Amanda Witherell is a writer living and traveling aboard a 41′ sailboat, Clara Katherine, currently docked in Wellington, New Zealand. She previously worked as a staff reporter for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, one of the oldest alternative newsweeklies in the country, where she covered energy, homelessness, free speech, and environmental issues. She has also written for Bookslut.com, the COA Alumni magazine, GOOD, Salt, The Squash, and Utne Reader. Her work for the Guardian has been reprinted in numerous altweeklies around the country, as well as the journal Race, Poverty & the Environment.
Amanda was born and raised in New Hampshire and graduated from College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Human Ecology. During her time at COA she interned at the Sun magazine in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In 2005, she attended the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies where she focused on long-form journalism and collaborated with black-and-white photographer Mike Teuteberg on a project about Nat Wilson, a traditional sailmaker in East Boothbay, Maine. She began at the Guardian in January 2006, as a culture intern before becoming a full-time reporter.
