About Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos

Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos is an American women’s historian with a special interest in maritime history. She has published two nonfiction books: The Pirate’s Wife; The Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd (Hanover Square Press, an imprint of HarperCollins, 2022) and The Pirate Next Door: The Untold Story of Eighteenth Century Pirates’ Wives, Families and Communities (Carolina Academic Press, 2017). Prior to these works, she was a freelance journalist and published over 40 articles in newspapers and magazines. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Southern Living, Virginia Business and many other publications. As a regular contributor to The New York Times Syndicate’s “Lifebeat” column her stories were published both nationally and internationally.

A former Legislative aide to a United States Congressman, she holds a Doctor of Liberal Studies degree and a Master of Liberal Studies degree from Georgetown University. She also holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from The George Washington University. During her studies at Georgetown University, she focused her research and writing as a women’s historian and in maritime history on issues concerning women, families and communities with a special focus on pirates of the eighteenth century.

She first became interested in pirates while writing an article in 2002 for The New York Times “Museums” Special Section about the Whydah Pirate Museum in Provincetown, Massachusetts. For over twenty years she has conducted extensive original research on women in maritime history, especially pirates and their wives in archives in London, Washington, New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. As a women’s historian with an expertise in maritime history of the 17th and 18th centuries, she developed a more complete and nuanced history of piracy, and discovered that the lives of pirates, while indeed colorful, were often quite different from those of their literary and cinematic counterparts.

Dr. Geanacopoulos’s expertise as a women’s historian with a special interest in maritime history has made her a sought-after speaker. She has given more than seventy-five talks on women lost in history, especially the wives and families of eighteenth-century pirates. She has given many radio and podcast interviews, and been the featured guest at book stores, libraries, historical societies, museums and literary groups. She is available for speaking engagements; please reach out to her on her Contact page.