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Author image credit: Brian McDonnell
Book Information
- Memoir
- Pub date: May 13, 2025
- ISBN: 9781958972748
- Retail price: $22.95
- Paperback
- 5.5 x 8.5
- 166 pages
- Publisher: Monkfish Publishing
- Distributed by Ingram
Contact Information
- Media inquiries and event bookings: mcgregorman@hotmail.com
- Review copies and rights: jon@monkfishpublishing.com (Jon M. Sweeney)
Book description
The power of solitude to change a life.
In his twenties, Michael N. McGregor traveled to the remote Greek island of Patmos to spend two winter months alone, 6,000 miles from home. It was a time before cellphones and the internet, when even a phone call was costly. Although he expected his solitude to be meaningful, he wasn’t prepared for how it would change him.
Before his island days, McGregor had spent years reporting on the world’s poor and months on the road. As he settled into days of rigorous writing, evening walks through fierce wind, and nights full of memories, dreams and spiritual encounters, he learned that solitude can be difficult and even dangerous, but also awe-inspiring and life-altering.
When he returned to his active life, McGregor sought solitude wherever he could–in nature, in libraries, in silent spaces–before returning to Patmos 40 years later to repeat his youthful experiment.
About the author
Michael N. McGregor is a Seattle-based author and journalist. His first book, Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax received an Excellence in Publishing Award from the Association of Catholic Publishers and was a finalist for a Washington State Book Award and other prizes. Korza Books published his first novel, The Last Grand Tour, earlier this year.
[See below for a full bio. For more general information, click on A Little About Me…]
Links to social media
What others are saying about An Island to Myself: The Place of Solitude in an Active Life:
“In this inspiring and hope-filled journey into the heart of solitude, McGregor takes us to the hinterlands of grace, and in the healing silence of a still heart and mind, we discover the antidote to a loneliness that plagues many of us these days, fed by consumption, competition, and a tendency to commodify relationships.”
– Patrick Hannon, author of Sacrament: Personal Encounters with Memories, Wounds, Dreams, and Unruly Hearts
“To dwell in solitude without feeling lonely, one must be open to a presence that’s inaccessible in the midst of even the dearest human companions. In search of that elusive presence, Michael N. McGregor has repeatedly taken leave from loved ones and workaday tasks, seeking stillness in a library, a park, a rustic cabin, a borrowed apartment, a Greek island, and other retreats. Over the course of decades, from restless youth to grateful elder, he has gathered insights into his character, his values, his past and possible futures. By accompanying him in his search, we may be inspired to undertake solitary sojourns of our own.”
– Scott Russell Sanders, author of The Way of Imagination
“Solitude is one of the most misunderstood words in the English language. Many of us would prefer to avoid being alone. But when we allow solitude to take us by the hand, we realize it is a guide, a doorway we step through to discover the most consequential person in our life: our self. As we follow along in this page-turner of a book—from the Greek island of Patmos to the San Juan Islands, Whidbey Island, and a myriad of other places McGregor has experienced solitude—we start to understand that being still is also a way to keep moving, to keep going deeper into the discovery of our true purpose and being.”
– Judith Valente, former faith and values correspondent for PBS-TV, author of The Art of Pausing and The Italian Soul: How to Savor the Full Joys of Life
“I finished An Island to Myself within the whirlwind of my screen-mediated over-extended life, one where my harried attention leaps quickly here then there and back again. Yet McGregor’s book is not finished with me. Its steady openhearted questions about fulfillment, gratitude, beauty, love, and meaning still call to me from within. His patient and humble account of the difficulties and rewards of seeking solitude, not in order to be alone and separate, but ultimately to love and connect more fully and more deeply with life, is one I won’t soon forget.”
– David Naimon, co-author of Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations On Writing, and host of the radio show and podcast Between the Covers
“Michael N. McGregor’s forty-year courtship of solitude is exacting, frank about the paradoxes of the journey, utterly determined to see his investigation through, and faithful to a helpful decision to include the journey’s contradictions. Bolstered by a counterpoint of epigraphs on solitude ranging from Wordsworth to Einstein, Epictetus to Proust, Anne Frank to Susan Sontag, Joan Didion to Rumi, Franz Kafka to bell hooks, and more, journey’s end brings McGregor to conclusions that are thoroughly flight-tested, uniquely his own, and invaluable to lovers of solitude counter-balanced with active lives.”
– David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and Sun House
Praise for earlier books
Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax (biography)
“Those who know [Robert Lax] only as a close friend of Thomas Merton will be delighted with the person they find in these pages: an influential poet, a voice for peace, a wanderer and seeker after truth. Many sought Lax out at his Patmos home; McGregor has made his wisdom available to all.”
