about sam

Bio

Sam Martin is the award winning and best selling author of seven books of non-fiction, dozens of magazine articles and a television documentary. He was a senior editor at This Old House and Mother Earth News magazines after breaking into the profession as a contributing writer at the Austin Chronicle. Sam is an expert on men's issues, green building, residential architecture, parenting, travel and spiritual pursuits. His writing has appeared in numerous respected publications such as Dwell, Metropolis, and Natural Home. He is a member of the Author's Guild and the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Manspace: A Primal Guide to Marking Your Territory is Sam’s fifth book and first for the Taunton Press. After surviving the writing of his first book at a desk in the living room of his house while his two year old son played in the background he decided enough was enough. Working weekends and vacations for five months he built a backyard manspace – 168 square feet of freedom where he called the shots and controlled the guest list. It didn’t take his friends long to lament their own lack of personal space or for others to tell stories of private workshops, bars, sheds, and pool rooms they’d seen over the years. That all added up to one great book idea.

Sam has appeared on Good Morning America, the Weekend Today Show, Fox & Friends, and has been a guest on dozens of national and international radio programs including NPR, BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He was profiled for a cover story in the London Times magazine and was the subject of a feature article in the San Diego Reader. Sam’s advice and quotes have appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today, and many other newspapers and magazines around the world.

Before pursuing a writing career, Sam spent seven years traveling the world. He taught English to Buddhist monks in Thailand, waited tables in Sydney, scuba dived in Honduras, snorkeled with sea turtles in The Philippines, trekked in Nepal and sold T-shirts in London. His last stop was Canada where he worked as a tree planter and filled the Ontario and British Columbian forests with nearly 80,000 trees.

Sam is currently working on a biography of the sustainable design pioneer Pliny Fisk III and ghostwriting a book with renown designer Hartmut Esslinger. When not working in his Austin, Texas-based manspace, Sam spends time with his two sons Ford and Wren.