Mark Salzman

Mark Salzman was born in 1959 in Connecticut. At the age of seven he started to play the cello because of his mother's musical influence. He also has a small thing for astronomy from his father. He has two younger sibilings, Erich and Rachel. At 13, Mark set out on a quest to become a Kung Fu Zen master after seeing his first Kung Fu film. He has many hilarious stories of his attempts and harsh training in his 1996 memoir "Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia". At age 16, on a whim to skip senior year, Salzman applied and was accepted to Yale University because of his ambitions to learn Chinese and study Chinese art and culture. Salzman graduated from Yale in 1982 with a degree in Chinese language and literature. From 1982 to 1984 Salzman lived in China and taught English to Chinese students at the Hunan Medical College. In 1986 Mark wrote his first and most acclaimed novel about his two years in China, "Iron and Silk". From 1987 till 1989 Salzman wrote and starred in the movie version filmed in China. Since then Salzman has written four other books, "The Laughing Sutra" (1991), "The Soloist" (1994), "Lost in Place" (1996), and "Lying Awake" (2000). Salzman is married to Oscar winner, film maker Jessica Yu. They live in Los Angeles with two cats, Fog and Smog, birds and fish. They long to move back to San Francisco.