Katy Butler

Katy Butler (born 1949) is an American journalist, essayist and author of Knocking on Heaven's Door, the Path to a Better Way of Death, (Scribner, 2013) and The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life (Simon & Schuster, 2019).

Career

Attended Sarah Lawrence College and earned a BA from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.

Teaches writing at the Esalen Institute and was a speaker at The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard's 2008 and 2009 conferences on Narrative Nonfiction. Awarded writing residencies at Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook, and Blue Mountain Center.

In the 1980s she exposed abuses of sexuality and power by leaders of American Buddhist communities.

She speaks at hospitals, medical schools and other locations about improving end-of-life medicine and the doctor-patient relationship.

Publications

Butler's essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker,The Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, New West Magazine, Vogue, The Village Voice, Tricycle (The Buddhist Quarterly), More magazine, Psychotherapy Networker magazine, among others. Her writing career began with an internship at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, followed by a stint as a staff reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle that lasted for 12 years.

Books

Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death (2013) The New York Times called Knocking on Heaven's Door a "thoroughly researched and compelling mix of personal narrative and hard-nosed reporting" and named it one of their 100 Notable Books of 2013. The book also received a Books for a Better Life Award in 2014 and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.