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Mark Matousek |
Mark Matousek is the author of two award-winning memoirs, Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story and The Boy He Left Behind: A Man’s Search for His Lost Father, as well as When You’re Falling, Dive: Lessons in the Art of Living.
Born in Los Angeles in 1957, Mark Matousek moved to New York after graduate school and landed a job in Newsweek Magazine’s letter department, before being hired as a proofreader at Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine. He was the magazine’s first staff writer and became senior editor the following year.
In 1985, Mark quit his job and spent most of the following decade as an itinerant dharma bum and freelance journalist, traveling between Europe, India, and the United States. He received a National Magazine Award nomination for “America’s Darkest Secret”, a piece about the epidemic of incest in the U.S., and published essays in numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, Details, Yoga Journal, McCalls, The Utne Reader, AARP Magazine, Out, and Harper’s Bazaar, as well as Voices of the Millenium, and A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, and a Prayer among other anthologies.
After working with Sogyal Rimpoche on The Tibetan Book of Living and dying, Mark published his first book, Sex Death Enlightenment, which became an international bestseller nominated for two Books for a Better Life Awards. He co-wrote Ram Dass’s book, Still Here, and published his second memoir, The Boy He Left Behind, a Los Angeles Times Discovery Book. Mark is also a contributing editor to O: The Oprah Magazine, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and a frequent blogger for The Huffington Post. In 2008, his book, When You’re Falling, Dive: Lessons in the Art of Living , brought 25 years of experience — as writer, seeker, interviewer, and medical patient – to the question of human survival through crisis.
In 2008, he became Creative Director of V-Men, the male arm of Eve Ensler’s V-Day, an organization to violence against women and girls. V-Day has enormous international outreach, having raised some $70 million to open safe houses and institute educational programs around the world.. Mark is currently working on a performance piece called “Ten Ways To Be a Man,” will serve as the male counterpart to “Vagina Monologues” and premier at the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg, South Africa.
His new book, Ethical Wisdom: The Search for a Moral Life, was published last year by Doubleday.
Website: www.markmatousek.com