Title: Co-Founder
Organization: Unity Productions Foundation
Area of Expertise: Arts & Culture
Media Experience: TV, Print, Radio, Talk of the Nation, ABC (Nightline), CNN, PBS, C-SPAN
Location: San Francisco, CA
Contact: Leah Borkin, Fenton Communication
Email
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Phone 212 584 5000 x 206
Michael Wolfe is Co-Founder of Unity Productions Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating peace through the media. He is the author of several books of poetry, fiction, history, essays and travel.
Wolfe’s writing has appeared in many magazines and has been recognized by the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Commission, and the American Travel Writers Association. He has been a MacDowell Colony resident and a three-time recipient of the Amy Lowell Traveling Poets Scholarship. His verse has been published in three small-press volumes over the years. Wolfe has read and lectured at Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, SUNY Buffalo, Princeton, and many other universities. He has 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, Santa Cruz. He holds a degree in Classics from Wesleyan University. For many years, he was the publisher of Tombouctou Books, Bolinas, California.
Wolfe has published three books on Islam: first, 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 September 11, 2001, he edited a collection of essays by American Muslims called Taking Back Islam: American Muslims Reclaim Their Faith (Rodale Press). Taking Back Islam won the 2003 annual Wilbur Award for ‘Best Book of the year on a Religious Theme.’ In 2006 he completed a fourth volume of poetry, entitled Digging Up Russia.
He is currently working on a novel and translating a group of epitaphs from the Greek Anthology, The Last Word (Grove Press, 2008).
In April 1997, Wolfe hosted a televised account of the Hajj from Mecca for Ted Koppel's "Nightline" on ABC, becoming the first American journalist to report live from there. 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. He writes an occasional column for Beliefnet, a Web journal of the world’s religions.
In 2002, United Productions Foundation 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 with his co-director at UPF, Alex Kronemer, received a national broadcast on PBS and subsequent international broadcasts on National Geographical International. It was awarded a Cine Special Jury Award for Best Professional Documentary in its category of People and Places. Two films have followed: Cities of Light, a two-hour PBS documentary on Medieval Spain, and Prince of Slaves, a 90-minute documentary on the life of an African prince enslaved in Mississippi. See Who's Who in America, 60th Edition.
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