bio

Mark Vonnegut, the son of Kurt and Jane Cox Vonnegut, was born in Chicago in 1947 and moved to Cape Cod when he was four years old. He attended Northfield Mount Hermon and received a B.A. in religion from Swarthmore in 1969. After graduation, he started a commune in British Columbia; he had his first psychotic break shortly thereafter and was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He then spent two years recovering and working odd jobs back on the Cape, where he eventually completed his first memoir, The Eden Express, which was published in 1975 and has remained in print ever since. It was named an ALA Notable Book and The New York Times declared it “required reading for those who want to understand insanity from the inside.”

In 1973, Mark decided to try to get into medical school. He spent two years completing the prerequisite coursework at The University of Massachusetts Boston and ultimately received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. Mark finished his pediatrics residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1982 and has been a primary care pediatrician ever since. He spent 19 years with Milton Pediatrics before opening his own pediatric practice in 2001. Mark has served on the Harvard Medical School Admissions Committee and is an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. He has spoken at numerous conferences and been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, The Boston Globe, The New York Times Magazine, and Harper’s Magazine, among others.

In 2010, Mark published his second memoir, Just Like Someone without Mental Illness Only More So. This second work details his youth living with a famous, but struggling, father as well as his personal experience managing the ups and downs of mental illness. It has been described as a “searingly funny, iconoclastic account of coping with mental illness, finding his calling, and learning that willpower is not enough.”