Wallace Kaufman

Writing
Editing
Teaching
Research

If it's worth saying, it's worth saying right.

"In sixth grade I wanted to grow up to be a poet, and while most of my writing is prose, I have never given up the idea that every word counts, that the sum of any writing from an economic report to a short story should be more than the sum of its words."

Wallace Kaufman's consulting, writing, and personal pursuits demonstrate his unusually broad hands-on experience. He has put his environmental principles to work in rural planning, urban renewal, and land development. He created several American businesses and consulted with new businesses in Russia and Central Asia. He also offers mediation services for dispute resolution in land use, contract, business, and environmental issues, and is available to mediate conflicts involving writers, editors, publishers and clients.

His writing includes literary essays, economic surveys in the former USSR, translations from German and Spanish, prize-winning newspaper columns, business and science writing and fiction in magazines like Redbook and Mademoiselle. He has been a Marshall Scholar at Oxford and a Science Writing Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.


SOME READER COMMENTS

S. Salem, NY. "It is a real page turner - I didn't expect that given the subject matter. . . . a wonderfully readable writer who packs a page with important information, observations and insights. It all flows so beautifully."

San Diego. "it was a very emotional experience for me. . . .It was like reading one of the most beautiful love stories I've ever encountered."

Santa Monica, CA. "First of all, the writing style is a pleasure to peruse; it's very much like having a conversation with someone in which you, the reader/listener, don't have to do a lot of the talking because the speaker/writer is a good story teller."

North Carolina. “There were tears in my eyes as I turned the last page. I'm not sure why, and I cringe a bit when I think of the apt work to describe the feeling. Empathy is much abused, but this may have been that rare instance where it was truly present. . . . The tears may have been those of a father who knows that special pride in a daughter. They may have been the kind that fall at the end of a perfect symphony performance. Or then may have been tears of regret that there were no more pages. They were probably a mixture of all three.”

New York, NY. "The book is well written and is a page-turner. I have a more sanguine feeling about Thoreau after reading it, and I don't exaggerate when I predict that some reviewer will say that you are the successor of Thoreau, but the more sensitive thinker regarding nature and the wilds."

Indiana. "[the] story is an interesting and compelling one - and, though I found it in the Environment Section, it could just as well have been in the Philosophy Section. That this is a work of love there can be no doubt; perhaps, this is the greatest gift to the reader."

Aspen, Colorado. ". . . a gentle book, deeply evocative of the transitions and compromises we all make in
life. . . . Once someone actually picks it up, they will be hooked."

Knoxville, TN. "It is a fine read and I have laughed out loud more than once. A fine ride of insight, opinion and
poignancy."

Western NC. "Finished Coming Out of the Woods last night. I laughed, I cried.. My wife said she hadn't seen me so engrossed in a book since she couldn't remember when."

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Sic Vita (Such is Life)

LIKE to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are,
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew,
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood:
Even such is man, whose borrowed light
Is straight called in, and paid to night.
The wind blows out, the bubble dies;
The spring entombed in autumn lies;
The dew dries up, the star is shot;
The flight is past, and man forgot.

(by Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, 17th Century)