Rusty Glicksman

Rusty Glicksman was born on February 18, 1947, in Newark, New York. His family moved soon afterward to Livingston, New Jersey, where he grew up. He earned a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University in 1969 and was accepted to McGill University in Montreal, which he chose in part to avoid being drafted during the Vietnam War.

After receiving his M.A. from McGill’s English Department in 1971, he began teaching English literature at Vanier College in Montreal, where he worked full time until 1989. During those years he developed a passion for travel. What began as trips to Europe soon expanded into journeys through Iran, Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan - until he finally reached India, a place he returned to again and again and came to think of as a spiritual home.

Rusty had always dreamed of becoming a writer. He took a sabbatical from Vanier and spent it at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, hoping to devote himself fully to his craft. He missed America, and in 1989 he moved back to the United States, settling in the Boston area where several friends lived. He taught part-time English courses at Harvard and Brandeis.

Around this time he also founded Earth Door Sky Door, importing jewelry, textiles, and other goods from India - first as a side business and eventually as his full-time livelihood. In 1999 he resigned from Vanier College and devoted himself entirely to his business, which he continued to run until his death in 2021.

The earliest stories- moments, encounters, impressions - that would eventually form Lessons in Coming and Going were written during his years in Quebec, originally as standalone pieces. Some were written close to the events themselves; others were written later, from the detailed notes he kept. Only in the early 2000s did he begin to see that these pieces belonged together, that taken as a whole they traced something larger: a life shaped by movement, curiosity, discomfort, and reflection. He spent the last years of his life seeking a publisher for the book that meant so much to him.