Phil Cousineau
Phil Cousineau is a writer, teacher, editor, independent scholar, documentary filmmaker, travel leader, and storyteller. The author of more than 30 nonfiction books, Cousineau has more than 15 documentary screenwriting credits to his name, including the 1991 Academy Award-nominated Forever Activists. His life-long fascination with art, literature, and the history of culture has taken him on many journeys around the world; one of his bestselling books is The Art of Pilgrimage, inspired by his many years of meaningful travels.
Born in an army hospital in Columbia, South Carolina, Cousineau grew up in Detroit, and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years. American mythologist Joseph Campbell was a mentor and major influence; Cousineau wrote the documentary film and companion book about Campbell's life, "The Hero's Journey." The “omnipresent influence of myth in modern life” is a thread that runs through all of his work. He lectures frequently on a wide range of topics--from mythology, film, and writing, to sports, creativity, travel, art, and beauty. Currently he is the host of the much-praised “inner travel” television series, Global Spirit, on Link TV and PBS, and is finishing a book on beauty.
“The journey of the hero is about the courage to seek the depths; the image of creative rebirth; the eternal cycle of change within us; the uncanny discovery that the seeker is the mystery which the seeker seeks to know. The hero journey is a symbol that binds, in the original sense of the word, two distant ideas, the spiritual quest of the ancients with the modern search for identity, always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find.”
“Inspiration comes and goes, creativity is the result of practice.”
“Centuries of travel yore suggest that when we no longer know where to turn, our real journey has just begun.”