Andy Couturier is the son of a biographer and a civil rights activist. During his four years of living in Japan, he wrote for the Japan Times ; worked with local environmentalists fighting large dam projects, rainforest destruction, and huge electric power plants; taught English; and studied the interconnections between Japanese aesthetics and innovative new forms of writing. In California, he and his partner built their own house using only hand tools, developing a piece of raw land into a functioning rural homestead with solar and hydro-electric power, running hot and cold water, and a Japanese-style bath.
Andy has studied Buddhist meditation and many other Asian philosophical systems, and has traveled extensively in Africa, Southeast Asia, and India. He has been a researcher for Greenpeace and has taught writing for more than a decade. He is the author of Writing Open the Mind: Tapping the Subconscious to Free the Writing and the Writer and has written for Adbusters, the MIT Press, Kyoto Journal, Creative Nonfiction, The North American Review, The Oakland Tribune, and Ikebana International. He directs his own creative writing center, The Opening, at www.theopening.org.
Andy welcomes your thoughts and comments on this book, either by mail to P.O. Box 881, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 or by email to andy@theopening.org.