Mark Kurlansky is a highly-acclaimed American journalist and writer from Hartford, Connecticut.

In his journalism career, he has worked in many places around the world, such as Paris and Mexico, to report on Europe, West Africa, Southeast Asia, Central America, and Latin America. He spent eight years exclusively covering the Caribbean and Haiti. Kurlansky has had 27 books published including fiction, non-fiction, and children’s books. He often illustrates his own books, which have been translated into twenty-five different languages. He is a winner of The James Beard Award for Writing and Literature, among others.