About Me

I was born in Germany, emigrated to Canada with my parents and siblings at the age of ten and grew up in the north of the country, still surrounded by wilderness.

I studied German and English literature in Vancouver and Hamburg and then taught European literature in translation at a college near Vancouver for ten years.

I have been writing since I was 15. My first book was published when I was 21. This was followed by over 200 titles in ten languages and over five million copies in print.

My particular love is poetry – the poems I have written throughout my life. It is my way of orienting myself in life and processing what I experience. But I have written many non-fiction books and novels as well.

A number of years ago I published eight books with Harper&Row before the publisher became Harper/Collins. Because of a greater interest in my ideas in Europe I started writing more in German. Presently I am making a foray into the English-speaking market again and hope to find many readers in North America.

I lived with my wife Waltraud in Gibsons, on the coast of British Columbia, just outside of Vancouver, until Waltraud’s death in November 2021 from dementia, about which I wrote the book WITH YOU, WITHOUT YOU. I took care of my wife at home for five years. Gibsons can only be reached by ferry or seaplane. I now live there alone.

As an author and photographer I went to Europe every year for over 1600 readings, lectures and seminars for 40 years without interruption. I just had to take 2020 and 2021 off due to the pandemic.
Since the autumn of 2020 I have been giving online seminars via the Eckstein Spiritual Center in Nürnberg.

The major themes of my writing are: the pursuit of a more conscious life, love and how it expresses itself in committed relationships and friendships, nature and our attitude towards it, and questions of faith and hope. I am always looking for new expressions for what concerns us all in the broadest sense.

You can find more information about me on Facebook under my name and on my German website.
www.ulrich-schaffer.com