Michael Wolfe

Michael Wolfe (b. 1945 CE) is an American poet, author, and documentary producer, widely recognized for bringing the experience of the Hajj to Western readers. He studied Classics at Wesleyan University and, on an Amy Lowell Traveling Scholarship, spent several years traveling in North and West Africa, an experience that drew him toward Islam. He embraced the faith in 1989 and performed the pilgrimage to Makka in 1990, describing it as transformative.

That journey produced his two best-known works. The Hadj: An American's Pilgrimage to Mecca is a candid first-person narrative of his own pilgrimage, while One Thousand Roads to Mecca gathers ten centuries of travelers' accounts of the Hajj, from classical Muslim voyagers to later Western converts, into a single anthology. He also edited Taking Back Islam: American Muslims Reclaim Their Faith, a collection of essays by American Muslims, and contributed to The Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage, a volume of scholarly essays.

Beyond the page, Wolfe co-founded Unity Productions Foundation and worked in broadcast media, serving as writer and on-camera host for an ABC Nightline report on the Hajj and helping produce a PBS documentary on the life of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. For a number of years he also ran Tombouctou Books, a small literary press. Across his work he has sought to present Islam and the pilgrimage with both personal warmth and historical depth.