Katy Butler

Katy Butler (born 1949) is an American journalist best known for narrative nonfiction that combines memoir and investigative reporting. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays, Best American Science Writing, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Best Buddhist Writing.[1]

Born in South Africa in 1949, Butler grew up in England and the Boston area. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and earned a BA from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. After an internship at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Butler became a staff reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, where she stayed for 12 years. Since then, she has written for Mother Jones, the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, Vogue, The Village Voice, Tricycle (The Buddhist Quarterly), More magazine and Psychotherapy Networker magazine,[2] among others.[3]

A Buddhist since 1977, Butler was lay ordained by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh[4] and has co-led small meditation groups. In the 1980s she exposed abuses of sexuality and power by leaders of American Buddhist communities.[5] In 2004, she was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for an essay about applying traditional religious practices to the chaos of modern life. She teaches writing at the Esalen Institute[6] and was a speaker at The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard's 2008 and 2009 conferences on Narrative Nonfiction.

When doctors refused to disable the pacemaker that enabled her 84-year-old father’s heart to outlive his debilitating stroke and dementia, journalist Katy Butler embarked on a quest to understand why modern medicine was depriving him of a humane and timely death.

In 2010, the Nieman Foundation named "What Broke My Father's Heart," an essay about how a pacemaker forced her "father's heart to outlive his brain" a "notable narrative."[7] The essay, first published in the New York Times Magazine,[8] also won awards for national journalism from the National Association of Science Writers[9] and the Association of Health Care Journalists.[10] Association of Health Care Journalists, accessed May 1, 2012.

Her first book, published in 2013, Knocking on Heaven's Door, the Path to a Better Way of Death, was chosen as a BEA bookseller's expo America buzz book for Fall 2013.[11]

Other honors include writing residencies at Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook, and Blue Mountain Center.[12]

References

  1. ↑ McLeod, Melvin (ed.). The Best Buddhist Writing 2006. Shambhala Publications, 2006, p. 64ff. The essay first appeared in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Summer 2005.
  2. ↑ American Society of Magazine Editors, National Magazine Award, accessed June 18, 2010. For the story, see "Living on Purpose, The Seeker, the Tennis Coach and the Next Wave of Therapeutic Practice" Psychotherapy Networker, September/October 2003.
  3. ↑ "Katy Butler shows the bitter side of medical intervention". Nieman Storyboard, accessed April 29, 2012.
  4. ↑ "An Interview with Katy Butler". Tricycle Magazine, accessed May 1, 2012.
  5. ↑ "Sex Scandal Has U.S. Buddhists Looking Within". The New York Times, accessed April 29, 2012.
  6. ↑ "What Broke My Father's Heart". New York Times Magazine, accessed May 1, 2012.
  7. ↑ "Katy Butler shows the bitter side of medical intervention". Nieman Storyboard, accessed April 29, 2012.
  8. ↑ "What Broke My Father's Heart". New York Times Magazine, accessed May 1, 2012.
  9. ↑ "2011 Science in Society Awards". National Association of Science Writers, accessed April 29, 2012.
  10. ↑ "2010 winners named in premier health journalism awards".
  11. ↑ and named “One of the Ten Best Memoirs of 2013” and “A Big Book for Fall 2013” by Publishers Weekly, which gave it a starred review. A memoir of shepherding her parents through their final declines, its provocative thesis is that modern medicine, by singlemindedly pursuing maximum longevity, often creates more suffering than it prevents. "BEA Buzz Books Announced"
  12. ↑ "2008-1998 Residents", Mesa Refuge, accessed June 28, 2010; Danticat, Edwidge and Atwan, Robert. "The Best American Essays 2011", Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2011, p. 227; "Resident Alumni Updates", Blue Mountain Center. Retrieved June 18, 2010.

External links