Major Works
- Off the Deep End: The Probably Insane Idea That I Could Swim My Way Through a Midlife Crisis — and Qualify for the Olympics (2008)
- Flushed: How The Plumber Saved Civilization (2007)
- Stolen Water: Saving the Everglades from Its Friends, Foes, and Florida (2004)
- A Viking Voyage : In Which an Unlikely Crew of Adventurers Attempts an Epic Journey to the New World (2000)
- An Illustrated Viking Voyage : Retracing Leif Eriksson’s Journey in an Authentic Viking Knarr (with Russell Kaye) (2000)
- Westward Whoa (1994)
Biography
Born in 1962 in Greenville, Mississippi, W. Hodding Carter, IV, attended Kenyon College in Ohio where he was an NCAA swimmer and studied English literature. He volunteered in the Peace Corps for two years in Kenya.
A member of the famous family of Hodding Carters in Mississippi who were journalists and newspaper men, he worked as a writer for Esquire Magazine and M Magazine.
Carter is the son of the well-known official who served in President Jimmy Carter’s administration and the grandson of a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (all with the same name).
His books are works of non-fiction. He and his wife lived in West Virginia where he was a white water raft guide, served on the New River Gorge City Council, and was its postmaster.
He now lives in Camden, Maine, where he writes non-fiction and teaches swimming.
Related Websites
- Article “How the Hot Tamale Conquered the American South” in Smithsonian Magazine (2014)
- Carter is Holding His Breath in the “Deep End” USA Today (2008)
- At 45, Hodding Carter hangs on to Olympic Dreams (2008)
- Book Review for Off the Deep End, The New York Times (2008)
- The Frugal Kitchen: W. Hodding Carter and Gourmet Magazine’s Extreme Frugality Series
- A Viking Voyage: An Interview with W. Hodding Carter