– Kathleen Norris, author of Dakota and Cloister Walk
“Pure Act, in its offering of a detailed recounting of [Robert Lax’s] life and an acute presentation and analysis of his too-neglected poetry, gives him to us: the gift of a human being unlike any other.”
– C. K. Williams, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Last Grand Tour (novel)
“A captivating exploration of the promise and burden of passionate love.”
– Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“An elegant and evocative novel about lives at crossroads. The indelible pair at the heart of this complicated and tender love story are surrounded by characters I will carry with me the rest of my reading life. Not to mention, the novel is a flat-out enlightenment on European culture. Michael N. McGregor is a writer at the height of his powers: creative and intellectual.”
– Mitchell S. Jackson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Residue Years
“Sweeping and vivid…a trip into the deepest corners of one man’s emotional excavation as he grasps for meaning, connection, and love…A gripping, entertaining, and ultimately transporting novel that feels at once personal and universal.”
– Chelsea Bieker, author of Madwoman and Godshot
Appearances (all dates are 2025):
- May 13–Seattle launch (details to come)
- May 21–Broadway Books, Portland, OR
- June 5–Content Bookstore, Northfield, MN
- June 22–Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, CO
- TBA–The Silver Unicorn Bookstore, Acton, MA
Full bio:
Michael N. McGregor is an author, journalist, editor, conversation host, and former professor of creative writing whose memoir An Island to Myself: The Place of Solitude in an Active Life will be published by Monkfish Publishing in May 2025.
His first book, Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax received an Excellence in Publishing Award from the Association of Catholic Publishers and was a finalist for a Washington State Book Award, a Biography Book Award from Catholic Press Association, and the Religion Newswriters Association’s Book of the Year. The Association of University Presses named Pure Act one of its 10 best books in American Literature for libraries, the New York Times Book Review called it “vivid and engaging,” and the Oregonian described it as “deeply satisfying.”
Korza Books published McGregor’s first novel, The Last Grand Tour, earlier this year. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews called it, “A captivating exploration of the promise and burden of passionate love.” Pulitzer Prize winner Mitchell S. Jackson described it as “an elegant and evocative novel about lives at crossroads” and called McGregor “a writer at the height of his powers: creative and intellectual.”
Before earning an MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia University in New York, McGregor received a BA in Journalism from the University of Oregon. He spent his college summers as a Forest Service firefighter on the slopes of Mt. Hood and his post-college years interviewing and writing about people in extreme poverty in Asia. On an eight-month trip through Europe and the Middle East, he met the poet Robert Lax on a Greek island and the two became close friends. Around the same time, he came to know the travel guru and guidebook author Rick Steves, who hired him to lead tours through Europe.
McGregor spent the next decade traveling up to six months a year while guiding groups for both Steves’ company and his own Halcyon Tours. Halcyon specialized in small group tours to places on the fringes of Europe, such as Scotland, Greece and Turkey, and, in the years just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Eastern Europe. McGregor was one of the first guides to lead Americans through the newly-freed lands of the former Soviet Union.
Over the past three decades, McGregor has taught writing at Columbia University, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and Portland State University, where he was a professor for 17 years and helped found the MFA in Creative Writing program. During his years at PSU, he received numerous Outstanding Teacher awards and served as director of creative writing.
McGregor has published over 300 stories, essays, and articles in magazines, newspapers, and journals, including Tin House, StoryQuarterly, Poetry, Orion, Image, Poets & Writers, The Seattle Review, and Notre Dame Magazine. His writings have earned him notable essay designations in Best American Essays, special mention in the Pushcart Prizes, an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship, a Literary Award Grant from the Illinois Arts Council, and the Daniel Curley Award for Best Short Fiction. In addition to speaking at conferences, colleges, and bookstores throughout the United States, he has been a guest on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” and Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “Think Out Loud.” He has also recorded podcast segments for Poetry magazine, City Lights Bookstore, Late Night Library, and Urban Roots.
As a journalist, McGregor spent over a decade writing about theater for the Oregonian and the Seattle Weekly and served as editor-in-chief of three magazines. In 2018, he was selected to be as one of eight international writers-in-residence at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, and in 2022, he was named the Oregon Historical Society’s Donald J. Sterling Jr. Senior Research Fellow in Pacific Northwest History.
He resides now in Seattle, where he runs the website WritingtheNorthwest.com and serves as host and emcee for the Cascadia Art Museum’s Writers-in-Conversation series.