Skip to main content

Isaac Fitzgerald

Biography

Isaac Fitzgerald

Isaac Fitzgerald is the New York Times bestselling author of DIRTBAG, MASSACHUSETTS (winner of the New England Book Award) and AMERICAN RAMBLER. He is also the author of the bestselling children’s book HOW TO BE A PIRATE, as well as the co-author of PEN & INK: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and KNIVES & INK: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (winner of an IACP Award). He appears frequently on the Today show, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, The Guardian, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and numerous other publications. He lives with his wife and their two dogs on the North Fork of Long Island.

Isaac Fitzgerald

Books by Isaac Fitzgerald

American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed
by Isaac Fitzgerald - History, Memoir, Nonfiction, Travel

As a child, Isaac Fitzgerald was captivated by Johnny Appleseed, drawn to the legend by family ties, his father’s larger-than-life stories, and a shared restlessness to leave home and discover what lay beyond. In AMERICAN RAMBLER, he sets out on a year-long journey to follow Appleseed’s path, walking (okay, sometimes driving...and, at one point, even floating downstream) from Massachusetts to Indiana. On this journey, Fitzgerald turns a childhood fascination into a profound reckoning of loss and grief, ritual and faith, grimy gas station bathrooms and scenic apple picking. He is followed by a mysterious creature, camps in hostile environments, trespasses more than once, and is warmed by the generosity of strangers at every turn.

Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional
by Isaac Fitzgerald - Essays, Memoir, Nonfiction

Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents' lives --- or so he was told. In DIRTBAG, MASSACHUSETTS, Fitzgerald recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self. Fitzgerald's memoir-in-essays begins with a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, recounting an extraordinary pilgrimage through trauma to self-understanding and, ultimately, acceptance.