About

I am an independent historian, writer, editor, photographer, and old house carpenter. You can hire me for most of those activities, as I am one of those people who exists at the intersection of various skills and interests. Plus, I teach workshops and mentor in writing, photography, history, and old house maintenance. And yes, I am old enough to have oodles of experience in all that, but not quite so old yet that I am completely superannuated. Along the way, I have taught writing and grant writing since the 1990's, organized conferences, created exhibits, designed and written numerous events announcements and posters, and worked full time at fixing old house problems.

Pleun Bouricius is an independent historian, writer, editor, photographer, and carpenter.  She is the principal of Swift River Press, where she writes, teaches, and consults about public history and communications. As AgathaO, she has published four collections of essays and photographs: Northern Byways and Other Essays From The Road (2024); Born Wet (2022); Beech, The Fall and Rise of a Forest (2019); and The Bog (2017).  She blogged for the Public Humanist (2008-2013); is the principal architect and author of the collaborative project Hidden Walls, Hidden Mills, a series of history/ecology adventures in Plainfield, MA; authored and designed, with Dario Coletta (photography) the 2010 Barns of Plainfield calendar and a bunch of other stuff for the Plainfield Historical Society; and she devised, designed, and authored an early (2001) online guide to women's history resources at Historical Collections in Harvard Business School's Baker Library, entitled, Women, Enterprise, and Society. 

Bouricius sells her books and photography at festivals and shows around New England. She was the founding president of the Massachusetts History Alliance and is the driving force behind and frequently moderates its program, Conversations on the Commons. She has been organizing the Massachusetts History Conference for more than fifteen years. Previously, she was Director of Grants and Programs and Assistant Director at Mass Humanities, where she spearheaded the Reading Frederick Douglass and Ideas Matter projects and conceived of and organized several statewide film and discussion programs on civil rights topics. She has been a carpenter and licensed contractor since 2003, operating an old-house carpentry business, Measure Twice Renewal, with her husband, Tee O'Sullivan. Before that, she briefly drove a Freightliner Classic around the country; brought the Women, Enterprise, and Society project at Baker Library at Harvard Business School to fruition; and taught history and literature and women’s history for a decade or so at Harvard University. Her undergraduate degree is in history, women’s studies, and photography from Montclair State College, New Jersey; her MA, in English, and PhD, in the History of American Civilization, are from Harvard University.

Pleun was born and raised in Scheveningen, The Netherlands, and lives in Plainfield, Massachusetts with husband Tee O’Sullivan at “three dumps and a swamp”: a forested New England hillside with a mile of stone walls and a bog.