Parker J. Palmer is a writer, teacher, and activist. Founder and Senior Partner Emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal, he has written ten books, including the bestselling Let Your Life Speak, The Courage to Teach, A Hidden Wholeness, Healing the Heart of Democracy, and On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity and Getting Old. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and thirteen honorary doctorates. In 1998, The Leadership Project, a national survey of ten thousand educators, named Palmer as one of the thirty “most influential senior leaders” in higher education and one of the ten key “agenda-setters” of the past decade. Since 2002, the Accrediting Commission for Graduate Medical Education has given annual Parker J. Palmer “Courage to Teach” and “Courage to Lead” Awards to directors of exemplary medical residency programs around the U.S.. In 2005, Living the Questions: Essays Inspired by the Work and Life of Parker J. Palmer was published, with essays from practitioners in a wide range of professions. In 2010, Palmer received the William Rainey Harper Award, whose previous recipients include Margaret Mead, Elie Wiesel, and Paolo Freire. In 2011, the Utne Reader named him one of 25 Visionaries on its annual list of “People Who are Changing the World.” In 2017, the Shalem Institute in Washington, D.C., gave him its annual Contemplative Voices Award. Palmer lives with his wife in Madison, Wisconsin, where he also enjoys hanging out with his 28-year-old granddaughter. He regards Madison as “the Berkeley of the Midwest,” and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of northern Minnesota as one of the earth’s “thin places,” a place of “great peace and beauty where you can almost see the connection between the visible and the invisible worlds.”
