Mark Lyons

Mark Lyons wrote, translated and Espejos y Ventanas / Mirrors and Windows, Oral Histories of Mexican Farmworkers and Their Families, published in Spanish and English by Temple University. He was a recipient of Pennsylvania Council of the Arts fellowships for 2003 and 2009, and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. As director of the Philadelphia Storytelling Project, Lyons uses digital storytelling in his work with teens, the immigrant community, and homeless veterans. Participants record their...See more

Mark Lyons wrote, translated and Espejos y Ventanas / Mirrors and Windows, Oral Histories of Mexican Farmworkers and Their Families, published in Spanish and English by Temple University. He was a recipient of Pennsylvania Council of the Arts fellowships for 2003 and 2009, and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. As director of the Philadelphia Storytelling Project, Lyons uses digital storytelling in his work with teens, the immigrant community, and homeless veterans. Participants record their stories, mix them with music, and share them on CDs, the radio, webcasts, and public venues. He recently completed a project with immigrant youth who created dolls, recorded stories about their fears of their parents being deported, and implanted their recorded stories into the dolls to create talking StoryDolls. Lyons has worked in the Latino community for the last twenty five years, as a health worker and community organizer. He was the director of the Farmworkers Health and Safety Institute, a consortium of grass-roots organizations in the U.S. and the Caribbean. The Institute trained farmworkers to use theater and other popular education methods to train other farmworkers concerning health and safety issues and workers' rights. He also worked for several years in a community health center, as a provider and health planner. He also edits Open Borders, the Wild River Review series of immigrant stories. See less