Dave Morine is a native of the greater Boston area. He graduated from Amherst College in 1966 and earned an MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia in 1969. From 1972 to 1990, he was the head of land acquisition for The Nature Conservancy, a major conservation organization. Morine left the Conservancy in 1990 and has been writing ever since.

GOOD DIRT: Confessions of a Conservationist (Globe Pequot Press, 1990; Ballantine paperback, 1993) was his first book, followed by The Class Choregus (North Atlantic Books, 1993). Next came PIT BULL: Lessons from Wall Street's Champion Trader (with Martin Schwartz and Paul Flint, Harper Business, 1998; Harper Perennial paperback, 1999), then VACATIONLAND: A Half Century Summering in Maine (DownEast Books, 2001), and most recently, SMALL CLAIMS: My Little Trials in Life (DownEast Books, June, 2003).

In addition to his books, Morine has contributed stories to Love of Labs (Voyageur Press, 1997), Love of Goldens (Voyageur Press, 1998), and Chicken Soup for the Baseball Fan's Soul (Health Communications, Inc., 2001). Articles, mostly about his work in conservation, have appeared in magazines such as Sports Illustrated, Reader's Digest, DownEast, Field & Stream, Range, and American Forests. The New York Times once described Morine's stories as ?embarrassing, hilarious and unpredictable.? These same adjectives could be used to describe Paddles with a Stranger, but with a dark undercurrent; Morine never expected to be dealing with suicide.
All of Morine's writing has been done with Paul Flint. Like Morine, Flint is a native of the greater Boston area, graduated from Amherst, and earned his MBA from Darden. After twenty years as a lawyer for The Nature Conservancy, Flint currently is working with long-term care insurance.