is the author of two novel-length manuscripts: Sanguma and Old Monroe. He grew up to hippy parents who moved the family from Long Island to a farm in West Virginia to “escape the rat race.” They had to assure the landowners they weren’t about to start a commune (or cult).

For two decades plus, ZHBW has been traveling the world, helping Indigenous and local communities protect some of the most important places on earth for biodiversity, the places these communities live in, and we all depend on. In 2005, he joined the Peace Corps and spent two years living in a little mud hut with a grass roof listening to hippos from bed. Bookended by long backpacking trips through southeast Asia he got a master’s degree in International Environmental Policy in California. That was followed by four years working with a local NGO in Papua New Guinea. He is still active on the Board of that organization. From there he spent ten years in Washington DC, having joined Conservation International where he currently leads a team specializing in community-based conservation. In 2023 he relocated to Arizona and joined the AZ Chapter of the Horror Writers Association.