About

Thanks for visiting the world of AgathaO’s. Here you can follow the adventures of an intrepid and clumsy dame of a certain age who plunges around life and falls in the water a lot. AgathaO enjoys the adventures of the ordinary, likes to fix what’s broken, and has a tendency to trip and drop things. She is accompanied on her adventures by an American Foxhound (we think), name of Buddy. And he is. It’s not quite clear which of the two of them makes more stupid decisions that land them in the water or cover them in mud.

Plus you can buy photographs, cards, and books. and you can tell me if you want something other, for instance a fancy tea cup sporting a ic of  an ice floe (easy: Agatha at AgathaO.com).

So come along and we’ll go  for a hike…


FYI

AgathaO is my alter ego and I am Pleun Bouricius, independent historian, writer, editor, photographer, and carpenter. You can hire me for all of those things, as I am one of those people who exists at the intersection of various skills and interests. Plus, I give 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, bit not quite so old yet that I am superannuated. Find out about all of that at SwiftRiverPress.com.

BIO: Pleun Bouricius is an independent historian, writer, editor, photographer, and carpenter. She is the principal of Swift River Press 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 sells her books and photography at festivals and shows around New England. Pleun also if the driving force behind and frequently moderates the Mass History Alliance’s program,  Conversations on the Commons. With her husband, Tee O’Sullivan, she runs a small carpentry a business, Measure Twice Reewal. Finally, she is the principal architect and author of Hidden Walls, Hidden Mills, a series of history/ecology adventures in Plainfield, MA. 

Pleun is also the author of a checkered career:  In past lives, she was Director of Grants and Programs at Mass Humanities,  drove a Freightliner Classic around the country for a while; 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 and a dog named Jax at “three dumps and a swamp”: 24 acres of forested hillside with a mile of stone walls and a bog.

If you want to contact Pleun, email agatha (at) agathaO.com or use the contact form on the website of the Swift River Press.

3 thoughts on “About

  1. Oh, Pleun! You are such a one-off! And such a Renaissance worman! I’m glad to have had the chance to meet you through Kin “back in the day, almost”. I’m honored to know you.
    Stephen

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