Lawrence Winkler is a renaissance man. After a double major in aerospace engineering and biology at M.I.T., his work as the life support systems consultant for a NASA study decided the habitat configuration for a space colony of 10,000 people. Winkler went on to medical school and then embarked on a hitchhiking odyssey around the world, an adventure he later documented in Orion’s Cartwheel. As an Internal Medicine specialist, Winkler spent the next thirty years as a Professor of Medicine. He built a lakefront homestead, planted gardens and a vineyard, and wrote of his passion for its native wildlife in Westwood Lake Chronicles. A fascination for natural philosophy evolved into his blog, Find Refuge.
But it was Winkler’s continuing enthusiasm for travel that got him writing, about his expeditions, and the male journey in general. Several authors influenced his vision and style—Hemingway, Conrad, Melville, Cervantes, Kafka, Twain, Thoreau, and Kipling.
His other passions include playing music, fishing, Japanese and Pacific art, and swimming across his lake in the heat of summer. He and Robyn live half the year on Vancouver Island, nearly half at their shack on New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula (the setting for his first historical novel, The Bolthole), and the rest traveling the planet in between.
Imbued with a lifetime acquisition of knowledge and experience, Winkler writes with humour and insight in a range of genres— narrative non-fiction, travelogue, science fiction, and adventure short stories. Explore his world, one book at a time.
