ARTIST AND AUTHOR

Paul Hosch grew up on the Jersey Shore many years before it became famous on MTV. In college, he majored in journalism and wrote a regular column for the campus newspaper. He migrated to Haight-Ashbury in 1969 and caught the last dregs of the Hippie Era.

In Mr. Hosch’s first e book, Jersey Goes West, he describes the scene at the Fillmore West, an unpleasant visit to the Woodstock festival and how he witnessed a man getting killed at the Stone's disastrous concert at the Altamont Racetrack.

After abandoning the hippie scene for yoga, the author met an Indian swami who took him on a cross country tour as his personal assistant. He accompanied the yogi to Yale, Harvard, and University of Pennsylvania where his mentor was designated a "Scholar in Residence”.

When they returned to the West Coast, the swami convinced the young man to sell his beloved VW Bus and buy a ticket to India to study with his guru. Mr. Hosch agreed to go although he was only 23 years old at the time and had never been outside the country before.

In his second illustrated e memoir, Undercover in India, the author tells how lived with at his guru’s ashram for a year, went underground during martial law, and climbed the Himalayas in search of a mysterious one-armed yogi. After his time in India, Mr. Hosch returned to the U.S. and graduated from Philadelphia College of Art.

Following the events narrated in The Fingernail King, he took a six year gig teaching writing and design at the University of Hawaii. After that, he taught portrait drawing at the Honolulu Academy of Art for another six years. During that time, one of his paintings was chosen to be featured in the Academy Award winning film, The Descendants starring George Clooney. Mr. Hosch moved to Florida in 2009 to take care of his mother. He has been practicing meditation and yoga for fifty-five years.