Carter Wilson

Carter Wilson comes from Washington, DC. As a young man he lived in Mayan communities in southern Mexico, learned enough Tzotzil Maya to get by, and wrote and produced a documentary film called "Appeals to Santiago" about an eight-day Mayan religious festival, "Appeals to Santiago" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKG94SRJtg4). Later he studied Quechua people's use of coca leaf in Peru on a grant from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.He has published ethnographic fiction and non-fiction, including two books about Mayan Mexico, a children's novel about Netsilik Inuit of Canada, and a fictional account of the discovery of Machu Picchu in Peru seen through the eyes of a photographer who is discovering he is gay at the same time. His first novel, CRAZY FEBRUARY, widely adopted in college anthropology courses, has been 53 years in print and now is available in Spanish as FEBRERO LOCO. A gay activist, Wilson wrote the narration for two Oscar-winning documentaries, "The Times of Harvey Milk" (with Judith Coburn) and "Common Threads." He received the Ruth Benedict Prize from the gay section of the American Anthropology Association for his "Hidden in the Blood". He taught at Harvard, Stanford, Tufts University, and for 34 years at the University of California at Santa Cruz.