Robert Atkinson

Robert Atkinson, Ph.D., an award winning author and member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle, is an internationally recognized authority on life story interviewing, personal mythmaking, and soul-making. He is co-editor of Our Moment of Choice: Evolutionary Visions and Hope for the Future (2020), and the author of The Story of Our Time: From Duality to Interconnectedness to Oneness is a 2017 Nautilus Book Award winner. He is professor emeritus of cross-cultural human development and religious studies at the University of Southern Maine, director of Story Commons, and founder of One Planet Peace Forum. His nine books also include Mystic Journey: Getting to the Heart of Your Soul's Story (2012), called by Jean Houston "an exquisite exploration of the spiritual craft of soul-making." After his B.A. from Southampton College of Long Island University, and an M.A. in American Folk Culture from SUNY, Cooperstown, his journeys took him to the Hudson River where he was a crew member on the maiden voyage of the sloop Clearwater with Pete Seeger. Next was Woodstock, then a stay in a cabin in the woods near the river, a visit with Ramblin' Jack Elliott to Arlo Guthrie's farm in the Berkshires, a fateful meeting with Joseph Campbell, an extended stay in a Franciscan monastery, and finally he returned to Southampton College to teach a course on folk-rock lyrics as poetry. The full details of all this and more can be found in his memoir of that period, Remembering 1969: Searching For the Eternal in Changing Times, of which Thomas Moore said it was "profound, friendly, inspiring,and nostalgic... I loved it." His first book - Songs of the Open Road: The Poetry of Folk Rock and the Journey of the Hero (1974, NAL/Signet; out of print, but still available here) - was a result of that first college course he taught. His second master's degree is from the University of New Hampshire in Counseling, and his Ph.D. is from the University of Pennsylvania in cross-cultural human development. He also completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the University of Chicago, which resulted in the publication of The Teenage World, co-authored with his mentors. At the University of Southern Maine, he was the first Diversity Scholar in the College of Education and Human Development, a co-founding faculty of the Russell Scholars Program, and a co-founding faculty of the Religious Studies minor, as well as a faculty member on the fall 2002 Semester at Sea voyage around the world. The Gift of Stories has been translated into Japanese, and The Life Story Interview into Italian and Romanian. He is online at www.RobertAtkinson.net