Mark Nepo

Mark Nepo, born February 23, 1951, in Brooklyn, New York, is a poet and spiritual teacher whose work sits at the meeting point of literature, spirituality, and daily life. Across more than 40 years of teaching in the fields of poetry and spirituality, he has built a body of work centered on inner transformation, relationship, courage, and the effort to live fully in the face of uncertainty.

Nepo has a doctorate in English and taught for 18 years at the State University of New York at Albany. He later moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan. His academic grounding in language and his long practice as a teacher helped shape the clear, reflective style of his books. In his 30s, he was diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma. That struggle helped form his philosophy of experiencing life fully while staying in relationship to an unknowable future.

He is best known for The Book of Awakening, first published by Red Wheel-Conari in 2000. In 2010, Oprah Winfrey chose the book as one of her Ultimate Favorite Things for her farewell season, sending it to the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list. A 20th anniversary edition appeared in 2020 with a new foreword by Jamie Lee Curtis. Nepo has published 28 books and recorded 20 audio projects, and his works have been translated into twenty languages, including French, Portuguese, Japanese, and Danish.

His books include Surviving Storms: Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity, The Book of Soul: 52 Paths to Living What Matters, Drinking from the River of Light: The Life of Expression, More Together Than Alone: Discovering the Power and Spirit of Community in Our Lives and in the World, The One Life We’re Given, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen, and Finding Inner Courage. He has also written poetry, essays, and edited work, with titles such as Reduced to Joy, Surviving Has Made Me Crazy, Unlearning Back to God: Essays on Inwardness, and Deepening the American Dream: Reflections on the Inner Life and Spirit of Democracy.

Nepo’s wider public presence grew through repeated appearances with Oprah Winfrey on Super Soul Sunday on OWN TV. He was named to Oprah’s SuperSoul100 list of visionaries and influential leaders, interviewed by Robin Roberts on Good Morning America, written about by Oprah in her O! magazine column “What I Know for Sure,” and featured in Oprah’s “The Life You Want” class on “Being Fully Present” in April 2022. In 2017, he became a regular columnist for Spirituality & Health Magazine.

His words continue to reach readers because they come from a life spent teaching, writing, surviving illness, and asking how people can stay open to one another. His often-quoted line, “We are stronger, gentler, more resilient, and more beautiful than any of us imagine,” gathers much of that work into a plain and hopeful sentence. It reflects the faith at the center of his writing: that difficulty can reveal depth, and that relationship remains part of how a life is met.