emily hoff

Together with the amazingly talented team at Ten Speed Press, maygen keller and i cooked up a guidebook to the national parks like no other! Available for sale now wherever books are sold! It's a highly illustrated, offbeat guide to the wildlife, geology, and botany of sixty (!) national parks. We'll show you how to look for aliens in Yellowstone, spike-covered clones in Joshua Tree, strange sea creatures in the Grand Canyon--and so much more.

Researcher & Writer

American Museum of Natural History

The AMNH houses millions upon millions of artifacts and specimens— everything from Vladimir Nabokov’s butterfly collection to Mayan bricks to dinosaur fossils. It’s my job to work with graphic designers, media developers, and other writers to produce a coherent, exciting, and thought-provoking exhibit of what the museum owns and why. Here’s to three floors of thought-provoking fun!

CO-HOST

One million years ago (during undergrad) maygen keller and I loved to drink like the 21 year olds we were and watch Planet Earth like the nerds we still are. In 2017 and 2018, we turned that ridiculousness into a live show, complete with drinking game rules (“Drink every time David says the name of an animal…”) and hilarious games. The only venue for us was Caveat on the Lower East Side. What a crazy bunch. We brought the show back for two epic nights in June of 2021 to celebrate Caveats re-opening and the fact that we’re all still here! <3

photo credit: Arin Sang-Urai

maygen keller and I are at it again! This time we’ve teamed up with the wildly talented crew at Clarkson Potter to create a spiffy looking, fun to play trivia card game. Strap in for 390 questions about the wildlife, geology, history, and culture of the national parks. Also included are five 10-second challenge card to get your creativity flowing and your friends arguing passionately about which park rules them all. On sale February 21, 2023!

Kennedy Space Center for PGAV Destinations

Exhibit writer, image researcher and licenser

Ok, I didn’t get to go to space. But as the writer and image researcher for the $100 million, 70,000 square foot museum that was built to celebrate the incredible achievements of Space Shuttle Atlantis, I think I got as close as I ever will. Technically, I worked on her final mission and I bought this patch in the gift shop to prove it.

Team Science at AMNH for Museum Hack

Renegade Tour Guide

What’s better than two hours of high-energy, snark-filled museum gossip? Literally nothing. As a tour guide for Museum Hack, I bounce around AMNH and tell outrageous (and totally true) stories about daring expeditions, creatures that weigh as much as the entire NFL, and the essential qualities of dinosaurs. We see the highlights as well as the un-highlights, all while playing games designed to get people to really look and think about the museum displays. Why, you ask? Because museums (especially AMNH) are fucking awesome, and I want to the whole world to know it!

SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT

I appeared as a science and history subject matter expert on 11 episodes of the long running series, Mysteries at the Museum on the Travel Channel. I got to hold forth about everything from duct tape on the moon to an the epic road trip of a future president.

Local Projects for the American Museum of Natural History

Content Developer, Script Writer, Researcher

Have you ever wanted to tour the fossil halls at AMNH as if you’re a dinosaur? How about wandering the Hall of North American Mammals looking for ways to uncover your secret identity as a bear? Of course you have! Now you can, thanks to the augmented reality experience that I scripted for the reboot of AMNH’s Explorer app. I also helped create and organize the content for objects in the app.

This photo is me touching the fossil imprint of dinosaur skin. You can’t write from the perspective of a dinosaur without a bit of cosmic communing, you know?

Photo credit: Edward Blake

SENIOR LEADER

Guided passengers from all over the world to some of the best known places in the US— from national parks to New Orleans, I covered it all! For four to twelve days I drove my passengers to all the best places and activities in a swanky 15 passenger van with a trailer. From the mountain tops to the mesa tops to the city sidewalks, I took ‘em everywhere and shoved all my favorite facts about rocks, plants, animals, and this wild country into their beautiful little heads.

TOUR GUIDE

Guided folks to some of the best food, most historic sights, best instagram shots, and out-of-the-way gems that nyc has to offer! From a walking tour of Central Park to a food tour of Chinatown and a historical romp through the Financial District, I helped tourists and dyed-in-the-wool new yorkers glimpse a few more of the infinite worlds the city has to offer.

AmeriCorps: EcoRangers

After the craziness of 2020 Brooklyn, I ran off to southern New Mexico to build trails on public land with an AmeriCorps program known as EcoRangers. As a ranger, I battled scrub oak, smashed rocks, and got absolutely covered in dirt, dust, and god-knows-what-else in the name of building fun, beautiful, and ecologically sustainable trails for this community. My crew also shoveled snow, picked up garbage, staffed marathons, and built a dog run for the local Humane Society. It’s been busy! Also my biceps are enormous. Arm wrestling, any one?

American Museum of Natural History

Interpretive Editor

These two special exhibits taught New Yorkers important lessons. Such as: pterosaurs are not dinosaurs, and you should avoid venomous sea snails generally, but we might be able to make some medicine out them. Now, they’re off to tour the world (the exhibits, not the sea snails). In preparation for the copy to be made into panels with multiple languages, I edited, condensed, and rewrote the exhibit text.

American Museum of Natural History

Writer and Assistant Producer

The oldest hall at AMNH--the Hall of the Northwest Coast Indians--is in need of some updates! The project is now in full swing, and I helped create the prototypes that brought it there. Working with a team, I researched, developed, and wrote content for a digital touch screen kiosk and mobile app tour. I also served as an assistant producer for video interviews with scholars and Native artists (one of whom drew this postcard for me!).

Discovery Park of America for Thinc Design

Exhibit Writer, Image Researcher and Licenser, Content Developer

There’s an awful lot you can squeeze into 52,000 square feet. The fine folks at the Discovery Park of America set up some exhibits about everything from from dinosaurs, to military history, to Native peoples, to energy and electricity. I wrote the label copy and oversaw the image research for just about every inch of it. If I’m being honest, I loved nothing more than getting to write about Pluto in the morning and the physics of bridge building in the afternoon.

I’m not sure I could be any more obsessed with being a volunTREEr for the nyc tree census. Yup, it's just like the people census, but with trees! If there’s anything better than taking measurements and recording data about every single street tree in nyc, I don’t know what it is. Also, peep that sweet safety vest.

Photo credit: tree-lover Corey Leamon

John F. Kennedy Hyannis Museum for Westerman Designs

Exhibit writer

Decided to dust off the ol’ MA in History to write and image research the text for this special exhibit, part of the redesign of the JFKHM. Several biographies, days of archival photo research, and a few thousand words later, people are reading every word in the exhibit and I can’t wait to dive back in and learn more about the Kennedys for the next special exhibit.

Cover photo credit: JFK Library and Museum