Eric Swanson is coauthor, with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, of the New York Times bestseller The Joy of Living and its follow-up volume, Joyful Wisdom. A graduate of Yale University and the Juilliard School, he is the author of several works of fiction and nonfiction. After converting to Buddhism in 1995, he cowrote Karmapa, The Sacred Prophecy, a history of the Karma Kagyu lineage, and authored What the Lotus Said, a memoir.