Neil is a writer based in Brooklyn.
For 20 years he’s written for National Geographic, reporting around the world at the intersection of conflict, climate science, and cultural change. Recently his work has focused on the Arctic, and his first book, Frostlines (Ecco 2025), gathers his storytelling into a narrative journey around the top of the world.
This autumn (2026), Neil will be the Snedden Chair in the University of Alaska’s Science and Environmental Journalism program. He’s also a contributing editor with the Virginia Quarterly Review, and The American Scholar, and he writes for the science blog The Last Word on Nothing, as well as his own Substack newsletter, Don’t Save Anything.
Beyond magazines and the web, he works in film, television, and audio. His Peabody-nominated investigative podcast, “Unfinished: Deep South,” was one of The Atlantic’s best pods of the year in 2020, and his storytelling has received numerous awards, nominations and grants. He is recently the recipient for a grant from the Pulitzer Center for his work on the decline of Arctic caribou, and in 2022 he was the John D. And Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation resident at Yaddo.
Neil lives in Brooklyn with his partner, the filmmaker Taylor Hom, and their children.
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Instagram: @neilshea13
Substack: Don’t Save Anything
Literary Agent: Susan Canavan susan@wlabooks.com