Stephen Jenkinson

Stephen Jenkinson is a culture activist, author, storyteller and musician who has made a public life as an advocate of conscious living and dying. He holds master's degrees in theology from Harvard University and in social work from the University of Toronto. As a young man he was apprenticed to a master storyteller. He went on to work extensively with dying people and their families, serving as a program director in a major Canadian hospital and as an assistant professor in a prominent Canadian medical school.

In 2010 he and his wife, Nathalie Roy, founded the Orphan Wisdom School, the home of his writing and teaching. For fourteen years the School convened twice a year in places including the Ottawa Valley, the Gulf Islands, Wales and Iceland. Orphan Wisdom is described as a project of cultural critique and restoration, rooted in knowing history, disciplined inquiry and being claimed by ancestry. It starts from the idea that a culture of people who cannot say who their people are is an orphan culture, and that this condition still leaves room for wisdom.

Since 2015 Jenkinson has co-led Nights of Grief and Mystery with singer-songwriter Gregory Hoskins. It is a mix of musical show, storytelling and ceremony, and it has toured North America, the U.K., Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Their recordings include Nights of Grief & Mystery (2017), Dark Roads and Rough Gods (2020), and Caldera (2026).

His books include Money and the Soul's Desires, How it All Could Be, the award-winning Die Wise, Come of Age, A Generation's Worth, Reckoning (with Kimberly Ann Johnson), Matrimony, and Trembling, Still, a dated account of the first year after his Parkinson's diagnosis. The documentary Griefwalker, directed by Tim Wilson, portrays his work with dying people. He is also a sculptor and traditional canoe builder, and he farms organically off the grid.