About the Author
Michael Sean Comerford is an award-winning, former international journalist working on a book after riding the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts asking ordinary people their views and experiences of climate change.
The “slow journalism” climate project is tentatively called The Story Cycle: America’s Coasts in Climate Crisis – it has three YouTube channels and is being archived by the University of Florida’s Samuel Proctor Oral History Program. It’s also the subject of numerous social media posts.
Comerford has bicycled cross country six times and hitchhiked across America, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. He rode freight trains and rounded up cattle out West, studied Buddhism in the Himalayas, and won a heavyweight boxing championship in Ireland.
He toured almost 100 countries, swam the headwaters of the Nile, fought off a hippo attack, and toured ecological disaster areas in the Amazon.
He worked with newspapers both here and abroad, including the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Daily Herald, Budapest Sun, Budapest Business Journal, and the Moscow Times.
He holds a M.S.J. from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism; a B.A. from Marquette University; junior year at University College Cork, Ireland; a business journalism fellowship at the University of Maryland, College Park; and a Backpack Video Storyteller certification from the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
He published a slow journalism book in October, 2022 – Beast of Main Street – about bicycling Route 66 during a pandemic surge and asking ordinary people about their experiences.
His runaway bestselling book American OZ is popular in eBook, print and audiobook formats.
The University of Florida’s Samuel Proctor Oral History Program is archiving both The Beast of Main Street videos and The Story Cycle climate videos.
Currently, Comerford lives on Marco Island, Florida to be close to his parents while he writes his new climate book. His teenage daughter, Grace Comerford, is a freshman and a Regents and Chancellor’s scholar in California. She’s the author of four books including a climate change book for kids Perry & Friends and a recent release of How to Change the World: 101 Ways to Make an Impact as a Teen.
Comerford encourages readers to review his books and he can be reached for comments at comerfordmichael@gmail.com.
