Why ‘A Lazy Marco Polo’?

Like Mark Twain, Aaron Allbright was born in Missouri and grew up on the banks of the Mississippi. Like Huckleberry Finn, Aaron has followed the rivers and currents of life, travelling and residing in five continents.

After three years in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, he travelled overland throughout Africa, crossing the Sahara twice, then taught English one year in Saudi Arabia, followed by four years in Paris as an actor and a member of the Union des Artistes. In Southern California, he met his husband, Gary Rodrigue, and the two of them trekked extensively in the Himalayas.

In 2004, Aaron left a tenured position teaching English at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, his husband quit his corporate job, and they decamped to the South Pacific, to New Zealand where they bought farmland by the sea and built a new life and a sanctuary, where they lived for seven years with two cats, two dogs, sheep, cows, and a donkey named Don Quixote. 

Shortly after moving to New Zealand, Aaron was diagnosed with Leukemia, an ordeal he is chronicling in his forthcoming memoir, The Problem with Luke.

Aaron has advanced degrees in Slavic Studies, Russian Literature, and Linguistics. In addition to his professorship at Saddleback, he taught English in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and at the University of California Irvine.

 In 2012, Aaron published his first memoir, The Land Near Oz: Two Gay Yankees Move to New Zealand. He and Gary currently spend most of their time in California and Colorado.