Jessica DuLong

After a decade as a freelance journalist, JESSICA DULONG published her first book.

In MY RIVER CHRONICLES: Rediscovering America on the Hudson, DuLong ditches her dot-com life for the diesel engines of historic fireboat John J. Harvey and along the way discovers four centuries of cultural history on the Hudson. The more she spends time with the boat’s finely crafted machinery and learns about the river’s industrial history, the more she wonders what America is losing in our shift away from hands-on work.

DuLong, one of the world’s only female fireboat engineers, offers a porthole-view narrative of the river and its social tapestry as a microcosm of post-industrial America. The book was released by Simon and Schuster’s Free Press on September 8, 2009, in time for the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s historic voyage upriver.

A U.S. Coast Guard-licensed merchant marine engineer, DuLong runs the five 600-horsepower opposed-piston diesel engines of retired New York City fireboat John J. Harvey, the 1931 vessel now operating as a living museum, giving free public trips around New York Harbor and taking an annual whistle-stop tour up the Hudson River.

DuLong and the rest of the crew were recognized in the Congressional Record for valor in aiding FDNY’s rescue efforts in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and appear as characters in Maira Kalman’s award-winning children’s book FIREBOAT: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey and Ben Gibberd’s New York Waters: Profiles from the Edge. When she’s not on the fireboat, DuLong can sometimes be spotted at the helm of a grey, 65-foot former army tug.

Over the course of her journalism career, DuLong has gone undercover to a white-power hate-rock festival in rural Georgia for Newsweek International, covered college finances for Rolling Stone, written about lesbian newlyweds for CosmoGIRL! (in an article nominated for a GLAAD Media Award), penned a history of engine room technology for Maritime Reporter and Engineering News, and chronicled the undoing of a paper-mill machinery factory for Today’s Machining World, among other varied assignments. Her work has also appeared in Psychology Today, Parenting, Newsday, The Advocate, Out, Alternative Medicine, Saudi Aramco World, and the New York Times Regional Newspapers, among other publications.

Her boating and writing worlds first collided with the publication in the anthology Steady As She Goes: Women’s Adventures At Sea (Seal Press, 2003) of her essay “Below Decks”—a piece singled out by Publishers Weekly as “stylish” and a “high point” of the collection.

She has edited a variety of projects for nonprofit and arts organizations, including A Celebrat10n of Pop-Up and Movable Books, a handmade, limited-edition, commemorative pop-up book.

Previously, as director of content and site development for AtBalance Solutions and managing editor at SavvyHealth.com, DuLong produced an online catalog of health articles and multi-media packages, including digital video and interactive tools. In 1997, she co-founded masque, a boutique queer arts and literature magazine that was awarded Vice Versa’s Best New Publication 1998.

After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, DuLong earned a degree in psychology from Stanford University. She served on the board of directors of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association from 1999 to 2004, and is currently a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

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