Pen Name:
None
Genres:
Memoir
Other Nonfiction: History, Peace and Justice Studies, Politics, Interdisciplinary Studies
Websites:
Amazon
Bookshop
Barnes & Noble
Bio
Ken Carpenter was born in New Mexico, raised in Colorado, and lived most of his life in the Southwest. As a student at Colorado State University in the 1960s he studied history and became active in civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. In 1968 he was drafted, refused to serve in Vietnam, and served a sentence in federal prison. After his release he earned a master’s degree at the University of Texas, came out as gay, and joined the struggle for LGBTQ rights. He was hired by the America Friends Service Committee, a Quaker peace and human right organization as Peace Education Secretary in their Austin, Texas office.
In the 1990s Ken earned a PhD at the University of Oregon and helped found an international education center in Nicaragua. For more than twenty-five years he taught courses in peace studies, international studies, and national security studies, at the University of New Mexico, directed study abroad programs, and worked with international students from many different countries.
In 2019 Ken published a memoir, Borderlands Boy, and in 2022 was awarded the Paul Bartlett Ré Peace Prize by the University of New Mexico Foundation for “a lifetime of enduring contributions to the promotion of peace through Peace and Environmental Activism.” Now retired, he lives in Albuquerque with his partner, Jonn Salovaara, and has recently written an historical survey of nonviolent resistance and reform, The Nonviolence of Everyday Life, to be released by the UNM Press in 2027.
More from Ken
My new book The Nonviolence of Everyday Life, will be available from the University of New Mexico Press in 2027. This book is primarily an historical survey of both violence and nonviolence beginning with the dawn of our earliest civilizations through the tumultuous period of history we are living through today. My approach is multidisciplinary, delving not only into history but also anthropology, social movements, philosophy, political theory, literature, arts, cultural studies, and other fields. It is solidly in the tradition of “history from the bottom up, not the top down.” I give due credit to the great historical figures, but my primary focus is on the millions and billions of people who incorporate nonviolence into their everyday lives working individually and alongside others to help create a more peaceful and just world. Many of the examples in book involve movements, and cultures we don’t usually hear about or associate with nonviolence, but who have helped make extraordinary contributions to a better world.
Nonfiction
Title: Borderlands Boy: Love, War and Peace in the Atomic Age
Published: Sunstone Press, Santa Fe, 2019
Genre: Memoir
A personal coming-of-age and coming out story of a boy growing up in the U.S. Southwest in an era of political, social and cultural transformation. It is also an extended reflection on the importance of place, time, history and geography in shaping who we are and who we become. In post-World War II America, the specter of nuclear destruction and environmental crises, challenges to racism and women’s inequality, the Vietnam War and the sexual revolution threaten to tear the country apart. Already struggling with what it means to be gay and what kind of man to become, the author faces the ultimate moral test of courage and conscience when he graduates from college and is drafted to fight in Vietnam. How will he navigate these tumultuous years and what will he learn from his experiences? How can he survive, find love and a purpose in life? And what lessons are there in such a story for future generations in a world without borders?