Mark KRAMER

Mark Kramer

Mark’s Updated Autobiography (2021)

The following is an updated version of Mark’s 50th Reunion Autobiography.

I'm still a writer and teacher of narrative nonfiction. My books include Three Farms: Making Milk, Meat and Money from the American Soil; Invasive Procedures: A Year in the World of Two Surgeons; and Travels with a Hungry Bear: A Journey to the Russian Heartland. I've written for many newspapers and magazines including The New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, National Geographic, Outside and Yankee. I was writer-in-residence at Smith College, and professor of journalism and writer-in-residence at Boston University for a decade each. In 2000 I became writer-in-residence and founding director of the Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism at Harvard University, teaching a writing seminar for the Nieman Fellows, and helping to build a thousand-writer conference in Boston. I returned to BU in 2010 for another decade. retired in 2007, but am still active as a writer. I've helped found narrative journalism

conferences in South Africa, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal and more recently, ongoing conferences in Holland, England and Norway. I've co-edited two anthologies used in college courses, Literary Journalism and Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers' Guide from The Nieman Foundation at Harvard University. A writing workshop conveneds in my living room every third Sunday until the plague hit, for mid-career writers with longform narrative nonfiction projects. The last two terms of it have convened via Zoom, spreading participation to Greece, Vancouver and Shanghai. For more, see http://www.tellingtruestories.com/.

I've two sons (23 and 25). I went to Brandeis after Staples, then to grad school at Columbia. I lived way out in the country in western Massachusetts from '69 to '82, then moved to the Boston suburbs. My connection with Westport endured. My mother, Esther, who died in April, 2011, founded The Remarkable Book Shop on Main Streetand ran it for 32 years. My dad, who was healthy until his final months, died 40 days shy of 100 at his home on Bluewater Hill, working to the end as an author's agent, and practicing publishing law. He'd founded, and headed the local political party Save Westport Now for nearly 50 years. I welcome old friends to be in touch.