Phil Cousineau
Phil Cousineau is a writer, teacher, editor, independent scholar, documentary filmmaker, travel leader, and storyteller. His life-long fascination with art, literature, and history of culture has taken him on journeys around the world. He lectures on a wide range of topics from mythology, film, and writing to creativity, travel, and sports. He has published over 40 nonfiction books and has more than 25 scriptwriting credits to his name. Cousineau is also a renowned expert on mythology in the movies for Warner Brothers and Pixar Films. For ten years, he was the host of the much-acclaimed “Inner Travel” television series, Global Spirit, on Link TV, which is also streamed on the web at www.globalspirit.tv, and a guest host for New Dimensions Radio.
"The discussions on LINK TV's 'Global Spirit' series are sorely needed in this dispirited and disenchanted world. In many ways it is more important than journalism today." Bill Moyers
Books
Phil's books include his international bestseller, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred, which has been translated into ten languages; The Book of Roads: Stories from Michigan; the recently released The Meaning of Tea; Stoking the Creative Fires: Nine Ways to Rekindle Passion and Imagination; The Olympic Odyssey, which was selected by the US Olympic Committee as a gift to the athletes at the 2004 Athens Olympics; Soul: An Archaeology: Readings from Socrates to Ray Charles; The Soul of the World: A Modern Book of Hours; and The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. Cousineau also worked with the drummer John Densmore on his bestselling autobiography, Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and the Doors. Cousineau is also a contributor to more than 50 other books.
Films
Phil’s screenwriting credits in documentary films, which have won more than 25 international awards, include: A Seat at the Table; Ecological Design: Inventing the Future; Wayfinders: A Pacific Odyssey; Humble Serpent: The Life of Reuben Snake; Wiping the Tears of Seven Generations; Eritrea: March to Freedom; The Presence of the Goddess; The Hero’s Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell; and the 1991 Academy Award nominated Forever Activists: Stories from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. His most recent work was story consultant and on-camera interviewee for Stealing Home: Tiger Stadium, Detroit’s Field of Dream, which was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2016. An expert on mythology and film and the “hero journey” structure of screenplays, Cousineau also consults on many types of films and projects, including at Warner Brothers, Twentieth-Century Fox studios, and Pixar Studios.
Appearances
Cousineau has been the keynote speaker at major conferences as diverse as the Ansel Adams Centennial Celebration in Yosemite National Park, The European Unitarian Universalist’s Fall Retreat in the Netherlands, and the Red Bull Conference on Creativity in 2015. He has been invited to lecture at distinguished venues including the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford University, Pacifica Graduate Institute, the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago, the Swedenbourg Library, the Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Museum and Library in Indianapolis, Syracuse University, Bard College, the University of Tennessee, and Jung on the Hudson. He gave a prestigious TEDx talk about mentorship and creativity called “The Passionate Life.”
He has collaborated and appeared with many of the great thinkers and philosophers of our time including mentors, Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith, John O’Donohue, Karen Armstrong, Robert Thurman, Robert A. Johnson, James Hillman, Brian Swimme, Robert Bly, Brother David Steindl Rast, Marija Gimbutas, Angeles Arrien, Baseball Hall of Fame announcer Ernie Harwell, and many others. He enjoys collaborating with musicians and artists such as John Densmore, drummer for The Doors, Mickey Hart and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, cellist David Darling, songwriter R.B. Morris, Cliff Aerie and Chris Bakriges of the Oikos Ensemble, movie producer Jeff “The Dude” Dowd, and painter Gregg Chadwick. For the Global Spirit series he interviewed Carlos Santana and his wife Cindy Blackman Santana, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Deepak Chopra, and Pico Iyer.
Cousineau’s most recent works include The Lost Notebooks of Sisyphus: A Mythopoetic Novel (2022), The Accidental Aphorist (2018), Burning the Midnight Oil (2015), and in 2021, the twenty-fifth anniversary edition was released of The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred (2021), which has been translated into seven languages, sold over 175,000 copies worldwide, and won the Benjamin Franklin Award for the Best Designed Book.
Currently, Cousineau is on, staff of the Book Passage Travel and Photographers Conference, in the Bay Area, a fellow of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, a Trustee of Sacred Sites International, Cousineau lives with his family on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. For more information about his books, films, lectures, and art and literary tours, please visit http://www.philcousineau.net
Photo Credit: Phil Cousineau on the Warner Brothers lot, photograph by Jo Beaton, 2010.
Phil Cousineau has led journeys to Greece, Turkey & Ireland for Sacred Earth Journeys. If you are interested in creating a custom tour with Phil, please contact us for a quote!
