Biography
Grossinger was born and raised in New York City, attended Horace Mann School, Amherst College, and the University of Michigan, earning a B.A. in English at Amherst and a Ph.D. in anthropology at Michigan. With his wife (then girlfriend at Smith College) Lindy Hough, he founded the journal Io in 1964, then founded North Atlantic Books in Vermont in 1974.
Between 1970 and 1972 he taught anthropology at the University of Maine, Portland-Gorham, now the University of Southern Maine, and between 1972 and 1977 he taught interdisciplinary studies (including alchemy, Melville, Classical Greek, Jungian psychology, and ethnoastronomy) at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.
An ethnographer and self-described psychospiritual explorer as well as a writer and publisher, he has studied or trained in homeopathic medicine, somatic theory, t'ai chi ch'uan, craniosacral therapy, qigong, Breema, yoga, and psychic healing.
His brother was Jonathan Towers, a poet who committed suicide in 2005.
His daughter is filmmaker, author and performance artist Miranda July.
Read more about this topic: Richard Grossinger
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every mans life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (174095)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, memoirs to serve for a history, which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (18921983)