About Raven Editions

Daniel Mathews

Raven Editions is the imprint of author Daniel Mathews. He intends to go down in history as the author who showed that field guides can be at least as well-written as other science-related nonfiction. He has a degree in literature, from Reed College, but is largely self-taught in the sciences. Judging by critical response, it might be a good thing if more field guide authors were English majors.

Between Reed and Raven, Mathews had careers in performance art and in culinary arts. His day jobs for seventeen years were in a French restaurant, working his way up from dishwasher through waiter to executive chef. After publishing his first Natural History, he:

taught natural history while backpacking, for the North Cascades Institute.
contributed the Plant sections, and a few small chapters, to the National Audubon Society Field Guides to the Pacific Northwest and the Rocky Mountain States.
sold his book-length manuscript on sea otters, which remains unpublished.
wrote interpretive signs for nature parks.
volunteered twice as fire lookout at Desolation Peak in the North Cascades, the lookout that Jack Kerouac wrote about. (He’s an admirer not so much of Kerouac as of Gary Snyder, who manned Crater Mtn. and Sourdough Lookouts — both within view of Desolation.)
married, and continues to raise two children.
is now at work on A Field Guide to Air Travel over the Continental United States.

Raven Editions, located in Portland, Oregon, currently has two titles in print. They are distributed in the U.S. exclusively by Mountain Press Publishing of Missoula, Montana, and in Canada (one title only) by Altitude Publishing of Canmore, Alberta.