Writer. Mariner. Coffee drinker. Leaver-of-town.


Uncharted

New Audiobook published: June ‘23!

2019 Nautilus Book Award Winner

Finalist Nancy Pearl Book Award

Silver North American Travel Journalists Award

“A beautifully transporting journey.”
—Paul Nicklen, National Geographic

“Exquisitely written.” — Forbes

Wall Street Journal names UNCHARTED one of the Best Books of 2019

September 17, 2019 — A couple facing the dreaded empty nest realize they need to rediscover who they are. This is an adventure story about a voyage from one life chapter to another that involves a sailboat, a narrow and unknown sea, and an appetite to witness a mythical blonde bear that inhabits a remote rainforest.

Kim Brown Seely and her husband had been damn good parents for more than 20 years. That was coming to an end as their youngest son was about to move across the country. The economy was in freefall and their jobs stagnant, so they impulsively decided to buy a big broken sailboat, learn how to sail it, and head up through the Salish Sea and the Inside Passage to an expanse of untamed wilderness in search of the elusive blonde Kermode bear that only lives in a secluded Northwest forest. Theirs was a voyage of discovery into who they were as individuals and as a couple at an axial moment in their lives. Wise and lyrical, this heartfelt memoir unfolds amid the stunningly wild archipelago on the far edge of the continent.


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Greetings – I’m an author, a contributing writer for Virtuoso magazine, a sailor, an empty nester, a dog-owner, and a road-tripper. The SATW Foundation named me a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year in 2016. I’ve written about far-flung places for National Geographic Adventure, Travel & Leisure, Town & Country, Outside, Coastal Living, and Sunset.

Before moving to the Northwest I spent a decade as a senior editor at Travel & Leisure. I was one of the founding editors at Microsoft’s online adventure magazine, Mungo Park, as well as travel books editor at Amazon.

My first book, UNCHARTED, an adventure memoir about a voyage from one life chapter to another, called both “a Wild for the empty-nest set” and “the Moby-Dick of empty nesting,” was published by Sasquatch/Penguin Random House in 2019.

When not traveling I divide my time between downtown Seattle and Sun Valley, Idaho.