Michael Wolfe

This article is about the writer. For people with similar names, see Michael Wolff (disambiguation).

Michael Wolfe

Michael Wolfe (Born 3 April 1945, United States) is a poet, author, and the President and Executive Producer of Unity Productions Foundation. He is also a frequent lecturer on Islamic issues at universities across the United States including Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, SUNY Buffalo, and Princeton. He holds a degree in Classics from Wesleyan University.

Teaching career

Wolfe 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, Beer van Srtaten.

Tombouctou Books

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, Dale Herd, Lucia Berlin, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Steve Emerson, and Paul Bowles's final collection of short stories, Unwelcome Words: Seven Stories.

Writing career

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 How Love Gets Around and World Your Own, fiction Invisible Weapons, and travel In Morocco derive from this period. In the 1980s, he returned to North Africa several more times and as a Muslim convert performed his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1990.

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 11 September 2001, he edited a collection of essays by American Muslims called Taking Back Islam: American Muslims Reclaim Their Faith. 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.

He writes an occasional column for Beliefnet, a Web journal of the world’s religions.

Television and film

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.

In 1999, Wolfe helped found an educational media foundation focused on promoting peace through the media, Unity Productions Foundation (UPF). 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 Geographic International. It was awarded a Cine Special Jury Award for Best Professional Documentary in its category of People and Places. Wolfe continues to produce long and short-form documentaries for PBS and other broadcasters in the US and abroad with Unity Productions Foundation.

Currently, Wolfe is co-producing two new films set for release in 2007. The first is entitled Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain and is set for a national PBS broadcast on Aug. 22, 2007. Prince Among Slaves is the true story of an African prince enslaved in antebellum Mississippi struggling to regain his freedom .

Awards

• Lowell Thomas Award, "Best Cultural Tourism Article, 1998," Society of American Travel Writers. March, 1999.
• Marin County Arts Council Writers Award, 1990, 1983.
• California State Arts Council Writers Award, 1985.

External links

• Official Unity Productions Foundation website
• Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet PBS Website

Published work

• How Love Gets Around, Soft Press, 1974.
• 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.

References

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