Albert Flynn DeSilver

“This courageous and visionary book enacts and embodies a concrete 'relational aesthetics'...Don’t miss it!” —Cornel West

“Albert Flynn DeSilver’s poems are filled with a sunny, kinetic plentitude” —Richard Silberg, Poetry Flash

“Prose poems you won’t want to miss! The pronoun I in its word-tissue forest . . . “a book of elastic steel, an opposable piano.” Meet tea leaf man, iced-over man, and others, as the inside-outside window collapses. “I am wind in the paper.” Beautiful. “I alone as mirror to the world.”” —Alice Notley

Albert is also the author of “Writing as a Path to Awakening: A Year to Becoming an Excellent Writer & Living an Awakened Life,” (Sounds True, 2017) which is based on his popular writing workshops by the same name. Albert teaches writing and mindfulness workshops at The Omega Institute, The Esalen Institute, Spirit Rock Meditation Center and literary conferences nationally. Albert has presented and taught with bestselling authors Cheryl Strayed, Elizabeth Gilbert, Maxine Hong Kingston, U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan and many others. He lives in Northern California.

“These poems are meditations of passage, and the reader is obliged to read slowly, honoring the lives one meets page after page...nothing less than stunning.” —David St. John

“Bay Poetics is a stunning achievement.” —Ron Silliman

“Albert is one of our poets, and we stand behind him. . .” —Andrei Codrescu

“This book is full of wonderful insights, exercises, and some luscious prose. Lucky for us, Albert Flynn DeSilver learned how to write as he was walking the spiritual path, a quality lacking in so many books on spirituality. This is an original, and a real good read.” —Wes Nisker, Radio host, commentator, actor, and Bestselling author of Essential Crazy Wisdom

“In this gentle, lucid, erudite and compassionate guide, Albert Flynn DeSilver offers the wisdom and warmth of a true friend who has walked the path. One who reaches out a capable hand and offers it to the new writer, to the struggling writer, and says here, here, let me show you not only how to write, but how to live.” —Dani Shapiro, Bestselling author of Still Writing and Devotion

“This is a wonderful collection of insights, practices, writing exercises, and meditations to help you get words on the page, not just as an accomplishment but as a way to discover who you really are.” —Susan Piver, Bestselling author of Start Here Now: An Open-Hearted Guide to the Path and Practice of Meditation

“Albert Flynn DeSilver is our funny, wise, and vulnerable tour guide on this magical year-long journey through the soul of writing. I recommend it to seekers who want to tell their stories, writers who want to connect with their deepest truths, and anyone who wants to use words as a path to what lies beyond language.” —Anne Cushman, author of Enlightenment for Idiots: A Novel and Moving Into Meditation

Albert Flynn DeSilver is an American poet, memoirist, novelist, meditation teacher, speaker, and workshop leader. He received a BFA in photography from the University of Colorado in 1991 and an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1995. Albert served as Marin County California's very first Poet Laureate from 2008-2010. His work has appeared in more than one hundred literary journals worldwide including ZYZZYVA, New American Writing, Hanging Loose, Jubilat, Exquisite Corpse, Jacket (Australia), Poetry Kanto (Japan), Van Gogh’s Ear (France), and many others. Albert Flynn DeSilver has taught for many years in the Teen and Family Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. He is the author of several books of poems and the memoir Beamish Boy, (2012) which Kirkus Reviews called "a beautifully written memoir, poignant and inspirational".