Michael Wolfe
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Michael Wolfe is the author of books of poetry, fiction, travel, and history, and a film producer. (April 7, 2007: This page now cites appropriate publication references. Facts below may be confirmed in Who's Who In America, 40th Edition and by Atlantic Monthly/Grove Press authors' online biographies.)
Wolfe’s writing has appeared in many magazines and has been recognized by the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Commission, and the American Travel Writers Association. He has read and lectured at Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, SUNY Buffalo, Princeton, and many other universities. He has taught Writing and English at Phillips Exeter and Phillips Andover Academies, the California State Summer School for the Arts, and at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He holds a degree in Classics from Wesleyan University. For many years, he was the publisher of Tombouctou Books, Bolinas, California.
Michael Wolfe was a MacDowell Colony resident in poetry in 1968. He received an Amy Lowell Traveling Poets Scholarship in 1970, which was renewed for two further years. During this time he traveled and wrote in North and West Africa. His first books of poetry (World Your Own, Threshold), fiction, (Invisible Weapons, Creative Arts Publishing), and travel (In Morocco, Sombre Reptiles) derive from this period. In the 1980s, he returned to North Africa several more times. In 1990, he performed the pilgrimage to Mecca.
For fifteen years, Wolfe was sole publisher of Tombouctou Books, a small press enterprise located in Bolinas CA that published works of poetry and avant garde prose, including The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll, two books of fiction by the Moroccan storyteller Mohammed Mrabet, and American fiction by Douglas Woolf, Lucia Berlin, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Steve Emerson, and Paul Bowles's final collection of short stories, Unwelcome Words.
Wolfe's first works on Islam were a pair of books from Grove Press on the pilgrimage to Mecca: The Hadj (1993), a first-person travel account, and One Thousand Roads to Mecca (1997), an anthology of 10 centuries of travelers writing about the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Shortly after September 11, 2001, he edited a collection of essays by American Muslims called Taking Back Islam: American Muslims Reclaim Their Faith (Rodale Press). Taking Back Islam won the 2003 annual Wilbur Award for ‘Best Book of the year on a Religious Theme.’ He is currently working on a novel, entitled Just Look at You Now, and translating a group of epitaphs from the Greek Anthology, entitled The Last Word: Selected Ancient Greek Epitaphs, for publication by Grove Press in 2008. He recently completed a fourth volume of poetry, entitled Digging Up Russia.
In April 1997, Wolfe hosted a televised account of the Hajj from Mecca for Ted Koppel's "Nightline" on ABC. The program was nominated for Peabody, Emmy, George Polk, and National Press Club Awards. It won the annual Media Award from the Muslim Public Affairs Council. In February 2003, Wolfe worked with CNN-International television news reporter Zain Verjee to produce a new half-hour documentary on the Hajj. Wolfe has been featured on hundreds of regional and national radio talk shows. He writes an occasional column for Beliefnet, a Web journal of the world’s religions.
In 1999, Wolfe helped found an educational media foundation focused on promoting peace through the media, Unity Productions Foundation. IN 2002, UPF produced its first full-length film, called Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet, a two-hour television documentary on the life and times of the Prophet Muhammad. The film, which Wolfe co-created, co-produced, and co-executive edited, received a national broadcast on PBS and subsequent international broadcasts on National Geographical International. It was awarded a Cine Special Jury Award for Best Professional Documentary in its category of People and Places. With Unity Production, Wolfe continues to produce long and short-form documentaries for PBS and other broadcasters in the US and abroad.
(And see: Who's Who in America, 40th Edition.)
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[edit] References and notes
World Your Own, Threshold Books, Putney, Vermont, 1976 In Morocco, Sombre Reptiles, Berkeley, California 1980 Invisible Weapons, Creative Arts Publishing, Berkeley, California 1985 The Hadj: An American's Pilgrimage to Mecca, Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 1993 One Thousand Roads to Mecca: Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing about the Muslim Pilgrimage, Grove Press, New York, 1997 Taking Back Islam: American Muslims Reclaim their Faith, Rodale Press, Pennsylvania, 2003.
