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BIOGRAPHY
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Jeff's Bio:
The Dance Mix
During my professional life I've traveled extensively through
five continents, working as a writer, artist and photographer.
I've also prepared exhibits, lectures and educational programs
for San Francisco's Exploratorium, the University of California,
the Body Shop International and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
In the course of my travels, I've had the opportunity to participate
in some unusual projects. In 1979, during my first trip to Asia,
I designed playgrounds for UNICEF and the Nepal Children's Organization.
Several months later, arriving in Thailand during the Cambodian
civil war, I served as a volunteer engineer at Khao-I-Dang, the
largest of the Cambodian refugee camps.
From 1980 until 1983 I lived in Santa Barbara, and served as Cultural
and Features Editor of the Santa Barbara News & Review. Following
that job I got into the graphic arts. For a while I edited an
international art journal called Art/Life, ultimately leaving
that magazine to publish and edit a limited edition art portfolio
called eye.
In the Spring of 1983 I was awarded a Journalism Fellowship by
the Rotary International Foundation, and zoomed back to Asia.
During the next 16 months I based myself in Kathmandu, making
trips to the Himalaya, India, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Japan, Java,
and Bali. That's when I broke into freelancing; some of my stories
appeared in GEO and Islands. The book I cobbled together about
that wild and crazy time - Mr. Raja's Neighborhood: Letters from Nepal - is still in print.
Nepal has remained a second home to me. Shopping for Buddhas, first published in 1990, was reissued in 1996 by Lonely Planet
Publications; the revised edition won the Lowell Thomas award
for Best Travel Book of 1996. The Size of the World, a chronicle of my 29,172-mile, around-the-world overland voyage,
won in 1995. My stories also appear in a bunch of anthologies,
including I Should Have Stayed Home and the award-winning Travelers' Tales series.
These days I divide my time between Oakland and Kathmandu, writing
full-time (more or less) and contributing science and travel articles
to a wide variety of publications including Islands, Yoga Journal,
and
McSweeney's. My last book before Scratching the Surface -- Future Perfect: How Star Trek Conquered Planet Earth -- was released as a Penguin paperback in 1998.
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