About
“Some writing is about the sea. David Gange’s writing is in the sea. He climbs through it, navigating fascinating stories that pop up like distant islands coming suddenly into view. Whales become living history, otters ribbons of water, geology and literature and especially poetry are drawn together by the intimate witness Gange bears to the ocean’s edge. [He] shows us that our shores are the beginning, not the ending, of things.”
Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan: or, the Whale.
David Gange is a writer, historian, & photographer based at the University of Birmingham, although he does much of his work on the open ocean in kayaks & other small rowed or paddled boats.
His writing combines sensory experience of the ocean with histories of communities who’ve built their lives on seafaring in small boats. The Frayed Atlantic Edge (Harper Collins, 2019), used a 2,000km journey by kayak to approach Shaetlan, Scots, Gaelic, Irish, Welsh, & Cornish cultures. This book was joint winner of the Highland Book Prize & shortlisted for prizes including The Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing. Afloat (Harper Collins, 2024) includes wider North-Atlantic geographies: Connemara & the Outer Hebrides, Saami Norway, Faroe, Greenland, Newfoundland & the Caribbean Sea.
He has written for publications including The Guardian, Big Issue, Scotsman, & Times Literary Supplement, as well as for leading presses & journals such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, University of Chicago Press, Past & Present, & The Historical Journal. He has particularly relished working with artists, photographers, musicians, & poets, from Norman Ackroyd to Jamelia, and these collaborations have been broadcast on BBC1, BBC2, Smithsonian TV, BBC Radio 3, & BBC Radio 4. Most of all, though, he loves being out at sea, among sealife, trying to understand the draw the ocean holds over humans past & present.