Katy Butler (born 1949) is an American journalist, essayist and author of Knocking on Heaven's Door, the Path to a Better Way of Death, (Scribner, 2013) and The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life (Simon & Schuster, 2019).
Attended Sarah Lawrence College and earned a BA from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
Teaches writing at the Esalen Institute[1] and was a speaker at The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard's 2008 and 2009 conferences on Narrative Nonfiction.
In 2004, she was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for an essay about applying traditional religious practices to the chaos of modern life.
A Buddhist since 1977, Butler was lay ordained by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh[19] and has co-led small meditation groups.