Hi! I’m Étienne.
(Pronounced, roughly: ay-TYEN. The acute accent is optional, unless you’re fluent in French.)
(Picture taken in October 2020 in Montreal’s parc du Mont Royal. Now I have a beard.)
I’m a generalist who writes and codes from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. My interests are diverse: writing, science, philosophy, progress, communities, history, and many others.
Projects:
- Every Wednesday, I publish a post on a blog called Atlas of Wonders and Monsters on topics like philosophy, history, science, or other diverse interests. It’s the easiest way to subscribe to my writing.
- The Journal of Accessible and Well-Written Science (JAWWS) is a project to research and exemplify better writing norms in academic science. You can subscribe to the monthly newsletter.
- The Classical Futurist is an online magazine I cofounded with two friends to write about the future from the lens of antiquity.
- I’m involved in Cabin, a community that creates physical spaces for online creators.
- I offer writing coaching, including for science writing, on a pay-what-you-want basis.
- My Twitter account is getting reasonably large; my main goal on there has always been meeting cool people, and that has succeeded beyond my expectations. My main claim to fame there is a viral thread on the miracle of cakes.
Previously:
- I studied evolutionary biology in Sweden, in France, and at Harvard, and biology and computer science at McGill University in Montreal.
- I was part of the first On Deck Writer Fellowship.
- I worked part-time in the Interintellect team, helping people host intellectual discussion salons. (I still host occasionally.)
- I wrote a blog in French, on hiatus at the moment.
- I wrote a blog in English called Dark Gray Matters, which got more or less replaced by my other blog.
- I’ve written some fiction, including several novels that are as of yet unpublished, and a few published short stories in French (one of which has been adapted into a short film).
For more, see my résumé on GitHub.
Contact me on Twitter or by email. I’d love to make new internet friends, so don’t be shy! And if for some reason you feel like supporting any of my work, you can use this: