About
Marlin Bree is an American author, an award-winning marine journalist, and a veteran boater. He is the only marine writer to have twice won the prestigious Grand Prize of Boating Writers International -- the 2004 and the 2008 West Marine Writers Award. His latest nonfiction book, Bold Sea Stories, is a compendium of 21 of his award-winning boating and sailing stories. Wake of the Green Storm: A survivor's tale, tells of the author's survival experiences in his 20-foot homemade sailboat during a 134-mph. killer windstorm. The book became a best-seller on Amazon.com and was the internet bookseller's regional best-selling books for more than a year. When it debuted in 2010 as an Amazon.com e-book on the Kindle, it shot to #7 best-sellerdom in Canada.
Broken Seas: True Tales of Extraordinary Seafaring Adventures, has the author's boating tales from the South Pacific, the North Atlantic, and Lake Superior. Two of the stirring tales have been the basis of magazine articles that went on to win the Boating Writers International's Grand Prize Award.
Bree's previous boating books on sailing Lake Superior include: In the Teeth of the Northeaster and Call of the North Wind. Both are nonfiction tales of the author's adventures on Lake Superior.
His first novel, Dead on the Wind, came out in April 2015 and tells the story of a boating journalist who sets out to investigate a string of missing boats and uncovers an international conspiracy. Bree is the co-author of the national best-seller, Alone Against the Atlantic, which he wrote with sailor Gerry Spiess after the sailor in 1979 crossed the North Atlantic Ocean in a 10-foot sailboat -- a world record. Alone Against the Atlantic was a selection of the Book of the Month Club and Reader's Digest Condensed Books.
Bree's Boat Log & Record (revised 4th edition 2013) began in 1989 after the author realized the need for a comprehensive log book and record-keeping book for an average boater to keep track of a small boat and its voyages -- instead of a navigator's ocean-crossing log for a large vessel. It's been on the nautical best-seller lists for years and in its latest edition has been revised and enlarged.
Bree edited and published the book, The Stormy Voyage of Father's Day, the nonfiction account of Hugo Vihlen's record-breaking crossing of the North Atlantic in a 5 foot, 4-inch sailboat. Vihlen's record broke that set by Yankee Girl as the smallest boat to cross the North Atlantic.
His Marlin Bree imprint at Marlor Press includes, Heavy Weather Boating Emergencies, by Chuck Luttrell with Jean Luttrell. The book is subtitled, "The survival guide for freshwater powerboat operators."
As a sailing journalist, Bree has written articles for Cruising World, Ensign, Sailing, Small Craft Advisor, Wooden Boat, Lakeland Boating and Northern Breezes sailing magazines.
Bree is a former newsman, serving in a variety of journalistic posts from the editor's reporter for the Stars and Stripes newspaper (European edition) to that of the magazine editor of the Star-Tribune, Minneapolis. He is a past president of the Minnesota Press Club and he served as the first president of the Midwest Independent Publishers Association. He was the chair of the 1992 Minnesota Book Awards.
He is the recipient of more than 50 writing and editing awards. In 2004, at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, he received The West Marine Writer's Award. He is the first Great Lakes author to receive this highest honor that BWI can bestow upon a writer. In an unprecedented move, in 2008, at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, he again won the West Marine Writer's Award. This was for his Ensign magazine article, The Old Man and the Inland Sea. Bree is the only BWI writer to twice win the hotly contested grand prize award to honor the best in nautical journalism.
