughout the western Caribbean, Central America, the Bahamas, and the Atlantic coast from Florida to the Canadian Maritimes. During this time, I wrote a monthly column for Cruising World magazine about our travels.
I’ve attended the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference twice studying fiction, the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, and Maine Media Workshops to learn storytelling through videography.
“During my years as a commissioning editor at Smithsonian Magazine, one of the finest writers I recruited for our pages was Wendy Mitman Clarke. She is a reporting and writing powerhouse.
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“Wendy Mitman Clarke has a profound and instinctive sense of story. She finds it amid the clutter of reality and captures it to illuminate life for the rest of us.
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“Wendy is an excellent writer who can capture the moment in words that really resonate with her audience. She is a true pro and excellent collaborator.”