(1915 – 1968) Prolific American poet, essayist and author of The Seven-Storey Mountain (1948), his memoir of modern spiritual discovery Born in Prades, France, but educated in the United States and England, Merton converted to Catholicism in the late 1930s. In 1941 he entered the Abbey of Gethsemani in rural Kentucky. As a Trappist, the pull between inward experience and the outside world continued in Merton’s life. He became increasingly attracted to Eastern mysticism in the 1960s, all the while involving himself in the Anti-Vietnam War movement and other left-wing political causes. Merton died in an accident while at a religious conference in Thailand.