Katy Butler is an investigative journalist and memoirist, she has shared stories about Buddhism, family caregiving, and creative responses to the AIDS crisis with readers of the The New York Times, The New Yorker, Tricycle, Best American Essays, and Best Buddhist Writing.
She has been a keynote speaker or lecturer at Harvard Medical School, Kaiser Permanente, and elsewhere, hoping to help de-medicalize, and restore sacredness to, modern death. Katy Butler trained at SFZC and was lay ordained by Thich Nhat Hanh. She is the author of Knocking on Heaven's Door (a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book of the Year) and The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life.