Jackson Kuhl is a writer and author specializing in American history, biography, and historical fiction.
In Kuhl’s latest novella, The Island of Small Misfortunes (Regal House, 2025), a visit to his estranged family’s private island soon turns sinister when a haunted sailor uncovers a strange history of ghosts and murder.
His novel A Season of Whispers (Whitney & Post, 2020) is a gothic mystery set in a 19th-century utopian commune. Kirkus Reviews called it, “A slim but delightful tale of terror set in transcendentalist New England.”
Kuhl’s first book, Samuel Smedley, Connecticut Privateer (The History Press, 2011), is a biography of the American Revolution’s most daring sea captain. Kuhl has spoken about pirates and privateers at bookstores, libraries, historical societies, museums, and private clubs.
Kuhl has written for Atlas Obscura, Electric Literature, Journal of the American Revolution, National Geographic News, the New York Post, Reason, and other publications. For more than a decade he contributed to a pair of children’s magazines about archaeology and history. He also wrote a regular column on dinosaurs.
Kuhl lives in coastal Connecticut. He has contributed to local outlets such as Connecticut Magazine, Fairfield County Weekly, Fairfield Minuteman, and the Stamford Advocate.
His historical fiction has appeared most recently in Love Letters to Poe (all three volumes), Tenebrous Antiquities, A Darkness Visible, and other anthologies. Some of his short fiction is collected in The Dead Ride Fast.
Kuhl also ghostwrites boutique memoirs and has worked as a freelance web producer, largely in the education space.
Kuhl holds a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Religion from Ithaca College and a master’s degree in Archaeological Studies from Yale University.