TONY WOLF

New Zealand citizen and US resident Tony Wolf is an author, producer, teacher, antiquarian and creator. 

His interest in memento mori philosophy dates back to the early 1990s, when he lost one close friend to suicide and another to a motorcycle accident. Dissatisfied with the culturally sanctioned responses to their deaths, he subsequently devised a series of memento mori ritual events for arts festivals in Wellington, New Zealand and Bellingen, NSW, Australia. 

A veteran of the education and entertainment industries, Tony served as the Cultural Fighting Styles Designer for the Lord of the Rings feature film trilogy (2001-2003). His novels include the popular Suffrajitsu trilogy (2015) and The Life and Fantastical “Crimes” of Spring Heeled Jack (2020) and he has co-produced and directed the independent documentaries Bartitsu: the Lost Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes (2011) and No Man Shall Protect Us: The Hidden History of the Suffragette Bodyguards (2018).  

In recent years, Tony’s Way of Life and Death essays and video lecture presentations have been featured via Morbid Anatomy, the Spiritual Naturalist Society, Atlas Obscura and Reimagine. In October of 2021 he convened and participated in the inaugural Memoria Symposium, a discussion between six artists working in the media of memorial and memento mori ritual.  

Tony lives with his wife Kathrynne in Chicago, USA and blogs at alt-death.com, a curated compendium of the changing mortality narrative.

COURSES TAUGHT

The Art of Ritual: Changing Ways of Life and Death