Hugh Delehanty is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, a National Magazine Award-winning editor, and a certified meditation teacher with more than 25 years of practice focusing on mindfulness and creativity.

He was born in New Haven and grew up in South Weymouth, Mass., a suburb of Boston. After graduating from Brown, where he studied with novelists R.V. Cassill and John Hawkes, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. That led him to jobs as a reporter for the Oakland Tribune, editor-in-chief of Professional Sports Journal, and senior editor for Women’s Sports and Fitness. He also wrote extensively for San Francisco magazine, KQED, the San Francisco Examiner, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Los Angeles Times syndicate.

He also wrote extensively for San Francisco magazine, KQED, the San Francisco Examiner, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Los Angeles Times syndicate.

In 1988, Hugh landed a position in New York as an editor at Sports Illustrated, where he supervised coverage of baseball, soccer, and the Olympics, and was part of the team that won back-to-back National Magazine Awards for general excellence. While at Time Inc., he was also the editor of FYI, the company’s in-house magazine, and senior editor at People, covering human interest, music, and the British royal family.

During that time, inspired by a meeting he had with the Dalai Lama, Hugh began studying meditation with Charlotte Joko Beck, the author of Everyday Zen, who taught him some important lessons about the relationship between mindfulness and creativity. The secret, she said, was trusting fully in the present moment: “If we have the patience to wait until the mud (your mind) settles and the water is clear, the right words will arise, without thinking about them.”

A few years later, Hugh teamed up with basketball coach Phil Jackson, a longtime Zen practitioner, to write Sacred Hoops, a national bestseller about mindfulness, Native American wisdom, and the transformation of the Chicago Bulls into NBA champions. Jackson had a gift for building teams focused on selflessness and creativity. “The power of the we,” he liked to say, “is much stronger than the power of the me”—even if the “me” in question was the greatest player in the game: Michael Jordan.

Not long after Sacred Hoops was published, Hugh moved with his wife, writer Barbara Graham, to Minneapolis, where he was the editor-in-chief of Utne Reader, a national magazine often referred to as “the thinking person’s Reader’s Digest.” Early in his tenure, Hugh and his team surveyed the magazine’s readers and discovered that the two topics they most wanted to read about were “values/ethics” and “creativity.” Their driving passion was learning how to navigate the complex realities of a fast-changing world without compromising their ideals. So Hugh repositioned the magazine with that in mind, and, over the next two years, subscriptions climbed and average newsstand sales nearly doubled.

Hugh’s next move was to become editor-in-chief of AARP’s flagship magazine, Modern Maturity, in Washington, D.C. To attract the growing wave of 50+ baby boomers, he relaunched the publication with a new name, AARP The Magazine, a new design, and a new way of looking at the second half of life. His inspiration was the work of psychologist James Hollis, who wrote about the rich possibilities for attaining “spiritual enlargement” in later life when we can “shed, once and for all, the self that everyone told us we were ‘supposed’ to be and embrace who we truly are.” Over the next decade, the readership of AARP The Magazine soared from 15 million to 35 million-plus, and Hugh’s team won numerous honors, including a National Magazine award and a Daytime Emmy (for the TV show My Generation).

Delehanty Family Archive

In 2012, Hugh left AARP and moved back to California to write another book with Phil Jackson, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success, which debuted as a #1 New York Times bestseller.  Shortly after that, Hugh became an editor-at-large for Mindful magazine, where he advised the editors on content development and wrote a wide range of articles on meditation, compassion, and peak performance.

Over the past three decades, Hugh has studied meditation with Joko, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, Adyashanti, and others. In 2019 he became a certified meditation teacher at the Mindfulness Training Institute, where he studied under Mark Coleman and Martin Aylward and is currently serving as a mentor for new students. Hugh’s teaching background also includes a visiting professorship at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., as well as being a guest lecturer at the Columbia School of Journalism, Georgetown, Rice and other universities. In addition, he has studied painting and drawing at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C., and at the Montorno workshop in Tuscany.

Hugh lives with Barbara in the Bay Area, where he writes, teaches meditation, and coaches individuals on how to tap into their innate creativity.

Over the past three decades, Hugh has studied meditation with Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, Adyashanti, and others. In 2019 he became a certified meditation teacher at the Mindfulness Training Institute, where he studied under Mark Coleman and Martin Aylward and is currently serving as a student mentor. Hugh’s teaching background also includes work as a visiting professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., and as a guest lecturer at the Columbia School of Journalism, Georgetown, Rice and other universities. In addition, he has studied painting and drawing at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C., and at the Montorno workshops in Tuscany.

Hugh lives with Barbara in the Bay Area, where he writes, teaches meditation, and coaches individuals on how to tap into their innate creativity.

What Inspires Me

A conversation with psychologist Elad Levinson