Ross Anderson is a free-lance journalist and blogger who focuses on the maritime environment, culture, history and politics of the Pacific Northwest. He has written professionally for the Seattle Times, the Los Angeles Times, Seattle Metropolitan magazine, US News and World Report, American Journalism Review, Washington Law and Politics, Pacific Yachting and the weekly Port Townsend Leader, for which he does a now-and-then column: “On the Waterfront.”

Raised in San Francisco and California’s Central Valley, Ross studied at Whitworth College, the University of Edinburgh (UK) and Stanford University. Over 30 years at the Seattle Times, he covered everything from the police beat and courts to commercial fishing. But most of his time was spent writing about politics, serving as chief political writer, congressional correspondent and political columnist.

Ross has won many awards, including the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, which he shared with three Times colleagues for coverage of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. He was also nominated for Pulitzers for his writing about the ecology and politics of Puget Sound recovery and about his centennial journey to the Klondike goldfields. He is also a former journalism fellow at Stanford University. More recently, his waterfront column won the 2007 first-place award from the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association.

Ross escaped from newspapers in 2001, and built a home overlooking Discovery Bay near Port Townsend, the 19th century seaport perched on a peninsula at the entrance to Puget Sound. He and his wife, Mary Rothschild, continue to do freelance work in the Puget Sound area. When not writing, he putters around Northwest waters in his restored, 1941 Monk cruiser, moored at Cape George.

Raised on Whidbey Island, Mary worked 30 years as a writer and editor at the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Since making her escape in 2005, she has become certified as a master gardener while pursuing her botanical vision in the Olympic rain shadow surrounding Port Townsend. She continues to do freelance work for the Times and the Leader, focusing on gardening and environmental issues.