Eric Scigliano, eclectic writer on Seattle, art, elephants, dies at 71
By Margo Vansynghel | Seattle Times staff reporter
Eric Scigliano, the long-form Seattle journalist known for award-winning articles and books that dug deep into topics ranging from marine science to local politics, died last week in a diving accident in the Galápagos Islands. He was 71.
His death was confirmed by his brother, Brian Scigliano, and daughter, Kate Scigliano.
In seven books and countless articles for local and major news outlets across the United States — from the Seattle Weekly to The Atlantic — Scigliano had a knack for finding the perfect turn of phrase. But as news of his death rippled through Seattle’s media world, “it’s been really hard for people to find words,” said Sally Anderson, a close friend.
“He had that kind of an impact. There is a largeness about his absence that’s really pretty unusual,” she said.
A globe-trotter rooted in Seattle since the 1970s, Scigliano was well-traveled, well-read and well-loved. Boundless curiosity and wanderlust led him to far-flung places and subjects: the importance of Carrara, Italy’s marble quarries for Michelangelo’s masterpieces; the relationship between humans and elephants; pet octopuses; climate change; and, in his travels, the Arctic, Brazil and the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.
Friends, family and former colleagues remember Scigliano as an ebullient presence, someone who could set anyone at ease.
“Eric,” Anderson said, “made people feel at home.”
Digging deep
Scigliano grew up mostly in the Midwest, but “the land of my most radiant and, I sometimes think, definitive childhood memories” was Vietnam, he wrote in a 1990 Washington Post story.
He was about 4 years old when the Scigliano family moved to Saigon — Eric’s father, a Michigan State University professor, took part in a U.S.-funded operation there — in the late 1950s, “the blithe intermission between what the Vietnamese call the ‘French War’ and the ‘American War,’ ” he later wrote.
Women in satin tunics and straw hats biking through the city and monsoons “blowing boughs of locust and tamarind into the streets” left indelible impressions. In Vietnam, elephants captured the author’s fascination, the seed for his 2002 book, “Love, War and Circuses: The Age-Old Relationship Between Elephants and Humans.”
Scigliano came to journalism by way of art. After studying and opening a commercial art studio in Santa Fe, N.M., he drew editorial cartoons for local publications and, as he said in a 2017 interview with L’Italo Americano, occasionally helped out the editor by writing. He’d found his calling.
In the late ’70s, Scigliano landed in Seattle — drawn by his future wife, as well as the city’s industrial feel and natural beauty — where he first wrote for the alt-weekly publications The Argus and, later, the Seattle Weekly.
“I love the ocean, and I like to dive,” he told L’Italo Americano. “Living in Seattle means you are very aware of the water around you. My interest in marine science was a natural part of this evolution.” (He’d go on to write books about Puget Sound, the Pacific Coast and ocean science.)
At Seattle Weekly, Scigliano wrote a story about the “other internees” of World War II: the Indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands off the Alaskan coast. His reporting detailed the Aleuts’ imprisonment in camps by the U.S. government and the looting of their homes and graves by American GIs. It earned Scigliano a Livingston Award, a prestigious prize for journalists under 35 years old.
“His mixture of rigor and kindness was very unusual,” said Seattle Weekly founder David Brewster, who edited Scigliano across a range of local publications. “He was very popular at the Weekly. People would cluster around his desk. He was funny, and he had all kinds of unusual comments about things. He was a good pal.”
Another colleague and editor, Knute Berger, said Scigliano had the ability to tackle just about any topic with both rigor and evocative writing: He would report on crime in Belltown, but also authored “a two-part series of very lengthy stories about dirt,” Berger remembered with a chuckle.
It was classic Scigliano. He was the kind of journalist who could find fodder for a story right under his feet. Often quite literally: In a 2019 Seattle Times story, he wrote about our city’s subterranean world, where “thousands of miles of tunnels, pipes and cables wind, twine, criss and cross through the ground — the arteries, capillaries, nerves, ducts and guts of the body civic.”
“Person of the present tense”
No matter the subject matter — art restoration, marijuana heists, tsunami preparations on the Washington coast or Seattle’s tree protection ordinance — Scigliano dug for nuance and vivid imagery, gravitating toward the untold and unexpected.
In 2019, he tried to make the climate crisis tangible in the book “The Big Thaw: Ancient Carbon, Modern Science, and a Race to Save the World.” It was a daunting task, but “Eric was the ideal writer to describe the scientific complexities of this story in clear terms, and weave it together with compelling and hopeful human stories,” said Helen Cherullo, publisher of Braided River in an interview with L’Italo Americano. The book won Scigliano multiple national awards for environmental writing, as well as the Washington State Book Award for general nonfiction.
But Scigliano wasn’t one to boast — he lived and traveled without ego or reservations, Anderson said. He was very much a “person of the present tense,” she said, the kind of host who would forget to cook the fish he’d invited you over for, because he’d become so absorbed in conversation. Someone who could be anywhere in the world at any given time.
“Where’s Waldo? Forget it — where’s Eric?!” said longtime friend Tim Appelo, who fondly remembered the time Scigliano decided to roast a chicken in his fireplace (which came out perfectly). “You never knew what new thing he was into.”
Kate Scigliano said her father would be remembered not only for his published work, “but also for his eclectic interests in art and music, and his deep appreciation for diverse cultures and geographies,” she said in a statement. “He died as he lived — pursuing his passions.”
Scigliano is survived by his daughter, Kate, and his siblings, Brian, Claire and John. Multiple tribute gatherings are in the works, at Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum and at The Royal Room, with dates to be announced later.
Seattle Times reporter Paul Roberts contributed to this story.
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