Byron Belitsos was voted by the members and visitors of Universe Spirit as our December Writer Artist of the month
Byron Belitsos is an author, editor, journalist, and book publisher as well as an experienced political activist. Currently he is the CEO of Origin Press, a publisher of trade book titles on spirituality, politics, and esoterica based in Northern California. Origin's world-renowned authors include Peter Russell, Charles Tart, Timothy Wyllie, Ralph Metzner, Phillip Krapf, and Jim Marrs.
Belitsos has extensively studied world history and world religions, as well as political theory and philosophy. In addition he has had a long entrepreneurial career, having started a number of businesses, including a highly successful software company.
Byron has been politically active since 1969 in a variety of venues and contexts. His involvement with the world democracy movement started in 1986 when he joined the World Federalist Association; he is now a board member of one of its successor organizations, the Democratic World Federalists. In 1988 Belitsos wrote, directed, and produced the acclaimed educational film, Toward a Governed World (1988) and has just completed an updated new edition, a 90-minute DVD entitled Toward a Well-Governed World (Origin Press: August, 2005). In addition, he is the coauthor and publisher of One World Democracy: A Progressive Vision for Enforceable Global Law (Origin Press: September, 2005).
Belitsos founded Origin Press in 1996 in San Rafael, California. He is also its principal funder and stockholder, and is the publisher of its two imprints, Wisdom Editions and Celestia. Origin's eighteen titles have so far been recipients of three national prizes.
Belitsos was also an inaugural member of Ken Wilber's Integral Institute, in its business branch. In this connection, Byron launched in 2001 the website ikosmos.com, known as the Portal for Cultural Creativity. This pioneering website has comprehensively covered the key ideas and books of the integral movement.
Belitsos has a B.A. (Honors) from the University of Chicago in intellectual history. He has done graduate work in the history of consciousness and religious studies at the University of California (Santa Cruz and Berkeley campuses), and at the California Institute of Integral Studies, developing expertise in history, psychology, literary criticism, and religious studies. Previous to that he studied poetics with American poet Allen Ginsberg, at Naropa University. He has taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and was a full-time faculty member for three years at Armstrong College in Berkeley, CA., from 1980-83.
Byron entered into a career as a business journalist and consultant in Silicon Valley in 1983, authoring over 40 published articles. This included a three-year stint as the West coast editor for Computer Decisions, where he covered the telecommunications industry for its national audience. He is also principal author of Business Telecommunications (Dow Jones-Irwin, 1987), an acclaimed and widely used business textbook on digital telecommunications. Byron became a business entrepreneur in 1990. Before entering the publishing industry, he was co-founder of Digital Communications of America, Inc., a successful telecommunications software firm that was acquired in 1994 by a Fortune 200 company for $6 million. These funds were instrumental in his founding of Origin Media.
Please visit www.originpress.com to order books and www.oneworlddemocracy.net for more information on One World Democracy.
Books
- PLANETARY DEMOCRACY: MOVING TOWARD A GOVERNED WORLD
- One World Democracy: A Progressive Vision for Enforceable Global Law
