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Mark Kurlansky biography

Author Biography  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Mark Kurlansky
© Lisa Klausner

Mark Kurlansky

How to pronounce Mark Kurlansky: ker-LAN-ski

Mark Kurlansky Biography

Mark Kurlansky was born in Hartford, Connecticut.  After receiving a BA in Theater from Butler University in 1970, and refusing to serve in the military, Kurlansky worked in New York as a playwright, having a number of off-off Broadway productions, and as a playwright-in-residence at Brooklyn College. He won the 1972 Earplay award for best radio play of the year.

He worked many other jobs including as a commercial fisherman, a dock worker, a paralegal, a cook, and a pastry chef.

In the mid 1970s, unhappy with the direction New York theater was taking, he turned to journalism, an early interest – he had been an editor on his high school newspaper.  From 1976 to 1991 he worked as a  foreign correspondent for The International Herald Tribune, The Chicago Tribune, The Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Based in Paris and then Mexico, he reported on Europe, West Africa, Southeast Asia, Central America, Latin America and the Caribbean.

His articles have appeared in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, including The International Herald Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, Partisan Review, Harper's, New York Times Sunday Magazine, Audubon Magazine, Food & Wine, Gourmet, Bon Apetit and Parade.

In addition to numerous guest lectures at Columbia University School of Journalism, Yale University, Colby College, Grinnell College, the University of Dayton  and various other schools, he has taught a two week creative writing class in Assisi, Italy, a one week intensive non-fiction workshop in Devon, England for the Arvon Foundation, and has guest lectured all over the world on history, writing, environmental issues, and other subjects.  In Spring 2007 he was the Harman writer-in-residence at Baruch College teaching a fourteen week honors course titled "Journalism and the Literary Imagination." His books have been translated into twenty-five languages and he often illustrates them himself.

He has had more than 30 books published including fiction, nonfiction, and children's books

Mark Kurlansky's website

This bio was last updated on 05/01/2018. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

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Books by this Author

Books by Mark Kurlansky at BookBrowse
Milk! jacket Havana jacket Paper jacket Birdseye jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Mark Kurlansky but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Daniel Alarcon

    Daniel Alarcon

    Born in Lima, Peru in 1977, Alarcón was raised in Birmingham, Alabama. He is Associate Editor of Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning magazine published in his native Peru, and in 2013 served as a Fellow in the Investigative... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Havana

    Try:
    At Night We Walk in Circles
    by Daniel Alarcon

  • Josh Barkan

    Josh Barkan

    Josh Barkan was born in Santa Monica, California. At the age of three he moved to Iowa City, where his mother taught comparative literature and his father political science at the University of Iowa. He spent a number of ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Havana

    Try:
    Mexico
    by Josh Barkan

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