Mark Nepo

American poet, philosopher, cancer survivor, and contemporary spiritual teacher whose 2000 book The Book of Awakening — a daily devotional structured as 365 short reflections, written from the threshold experience of his lymphoma diagnosis and recovery — became a long-running bestseller, was selected as Oprah's Soul Series book, and remains one of the most widely-given spiritual books in the genre. Born 1951 in Brooklyn, Nepo earned his MFA at the State University of New York and taught creative writing for many years before the illness in his mid-thirties refocused his work on the question of what we learn from suffering when suffering is unavoidable. He has published more than twenty books, including Seven Thousand Ways to Listen, The Endless Practice, The One Life We're Given, More Together Than Alone, Drinking from the River of Light, and the bestselling poetry collection Inhabiting Wonder. His work bridges the Sufi, Christian, Buddhist, and Jewish mystical streams without claiming any of them exclusively, and has earned him the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY).