James Redfield was 43 when he published The Celestine Prophecy, which chronicles Nine Insights into a greater spirituality. He has been keenly interested in human spirituality all of his life. Born on March 19, 1950, he grew up in a rural area near Birmingham, Alabama.

From an early age, he was motivated by a need for clarity about spiritual matters. Brought up in a Methodist Church that was loving and community-oriented, he was nevertheless frustrated by a lack of answers to his questions about the true nature of spiritual experience.

As a young man, he studied Eastern philosophies, including Taoism and Zen, while majoring in sociology at Auburn University. He later received a Master's degree in counseling and spent more than 15 years as a therapist to abused adolescents. During this time, he was drawn into the human potential movement and turned to it for theories about intuitions and psychic phenomena that would help his troubled clients.

All along, Redfield was forming ideas that would eventually find their way into The Celestine Prophecy. In 1989, he quit his job as a therapist to write full-time, synthesizing his interest in interactive psychology, Eastern and Western philosophies, science, futurism, ecology, history, and mysticism.

As he writes in The Celestine Vision, his non-fiction title published in 1997, "the actual writing of The Celestine Prophecy occurred from January 1989 through April 1991 and was characterized by a sort of trial-and-error process.

James recalls in The Celestine Vision, "Word of mouth recommendations took care of everything else." In six months, the book had over 100,000 copies in print, was in all 50 states, and was appearing in countries around the world.

In October 1997, James Redfield was awarded the highly prestigious Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Senate at the XXIII Pio Manzu International Conference in Rimini, Italy. Pio Manzu is a non-governmental arm of the United Nations headed up by Mikhail Gorbachev.

In the spring of 2000, James joined Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat For Humanity, as the only two recipients of Humanitarian of the Year honors from their alma mater, Auburn University. Two months later, he was honoreticksd by the International New Thought Alliance with another Humanitarian of the Year award.Also in the spring of 2004, principal photography began on an independent feature film based on The Celestine Prophecy.

James Redfield partnered with Barnet Bain in co-writing the screenplay before they teamed up with co-producers Terry Collis and Beverly Camhe to take the international bestseller from page to screen. The movie is slated for a 2006 release.

James and his wife, Salle, both natives of Alabama, reside in Florida with their cat, Meredith.