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4 unusual facts about Naropa University


Always Coming Home

A stage version of Always Coming Home was mounted at Naropa University in 1993 (with Le Guin's approval) by Ruth Davis-Fyer.

London International School of Performing Arts

Whilst in the past, LISPA has offered an MFA in conjunction with Naropa University, it is no longer offering this option.

Lucien Wulsin III

Wulsin lived his retirement in Boulder, Colorado, where he served as an original member (1986) of the board of trustees of Naropa University.

Naropa University

Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Oxford University scholar Chögyam Trungpa, it is named for the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda.


Contemplative education

It has inspired networks of higher-education professionals for the advancement of contemplative education at Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke, Smith College and University of Massachusetts Amherst and in Colorado, with the Rocky Mountain Contemplative Higher Education Network (RMCHEN), which launched in September 2006 with an event hosted by Naropa University; and with the Contemplative Studies Initiative at Brown University.

Janet Feder

Previously the Chair of the Music Department at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, Feder has performed and collaborated with Fred Frith, Nels Cline, Henry Kaiser, Bill Frisell, Elliott Sharp, Mike Keneally, Bryan Beller, Amy Denio, Chris Cutler, Mike Johnson/Thinking Plague, Susie Asado, Nikmat Hatraktor, Paolo Angeli, Wu Fei, Thomas Dimuzzio, Tatsuya Nakatani, Erin McKeown, and poet Anne Waldman.

Michelle Naka Pierce

She teaches experimental poetry and writing pedagogy at Naropa University and is the director of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman in 1974.

Nancy Steinbeck

She and John met in Boulder, Colorado, in 1975, where they studied Tibetan Buddhism at Naropa University with Chögyam Trungpa, the notorious renegade Tibetan lama.


see also

Laura Mullen

She’s also been invited as a guest author to teach at Naropa University's Summer Writing Program (1996, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2008), Columbia College – Chicago - (spring semester 2003), Brown University (2001), and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop Summer Program, (1998).