Colin Woodard

His third book, The New York Times bestseller The Republic of Pirates, was the basis of the 2014 NBC drama Crossbones, written by Neil Cross and starring John Malkovich. Woodard was also a historical consultant for Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, which was also set in the time period covered in Republic of Pirates.

He was a long-time foreign correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and has reported from more than fifty foreign countries and seven continents, from postings in Budapest, Hungary; Zagreb, Croatia; Washington, D.C.; and the US–Mexico border. His work has appeared in dozens of publications including The Economist, Smithsonian, The Washington Post, Newsweek/The Daily Beast, Bloomberg View, The Guardian, Washington Monthly, and Down East, where he was a contributing editor. He is currently a contributing editor at Politico.

He is State & National Affairs Writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram. He received a 2012 George Polk Award for an investigative project he did for those papers and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for a series on climate change and the Gulf of Maine. He received a 2004 Jane Bagley Lehman Award for Public Advocacy (for his global environmental reporting), the 2012 Maine Literary Award for Non-Fiction (for American Nations), the 2016 Maine Literary Award for Non-Fiction (for American Character) and a Pew Fellowship in International Journalism at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Woodard was also a finalist for the 2016 Chautauqua Prize (for American Character) and for a Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism in both 2013 and 2014. In 2014, The Washington Post named him one of the "Best State Capitol Reporters in America" and the Maine Press Association chose him as Journalist of the Year.

Woodard's first book, Ocean's End: Travels Through Endangered Seas, appeared in 2000. His most recent, American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good was published in the spring of 2016.

Woodard graduated from Tufts University with a B.A. and completed his M.A. in international relations at the University of Chicago. In 1999 he was a Pew Fellow in International Journalism at the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies. He currently lives in Portland, Maine.

Colin Woodard (born December 3, 1968) is an American journalist and writer, known for his books American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (2011), The Republic of Pirates (2007), and The Lobster Coast (2004), a cultural and environmental history of coastal Maine.