Lessons from an American Stoic: How Emerson Can Change Your Life by Mark Matousek

Mark Matousek is an award-winning author of eight books, Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story, The Boy He Left Behind, When You’re Falling, Dive, Ethical Wisdom: The Search for a Moral Life, Dialogues with a Modern Mystic, Ethical Wisdom for Friends, Mother of the Unseen World, and Writing To Awaken: A Journey of Truth, Transformation, and Self-Discovery. He was the co-editor on the book Still Here by Ram Dass. His latest book released in June 2023 is Lessons from an American Stoic: How Emerson Can Change Your Life, In this timely, remarkable book, Mark reveals the depths of Emerson’s extraordinary wisdom, demonstrating how his timeless philosophy can help you navigate the challenges of contemporary life. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and publications, including The New Yorker, O: The Oprah Magazine, Details, Tricycle, Good Housekeeping, and Harper’s Bazaar. He blogs regularly for Psychology Today and offers workshops, retreats, and online classes in creativity and spiritual growth using his Writing To Awaken method. In 2013, Mark founded The Seekers Forum, an international fellowship dedicated to the cultivation of self-awareness and spiritual insight through dialogue, self-inquiry, and expressive writing. The Seekers Forum presents programs on topics related to self-care, spirituality, and personal awakening and offers a unique open-door community for folks seeking wisdom, camaraderie, and practical tools for living a more awakened life. He is on the faculty of The New York Open Center, The Omega Institute, 1440, Esalen, The Rowe Center, Hollyhock, and Blue Spirit, Costa Rica and produces his own Writing to Awaken workshops and retreats in the US, Canada, and Europe. As a teacher and speaker, his work focuses on personal awakening and creative excellence through transformational writing and self-inquiry. He is a co-founder of V-Men, the male arm of V-Day, V's (formally Eve Ensler’s) movement to end violence against women and girls. Born in Los Angeles, Mark graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Berkeley in 1979, and received a fellowship to Worcester College, Oxford, after being awarded an M.A. in English Literature from UCLA in 1981. Upon graduation, he moved to New York, worked as a stringer for Reuters International, then in Newsweek’s letter department, before being hired as a proofreader at Andy Warhol’s Interview, where he became the magazine’s first staff writer and senior editor the following year. During his three years at Interview, he conducted hundreds of interviews with well-known figures in film, television, books, fine art, politics, design and science. Mark left publishing in 1985 and spent most of following decade as a freelance writer and dharma bum in Europe, India, and the United States. Shifting professional gears from pop culture to psychology, philosophy and spirituality, he was a contributing editor at Common Boundary, where his column “The Naked Eye” appeared from 1994-1999, and where his expose, “America’s Darkest Secret,” was nominated for a National Magazine Award. He contributed essays to anthologies including Wrestling with the Angel, Voices of the Millennium, Oprah’s Best Life, and A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant and a Prayer. Mark worked with Sogyal Rimpoche on The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, and collaborated with writer Andrew Harvey on Dialogues with a Modern Mystic (and the British documentary of the same name). His first book, Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story (Riverhead) was published in 1996 and became an international bestseller in ten countries. Since then, Mark has been writing books and teaching Writing to Awaken, a transformative method of self-discovery, creative growth, and spiritual insight which has helped countless people reach their creative and spiritual goals. Mark lives with his partner in Springs, New York.